STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP This work has not previously been submitted for a degree or diploma in any university. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the thesis itself. Date: 25/ 6/ 2016 Signature Bui Thi Kim Tuyen i ABSTRACT Most high school students face several difficulties when they need to listen to recordings in English or their lecturers' speech in English because they do not know how to use the listening strategies to understand the texts. Therefore, this paper presents a study on the metacognitive strategies for listening comprehension employed by students.
In order to achieve this object, a study was conducted on 200 tenth graders at Tran Quoc Tuan Upper Secondary School in Quang Ngai province. Two instruments including a questionnaire and an interview were used to collect quantitative as well as qualitative data. The findings demonstrated that the frequency of overall listening strategy use of the participants was at the point three in the scale level in which among five categories of metacognitive listening strategies, directed attention was used most frequently, followed by problem- solving, personal knowledge, planning and evaluating and the subjects used mental translation least frequently. Furthermore, descriptive analysis from the data also supported the common factors affecting the choice of metacognitive strategies for listening.
The results indicated that, motivation was the most significant factor affecting the choice of the strategies, followed by teaching method, personality, learning styles and learners‟ proficiency, respectively. It suggested that metacognitive strategy training should be incorporated into the regular listening teaching program to help students become more effective listeners. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Firstly, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor Associate Professor Dr. Truong Vien, at Department of English, College of Foreign Languages, Hue University for the continuous support of my thesis writing, for his patience, motivation, and immense knowledge.
His guidance also helped me to use SPSS, a useful tool for the data analysis of the research. I could not have imagined having a better advisor and mentor for my study. My gratefulness extends to Dr. Ton Nu Nhu Ngoc, who has given valuable comments on my thesis.
I believe that without her support this research paper would have hardly come into being. Besides my supervisor, I thank my fellow teammates for the stimulating discussions, for the sleepless nights we were working together before deadlines, and for all the fun we have had in the last two years. Last but not least, my special thanks go to my family: my parents, my husband and my children for supporting me spiritually throughout writing this thesis and my life in general. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP.
iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. vii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES. viii CHAPTER 1- INTRODUCTION. Purpose of the study.
Scope of the study. Organization of the study.3 CHAPTER 2 - LITERATURE REVIEW. Language Learning Strategies. Definitions of Language Learning Strategies.
Classifications of Language Learning Strategies. Metacognitive Strategy in Listening Comprehension .24 CHAPTER 4 - FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION. Metacognitive listening strategies used by the participants. The reliability of the questionnaires.
The frequency of metacognitive listening strategies of each cluster used by the participants. Personal Knowledge on Listening strategies .2 Planning-Evaluation Metacognitive Strategies .3 Mental Translation Strategies .4 Directed Attention Strategies. Problem-solving Strategies. The frequency of metacognitive listening strategies of five clusters used by the participants.
The frequency of all metacognitive listening strategies. Common factors affecting the choice of metacognitive strategies for listening .52 CHAPTER 5 - CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS. For students of English. For teachers of English.
Limitations of the study. Suggestions for Further Studies .67 QUESTIONS FOR INTERVIEW.69 PHIẾU THĂM DÒ Ý KIẾN .74 Raw calculations of the questionnaires .85 Raw calculations of one sample T-test .85 vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS EFL: ENGLISH AS FOREIGN LANGUAGE L2: TARGET LANGUAGE M: MEAN MALQ: METACOGNITIVE AWARENESS LISTENING QUESTIONAIRE SILL: STRATEGY INVENTORY FOR LANGUAGE LEARNING SPSS: STATISTICAL PACKAGE FOR THE SOCIAL SCIENCES vii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 2.1: Oxford‟s (1990) Strategy Classification System .2: Criteria for Assessing the Frequency of strategy use .3: Questionnaire clusters and items .2: Description of each metacognitive factor measured by the MALQ .5: Sample MALQ items and corresponding metacognitive factors identified by Vandergrift et al.1: The reliability of the pilot and post questionnaires .2 The overall frequency of using personal knowledge on listening strategies .3: Results of the one-sample T test in personal knowledge on listening strategy cluster .4: The mean scores of individual personal knowledge strategy items .5: The overall frequency of using planning-evaluation metacognitive strategies .6: Results of the one-sample T test in listening planning-evaluation metacognitive strategy cluster .7: The mean scores of individual planning-evaluation metacognitive strategy items .8: The overall frequency of using mental translation strategies .9: Results of the one-sample T test in listening mental translation strategy cluster.10: The mean scores of individual mental translation strategy items .11: The overall frequency of using directed attention strategies .12: Results of the one-sample T test in directed attention viii strategy cluster .13: The mean scores of individual directed attention strategy Items .14: The overall frequency of using problem-solving strategies .15: Results of the one-sample T test in problem-solving strategy cluster .16: The mean scores of individual problem-solving strategy items .17: The comparison on the overall frequency of using listening metacognitive strategy clusters .18: The mean scores of metacognitive strategies in listening used by high school students .19: Results of the one-sample T test in common factors affecting the choice of metacognitive strategies for listening .20: The mean scores of common factors affecting the choice of metacognitive strategies for listening. 45 ix CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale English has played a vital role in society and made considerable contribution to education, culture, science and technology.
The number of people learning English for various purposes (such as for job, business, traveling…) is continually on the increase every day. Therefore, English has been regarded as the most important foreign language in Vietnam nowadays, especially since the Vietnamese Government carried out the open-door policy. English has been taught for a long time in most universities and schools throughout the country. At present, it becomes one of the core subjects in the national curriculum and it is compulsory in the national examination for General Certificate of Education, along with Mathematics and Literature.
In the acknowledgment of the importance of the English subject, many specialists in language teaching as well as language learners have paid much attention to discovering the strategies with the hope of enabling learners to become more proficient in learning language. Anderson (1991) considered metacognitive strategies as the most important strategy to develop learners' skills and it was proposed by O'Malley and Chamot (1990) that learners without them have no ability to monitor and regulate their development, performance, and future learning. On the other hand, learners who use metacognitive strategies are more proficient learners (Hauck, 2005). Chamot, Bernhardt, El-Dinary and Robbins (1999) mentioned four metacognitive strategies: planning for learning, thinking about the learning process, monitoring production or comprehension, and evaluating learning processes.
Actually, language learning strategies are a key factor in learning English because they help learners develop language competence in many ways and some of these ways appear to lead to better listening comprehension. 1 In addition to this, listening is an essential aspect of communicative competence and the most frequently used language skill (Richards, 2008). A large proportion of second and foreign language research findings indicated that listening is the most important skill for language learning, because it is the most widely used language skill in normal daily life (Morley, 2001; Rost, 2001). Listening is not only the first of the language skills developed, it is also the skill most frequently used in the classroom.
In a language classroom, listening ability plays a significant role in the development of other language skills. Because students receive so much important language input aurally, they should work to develop aural proficiency skills and strategies to help them manage the listening comprehension process. For this reason, teachers should make the students access a wide range of strategies aiming at helping them train the strategies they need most and choose the appropriate ones in the learning process. As a result, learners can control their learning and make much progress.
It is obvious that effective learners are more aware of the strategies concerned so as to improve their listening comprehension. The previous studies on language learning strategies tried to find out what type of strategies are used by learners, or how many times each strategy is employed. However, language learning in general and language skills learning in particular are not always easy to all learners. Especially, one of the most difficult language skills learners need to acquire is listening skill.
Therefore, the present study attempts to find out what effective and successful metacognitive strategies for listening are employed by learners at Tran Quoc Tuan upper secondary school in Quang Ngai. Purpose of the study This study investigates metacognitive strategies for listening comprehension used by grade 10 students at Tran Quoc Tuan upper secondary school. Additionally, it provides language teachers and researchers with a greater understanding of the ways the learners learn. The findings could further assist language teachers in 2 developing and implementing strategy training in foreign language curricula.
Training students in the use of learning strategies would maximize their potential and contribute to their autonomy. Research questions In order to fulfill the objectives, this study will be conducted based on the following research questions: 1. What are metacognitive strategies for listening comprehension employed by tenth graders? 2. What are common factors that affect students‟ choice of metacognitive strategies for listening? 1.
Scope of the study The study focuses on investigating metacognitive listening strategies used by high school students and common factors that affect students‟ choice of those strategies. Organization of the study The study consists of five chapters as follows: Chapter 1 introduces reason of the study, purpose of the study, research questions, and the brief outline of the thesis. Chapter 2 is devoted to the literature review in which theoretical basis of language learning strategies and metacognitive learning strategies. Listening Comprehension is also carefully presented.
The previous studies related to the research are also included here. Chapter 3 outlines the research methodology used aim to achieve the objectives of the study. It is a brief description and the process of the data collection of the 3 research including basis type of research, participants in the study, data collection tools and data analysis and research procedure. Chapter 4 displays the findings and discussions of the collected data.
Chapter 5 deals with the conclusion for the study and implications for English teaching and learning. Suggestions for further research are also included in this chapter. 4 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 2. Language Learning Strategies 2.
Definitions of Language Learning Strategies Many researchers shared ideas about learning strategies and their functions in the process of foreign language learning (e., Bialystok, 1990; Oxford, 1990, 1996; Pressley & McCormick, 1995). They defined the strategies as essential techniques intentionally and consciously used by language learners for effective understanding, remembering, and using information. One of the earliest researchers in this field, Chamot (1987) stated that “language learning strategies are techniques, approaches, or attentive actions that pupils adopt to facilitate the learning and recall of both linguistic and contextual information”. Weinstein and Mayer (1986: 315) defined learning strategies broadly as “behaviours and thoughts that a learner engages in during learning which are intended to influence the learners encoding process”.
O'Malley and Chamot (1990) in their seminal study, Oxford (1990 a: 209) and Wenden and Rubin (1987) defined “language learning strategies as the particular thoughts or behaviors and tasks that learners apply to assist them to comprehend, learn, and retain new data.