MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HUE UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES ------------ LY THI MINH DUC AN INVESTIGATION INTO EFL TEACHERS' PERCEPTIONS AND PRACTICES OF PRE-LISTENING ACTIVITIES IN ENGLISH CLASSES AT QUOC HOC HIGH SCHOOL, HUE CITY MA THESIS IN THEORY AND METHODOLOGY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, Hue University of Foreign Languages HUE, 2018 i MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HUE UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES ------------ LY THI MINH DUC AN INVESTIGATION INTO EFL TEACHERS' PERCEPTIONS AND PRACTICES OF PRE-LISTENING ACTIVITIES IN ENGLISH CLASSES AT QUOC HOC HIGH SCHOOL, HUE CITY MA THESIS IN THEORY AND METHODOLOGY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING CODE: 60.11 SUPERVISOR: TRAN QUANG NGOC THUY, Ph. HUE, 2018 i BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO ĐẠI HỌC HUẾ TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ ------------ LÝ THỊ MINH ĐỨC KHẢO SÁT VỀ NHẬN THỨC VÀ THỰC TẾ ỨNG DỤNG CÁC HOẠT ĐỘNG TRƯỚC KHI NGHE CỦA CÁC GIÁO VIÊN DẠY TIẾNG ANH TẠI TRƯỜNG TRUNG HỌC PHỔ THÔNG QUỐC HỌC HUẾ LUẬN VĂN THẠC SĨ LÝ LUẬN VÀ PHƯƠNG PHÁP DẠY HỌC BỘ MÔN TIẾNG ANH MÃ SỐ: 60.11 NGƯỜI HƯỚNG DẪN KHOA HỌC: TS. TRẦN QUANG NGỌC THÚY HUẾ, 2018 ii STATEMENT OF ORIGINALITY 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: 22/ 10 / 2018 Signature LY THI MINH DUC iii ABSTRACT This study aims to investigate how Quoc Hoc Hue high school EFL teachers perceive the effects of pre-listening activities on their students’ listening comprehension skill and explore the practices of teachers’ implementation of pre- listening activities in English classes at Quoc Hoc Hue high school. The research involved 10 teachers of English department of Quoc Hoc high school and used a mixed methods approach collecting data from an online survey and semi-structured interview. The study found that most of the EFL teachers at Quoc Hoc Hue high school fully perceived the concept of “pre-listening activities”, the importance and the goals of these activities. Regarding the reality of teachers’ conducting pre-listening activities in English classes at Quoc Hoc high school, the results of the present study revealed that pre-listening activities in English classes at Quoc Hoc Hue high school were conducted with a high frequency level and with a period of three to five minutes.
Among some popular pre-listening activities such as pre-questioning, brainstorming, vocabulary pre-teaching and pair or group discussing, brainstorming is considered the most effective pre-listening activity while vocabulary pre-teaching is least preferred. Furthermore, the study showed that English language skills were often integrated in pre-listening stage and speaking was the most favorite skill of both the teachers and students. What’s more, it is justified that there was a disparity in the teachers’ implementation of pre-listening activities between classes of English-majored and non-English majored students. Finally, some suggestions based on teachers’ perceptions and realities of pre-listening activities were made to help teachers improve the quality of these activities in English lessons at Quoc Hoc high school.
iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Tran Quang Ngoc Thuy who spent lots of time giving enlightened comments and constructive suggestions to every piece of my work. I most heartily appreciate her professional guidance and affectionate encouragement during the writing of this study. Without her support, I might never have fulfilled my work.
My special thanks go to English teachers and students at Quoc Hoc high school for their fruitful collaborations and endless kindness throughout the entire data collection period. Last but not least, I am immensely grateful to my beloved family, colleagues and friends who gave me lots of best wishes, sound comments, enormous motivation as well as inspiration to keep me on the right track and to complete my MA thesis. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT. v TABLE OF CONTENTS.
vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. ix LIST OF TABLES. x LIST OF FIGURES. Objectives of the study.
Scope of the study. Organisation of the study…………………………………………. Definition of “perception”. Listening comprehension skill.
Definition of “Listening comprehension”. The importance of listening comprehension skill. The process of listening comprehension. The relationship between listening and other language skills.
Pre-listening stage. Definition of pre-listening. The purposes of pre-listening stage. Pre-listening activities.
Factors affecting teachers' choice of pre-listening activities. Context of the study. Data collection procedure and data analysis. Data collection procedure.
36 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION. EFL teachers’ perceptions of effects of pre-listening activities on students’ listening comprehension skill. EFL teachers’ understanding of a definition “pre-listening activities” in English teaching context. Importance of pre-listening activities in English classes at Quoc Hoc Hue high school.
EFL teachers’ perceptions of objectives of pre-listening activities in English classes at Quoc Hoc Hue high school. Practices of pre-listening activities employed in English classes at Quoc Hoc Hue High school. Frequency of teachers’ conducting pre-listening stage in English classes at Quoc Hoc Hue high school. Amount of time for pre-listening activities in English classes at Quoc Hoc Hue high school.
Frequency of pre-listening activities used in English classes at Quoc Hoc Hue High school. Effectiveness of different pre-listening activities in English classes in Quoc Hoc Hue high school. Teachers’ combination of different English language skills in pre- listening activities in English classes at Quoc Hoc Hue high school. Differences in pre-listening activities between English majored classes and non-English majored classes.
Factors affecting success in conducting pre-listening activities in English classes at Quoc Hoc Hue high school. Suggestions for improving effectiveness of pre-listening activities in English classes at Quoc Hoc Hue high school. 66 CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS. Summary of the key findings.
Pedagogical implications of the study. For the development of teachers’ perception. For the quality improvement of teachers’ implementation of pre-listening activities in English classes at Quoc Hoc Hue high school. Limitations of the study.
81 viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CEFR : The Common European Framework of Reference EFL : English as a Foreign Language IELTS: The International English Language Testing System MOET: Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training SAT : Scholastic Aptitude Test TOEFL : Test of English as a Foreign Language TOEIC : Test of English for International Communication ix LIST OF TABLES Table 3. Background information of the surveyed teacher group. Background information of the surveyed student group. 32 x LIST OF FIGURES Figure 4.
EFL teachers’ understanding of a definition of “pre-listening activities” in English teaching context. Importance of pre-listening activities in English classes at Quoc Hoc Hue high school. EFL teachers’ perceptions of objectives of pre-listening activities in English classes at Quoc Hoc high school. Frequency of teachers’ conducting pre-listening stage in English classes at Quoc Hoc Hue high school.
Amount of time for pre-listening activities in English classes at Quoc Hoc Hue high school. Frequency of pre-listening activities used in English classes at Quoc Hoc Hue High school. Effectiveness of different pre-listening activities in English classes in Quoc Hoc Hue high school. Teachers’ combination of different English language skills in pre- listening activities in English classes at Quoc Hoc Hue high school.
Differences in pre-listening activities between English majored classes and non-English majored classes at Quoc Hoc high school. Factors affecting success in conducting pre-listening activities in English classes at Quoc Hoc Hue high school. 61 xi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale Languages play an important role in every field of social life as they help people to communicate and connect each other.
Among languages in the world, the most popular one is, perhaps, English which so far has been considered a means of international communication for those who want to access the modern world. That is the reason why the number of learners of English is increasing rapidly in recent years. In Vietnam, nowadays, English is a compulsory subject in the curriculum of all high schools, secondary schools and even in many primary ones. For successful communication, it is essential for learners of English to grasp the four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing.
Among them, listening contributes greatly to the process of language acquisition since it gives learners opportunities to get familiar with the real language used in real life. Indeed, no one can ignore the remarkable role of listening in our perception of the world around us. As Le Huynh Thanh Huy (2015) states in his research, when people communicate with others, they spend the largest proportion of time, about 45% of listening, but only 30% of speaking, 16% of reading, and 9% of writing. Additionally, a significant role of listening skill is emphasized in Underwood’s words (1990).
It is that if students do not learn to listen effectively, they will be unable to take part in oral communication. However, as Nunan (1997) said, although listening skill accounts for more than half of the time that EFL learners spend functioning in a foreign language, it seems to be usually either neglected or underestimated. Listening was considered a less valuable skill to focus on in the classroom as it was believed to be easily picked up by the learners (Miller, 2003). On the other hand, in the Vietnamese context, for example, although listening is one of the key components in the English textbooks for Vietnamese high school students, this skill is neglected by some EFL teachers because they assume that listening is not assessed in national exams.
Actually, listening is more than just perceiving the sound. It is a complex problem-solving skill 1 in which the meaning of words, phrases, clauses, sentences and the discourse must be comprehended. It is virtually a difficult skill to acquire even in one’s own language (Oxford, 1993). Listening is difficult because it requires attention, thought, interpretation, and imagination (Austin, 1970).
A study by Swanson (1984) found out that teachers tend not to emphasize the teaching of listening as they assumed that listening is a passive skill and develops naturally. It is generally hard to improve EFL learner's listening ability, and no student feels quite confident when taking part in a listening exam though they are good at other skills. Normally, in some EFL classrooms, teaching listening skill mainly focuses on while-listening stage in which teachers play the recording and students listen to the listening tasks by themselves. In reality, in listening the role of teachers is also very important in improving students' listening skill.
In particular, the language teachers can supply students with a variety of pre-listening activities in order to help students gain essential knowledge or related information before they begin listening. As claimed by Underwood (1990), in listening the content schema must be activated in order for students to access their prior knowledge. Thus, before listening to a recording, some pre-listening activities are expected to give to students to help them activate existing knowledge, build prior knowledge and define a purpose for the listening. "The pre-listening activities are probably the most important aspect of any listening sequence because the success of all the other activities depends on the extent to which the teachers manage to give to the students” (Chastain, 1988, p.
All in all, since the pre-listening stage plays an important role in increasing students' interest, triggering students’ prior knowledge and preparing the students for the while-listening stage. The traditional way of teaching listening in which listeners are simply given a series of pre-recorded listening texts on a tape, and then are tested how much they have understood by answering a lot of comprehension exercises is not quite responding.