VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES DƯƠNG THỊ THẢO A STUDY ON USING BOTTOM-UP TECHNIQUES IN TEACHING LISTENING SKILL TO THE FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS AT THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY. NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ VIỆC SỬ DỤNG PHƯƠNG PHÁP BOTTOM-UP TRONG GIẢNG DẠY KỸ NĂNG NGHE CHO SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ NHẤT TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC KỸ THUẬT CÔNG NGHIỆP THÁI NGUYÊN.A MINOR THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY CODE: 601410 Hanoi, 2012 1 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS List of tables and charts. Aims of the study. Scope of the study.
Design of the study.4 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW. Theory on listening. Definitions of listening. Type of listening.
What make listening difficult?. Teaching listening skill. Stages of a listening lesson. Bottom-up process in teaching listening.
Teacher’s role in teaching listening.17 CHAPTER II: THE STUDY. The setting of the study.20 6 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail. The application of bottom-up process in listening class. Findings and Discussions.
Tests’ result analysis. Mid-term test. Questionnaire result analysis.37 CHAPTER III: IMPLICATION. Bottom-up techniques should be applied.
Arousing students’ motivation and interest. Improving 3 stages of a listening lesson.42 7 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART C: CONCLUSION. Summary of the study. Limitations and suggestions for further study.45 Appendix 1: Survey questionnaire Appendix 2: Pre-test, Mid-term test and Post test.
Appendix 3: Sample lesson plan 8 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS EFL: English as a Foreign Language ESL: English as a Second Language ESP: English for Specific Purpose GE: General English LTM: Long Term Memory L2: The second language No: Number SD: Standard deviation STM: Short Term Memory TNUT: Thai Nguyen University of Technology 9 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS Tables: Table 1.1: Descriptive statistics for the pre-test of the control and experimental groups. Comparison of mode, mean, median and SD for the pre-test of the experimental and control group. Descriptive statistics for the mid-term test of the experimental and control groups. Comparison of mode, mean, median and SD for the mid-term test of the experimental and control group.
Descriptive statistics for the post-test of the experimental and control groups. Comparison of mode, mean, median and SD for the post test of the experimental and control group. Comparison of mean between the experimental and control groups.1: Activities motivated students in the pre-listening stage.2: Activities attracted students in while-listening stage.3: Useful activities to students after listening.4: Teaching methods in helping students listen better and more efficiently.5: Requires tasks for students in a listening lesson with bottom-up processes.6: The students’ opinion about teaching methods.7: The students’ opinion about listening lessons with bottom-up process.1: Percentage of the raw mark in the pre-test. Percentage of the raw mark in the mid-term test.
Percentage of the raw mark in the post test.1: The students’ opinion about the listening tasks.2: The students’ opinion about learning listening with bottom-up process.3: The students’ opinion about their listening skill after a term with bottom-up process. 10 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com PART A: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale It cannot be denied that English is the international medium in the fields of science, technology, culture, education, economy and so on. It is also considered a means to promote mutual understanding and cooperation between Vietnam and other countries.
It is widely seen as the key language toll in the integrating process in the world. With the rapid development and expansion of informational technology, there needs to be a common language for people of all countries to exchange information with each other and it is English that is used as a means of international communication. Therefore, there has been an explosion in the need of teaching and learning English all over the world. In Vietnam, in recent years the number of people who wish to know and master English has become more and more increasing; especially since Vietnam adopted an open-door policy, teaching and learning English have been paid much attention to.
English has been part of the general education. It becomes a compulsory subject at high schools and universities in most towns and cities throughout the country. In Thai Nguyen University of Technology (TNUT), English teaching is strongly influenced by the traditional methodology. Emphasis has been placed on the mastery of forms and vocabulary, rather than the language in use.
And listening seems to be the most difficult skill for first year students of TNUT. There are a number of possible reasons for this. First, this might be due to the fact that most students lack necessary strategies to fulfill the listening tasks. Next, they often have difficulties in catching the meaning from the tape because they lack vocabulary.
Besides, they are afraid of listening and have no head for it.Therefore, it is essential for teachers to find out some ways to help students overcome their difficulties, and make them feel more comfortable when practicing listening to English so as to assist them in approving their skills as well. It is also essential to note that listening is an efficient channel to provide comprehensible input for learners, so teachers should pay attention to it from the very beginning. 11 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com In addition, after a master course with methodology subject, I realized that bottom-up process with its techniques and characteristics suit to the first-year non-major students in learning listening skill. It can help students in learning listening.
All in all, the above has encouraged the writer of the thesis to carry out the study entitled: “A study on using bottom – up techniques in teaching listening skill to the first – year students at Thai Nguyen University of Technology. Null hypothesis This study is designed to test the following hypothesis: “Bottom-up techniques can be used to enhance TNUT first-year English learners’ listening comprehension”. Aims of the study In order to test the above-named hypothesis, this study is aimed at: - Experimenting and investigating the effects of using bottom-up techniques in teaching listening to first-year students. - Investigating the learners’ perceptions regarding listening activities using bottom-up listening strategies.
- Formulating pedagogical implications and making suggestions for improving the teaching and learning of the listening skills at TNUT. Scope of the study In this study, the investigator intended to use bottom-up techniques to help first year students at TNUT overcome their listening difficulties, not taking the other kind of techniques, i. top-down ones. These techniques were experimented over a period of one term with 17 weeks and were applied in the three stages of a listening lesson: pre-listening, while-listening and post-listening.
The sample population is 70 freshmen from two classes: 47Y and 47K1. Methodology To fulfill the above aims, quantitative method has been chosen for the study. Comments, remarks, comparison, suggestions and conclusions are based on factual research. Data for analysis in this study are gained through the following sources: - Pre-test, mid-term test and post-test.
12 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com - Survey questionnaire. Design of the study This minor thesis consists of 3 parts: Part A: Introduction, presents the rationale, hypothesis, aims, scope, methodology and design of the study. Part B: Development, which is divided into 3 chapters: - Chapter 1: “Literature review”, sets up theoretical background that is relevant to the purpose of the study. - Chapter 2: “The study”, shows the setting, the subjects, the methods, the way to collect data, the application of bottom-up techniques on teaching and learning listening skill at TNUT, the fidings and some discussions.
In this chapter, the implications of the study in which suggestions for improving listening skills to the students at TNUT are proposed at the end of this chapter. Part C: Conclusion, summarizes the key issues in the study, points out the limitations and provides some suggestions for further study. PART B: DEVELOPMENT 13 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW To provide a theoretical background for the study, this chapter is devoted to the reexamination of the concepts most relevant to the thesis’s topic. Firstly, an account of the theory on listening is made.
Secondly, some difficulties in learning listening and some problems in teaching listening skill are discussed. Finally, bottom-up process along with its techniques in teaching listening will be presented. Theory on listening 1. Definitions of listening There are some traditional views that listening is considered a passive language skill alongside the reading skill.
It means that learners are almost passive in practising listening activities in the classroom. Learners just hear what they are going to listen without paying sufficient attention in the discourse such as the background knowledge of the speakers as well as their intentions, attitude, implication and other shades of meaning etc. The learners mainly hear the message; they only try to elicit the meaning from the individual syntactic and semantic components of the utterance and the manner in which it is spoken. This leads to the result that it is hard for the learners to communicate.
Having this attitude, the teacher often conducts the lesson as “tested” listening comprehension rather than teaching it. The method of testing the comprehension of the learners is based on the ability to remember the utterance, which they have just heard. Obviously, this method is not effective as the ability to remember the utterance does not mean that the listener can understand the message. Just like a child who is good at remembering songs and poems, but he does not know what they are about.
In fact the learners are not provided enough information about what they are going to hear before the tape plays and they cope with a wide range of problems while they are listening and the result is that they cannot get any listening experience from the teacher. For the past few years some present studies on listening comprehension have to come to another view in which the role of the listeners is thought to be active, but not passive any more. Listening is really a receptive skill alongside reading skill. It is believed that listening is a significant and essential area of development in a native language and in a second language.
14 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Therefore, there have been numerous definitions of listening which present different views of scholars towards the concept. Listening comprehension is viewed theoretically as a process in which individuals focus on selected aspect of aural input, construct meaning from passages, and relate what they hear to existing knowledge (O’Malley, Chamost and Kupper,1989). Nunan believed that: “.listening is the basic skill in language learning. Without listening skill, learners will never learn to communicate effectively.
In fact over 50% of the time that students spend functioning in a foreign language will be devoted to listening…. According to Rost (1994), listening is referred to a complex process that enables us to understand spoken language. Harmer (2004) categorizes listening into receptive skill, the way in which people extract meaning form the discourse they hear or see. Buck (2001) indicated that listening is an active process of constructing meaning and this is done by applying knowledge to the incoming sound in which “number of different types of knowledge are involved: both linguistic knowledge and non-linguistic knowledge”.
In another word, he concluded “comprehension is affected by a wide range of variables, and that potentially any characteristic of the speaker, the situation or the listener can affect the comprehension of the message”. Anderson and Lynch (1988) pointed out that listening is really a receptive skill alongside with reading skills and the role of the listeners is no longer passive but active. After a period of listening the learners are exposed to be able to talk or write about what they have heard, that is the objectives of listening comprehension.