VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES ------------------------ NGUYỄN THỊ LAN AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE EFFECTS OF EXTENSIVE LISTENING USING TED TALKS ON STUDENTS’ LISTENING COMPREHENSION: AN ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT AT FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES IN HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF INDUSTRY (NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ TÁC ĐỘNG CỦA VIỆC NGHE TĂNG CƯỜNG (SỬ DỤNG TED TALKS) ĐỐI VỚI KHẢ NĂNG NGHE HIỂU CỦA SINH VIÊN: NGHIÊN CỨU HÀNH ĐỘNG TẠI KHOA NGOẠI NGỮ, TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC CÔNG NGHIỆP HÀ NỘI) M. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Hanoi – 2016 z VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES ------------------------ NGUYỄN THỊ LAN AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE EFFECTS OF EXTENSIVE LISTENING USING TED TALKS ON STUDENTS’ LISTENING COMPREHENSION: AN ACTION RESEARCH PROJECT AT FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES IN HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF INDUSTRY (NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ TÁC ĐỘNG CỦA VIỆC NGHE TĂNG CƯỜNG (SỬ DỤNG TED TALKS) ĐỐI VỚI KHẢ NĂNG NGHE HIỂU CỦA SINH VIÊN: NGHIÊN CỨU HÀNH ĐỘNG TẠI KHOA NGOẠI NGỮ, TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC CÔNG NGHIỆP HÀ NỘI) M. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Supervisor: Dương Thu Mai, Ph.D Hanoi – 2016 z DECLARATION I hereby certify that this thesis entitled ―An investigation into the effect of extensive listening using TED Talks on students’ listening comprehension: An action research at Faculty of Languages in Hanoi University of Industry‖ is entirely my own work. I have provided fully documented references to others‘ work.
The material in this thesis has not been submitted for a degree in any other university or institution. I also accept all the requirements of ULIS relating to the retention and use of M.A Graduation Thesis deposited in the library. Hanoi, October, 2016 Nguyễn Thi Lan ̣ i z ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This thesis would not be fulfilled without the help of some people, and in all ways, I would like to thank those who has taught me, inspired me, challenged me, and supported me throughout the realization of this thesis. I would like to express my deepest gratitude towards my supervisor, Dr.
Duong Thu Mai, for her whole-hearted assistance, encouragement as well as her profound guidance she gave me while I was implementing my research. I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to all lecturers in Faculty of Post-graduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi for their interesting lectures which have inspired me to conduct this thesis. I would also like to express my gratitude to the teachers of English and the second-year students at Faculty of Languages in Hanoi University of Industry for their willingness to participate in the research. Without their help, this project could not be completed.
Last but not least, I am most thankful to my beloved relatives, especially my parents and husband for their encouragement and great support during the time of implementing this thesis. ii z ABSTRACT This study examines how TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) Talks, used as an extensive listening material, can affect HaUI English-major students‘ listening comprehension and explores their awareness of benefits and obstacles they may have during the project. This study also addresses key notions about listening, listening comprehension, extensive listening with TED Talks and then examined these issues in its merits and demerits. The quantitative and qualitative data analyses, based on the results of students‘ pre-and post-tests and their self-assessment paper, indicate that students (inter-mediate and upper- intermediate levels) felt the lectures improved their listening comprehension, enhanced their vocabulary, and accustomed them to listening to a variety of English accents while students of the pre-intermediate group seemed to achieve less progress.
Finally, providing more talks with suitable levels to their comprehension levels and conducting various types of scaffolding activities for lower proficiency students are also discussed. iii z TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION. Aims of the study. Scope of the study.
Methodology of the study. Design of the study. 4 PART II: DEVELOPMENT. 5 CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW.
Definitions, significance and classifications of listening. Definitions of listening comprehension. Definitions of extensive listening. Benefits of extensive listening.
Limitations of extensive listening. TED talks as an extensive listening source. Data collection instruments.1 Pre and post tests. Self-assessment paper.
Data collection procedures. Pilot test data collection. Main data collection procedure. Methods of data analysis.
Quantitative data analysis. Qualitative data analysis. 25 CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION. Pre-test‘s and post-test‘s descriptive statistics for three different levels of students.
Overall test descriptive statistics for all students. One sample T-test results. Developing listening comprehension. Developing other aspects.
38 PART III: CONCLUSION. Summary of the findings and discussion. Suggestions for further studies. VIII v z LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS HaUI: Hanoi University of Industry TED: Technology, Entertainment, Design IELTS: International English Language Testing System EL: Extensive listening vi z LIST OF TABLES Table 1: A brief description of the pre-test and post-test Table 2: Statistical results based on the collected pilot test scores Table 3: Descriptive statistics related to the results of the pretest and the posttest of Pre-intermediate students Table 4: Frequency Distribution of the scores of Pre-intermediate students‘ pre-test and post-test Table 5: Descriptive statistics related to the results of the pretest and the posttest of Intermediate students Table 6: Frequency Distribution of the scores of Intermediate students‘ pre-test and post-test Table 7: Descriptive statistics related to the results of the pretest and the posttest of Upper-intermediate students Table 8: Frequency Distribution of the scores of Upper-intermediate students‘ pre- test and post-test Table 9: Descriptive statistics related to the results of the pretest and the posttest of all students Table 10: Frequency Distribution of the scores of all students‘ pre-test and post-test vii z PART I: INTRODUCTION 1.
Rationale Extensive listening (EL) is one of the measures to tackle almost all difficulties that students may encounter on the way of conquering their listening comprehension. Rixon (1986) mentioned that students should be motivated to listen outside the class by two main ways – have them ―exercise‖ their listening outside the chool and listen for ―pleasure‖. This seems to lead to ―spontaneous listening for pure pleasure‖. Therefore, EL appears to be regarded as a rewarding motivator to facilitate students‘ learning.
In addition, TED Talks, the most popular conference and events website in the world with over 1 billion informational videos viewed, provides academics with increased popular exposure and is one of the highly recommended websites for EL. First of all, TED Talks has featured lectures around the world on Technology, Entertainment and Design which are posted everyday by both native and non-native speakers. Using TED Talks as an authentic source for students to explore knowledge and language seems to appeal to students. TED Talks also has accompanied almost all lectures with subtitles of over 40 languages, including English which is a highly supportive tool for students to recheck whether they master the content or not.
In other words, the subtitles make TED Talks less demanding for students to enjoy listening instead of making their concerted attempts when watching. For another feature, TED‘s mission is transferring ―ideas worth spreading‖, which is presented by inspirational lectures with appealing inventions as well as breakthroughs and even new perspectives on aspects of life. This will keep students‘ interest in exploring and broadening their knowledge as well as keep the passions. As a result, they may listen as a pleasure, not as a required assignment to get high marks or pass exams and then enhance their listening comprehension with academic talks.
Alhough EL seems to be highly recommneded with such the website, the importance of listening, especially EL is not intentionally paid much attention in a 1 z plenty of colleges and universities in Vietnam. In particular, at Hanoi University of Industry (HaUI), the second-year students are taught with a book named ―Listening and Speaking Skills‖ by Cusack and McCarter (2007). Students have 4 periods per week (15 weeks in total). During these weeks, students are trained both listening and speaking skills; therefore, the amount of time to study listening in the class is not a great deal.
In addition, students are also guided listening theory for several listening types in IELTS test in general, which they are tested at the end of every semester. It can indicate that there are not many opportunities for students to practice listening outside the class. Therefore, EL can probably aid them in meeting the expected targets set at the beginning of the course. On account of all the reasons above, ―an investigation into the effects of extensive listening using TED Talks on students’ listening comprehension: an action research at Faculty of Languages in Hanoi University of Industry‖ was implemented, which aims to find out one of the best ways to assist students in improving their listening comprehension skills.
Aims of the study The research is conducted with the aim of discovering both whether students can make progresses in their listening thanks to TED Talks as well as their awareness of that progress. More specifically, this study is to examine the following research questions: 1. To what extent is students‘ listening comprehension different between before and after the project? 2. How do students view the effectiveness of the project to their listening comprehension? 3.
Scope of the study In terms of literature review, on account of the lack of accessible online sources as well as TED-Talks related topics in the library, this study can only make use of several free sources on the Internet, especially few minor theses sharing nearly the same interest. 2 z Besides, due to the small scale of the study as well as the limitation of time, the results only assessed based on two data sources, students‘ results of the pre-and post-tests and their self-assessment paper. As a result, this study mainly focuses on evaluating students‘ listening comprehension using TED Talks. The other skills such as reading, writing, speaking or even presentation skill are not within the scope of the study.
Regarding the participants of the study, there are 90 English-major students at the Faculty of Languages in Hanoi University of Industry. Hence, the results of this study is expected to be possibly generalized to English-major students in other universities and colleges. Significance of the study The findings of the thesis may serve as useful information not only for the researcher, students but also for teachers at HaUI or even other universities and colleges. In particular, the study is conducted to enable English-major students in search of their passion for listening and then enhance their listening comprehension with the support of a selected academic TED Talks list.
Therefore, the results of this study may be generalized to apply for students at the same levels. It is also hoped that the thesis can make great contributions towards the development of students‘ listening comprehension at HaUI. Besides, recommendations for other research are stated with the hope of taking the most advantages of the source - TED Talks. Methodology of the study To achieve the aims stated, both quantitative and qualitative methods were used.
The data collected for the study is analyzed from the results of pre-test and post-test and students‘ self-assessment paper. The pre-test and post-test which have been examined to have an equivalent difficulty level, are used to test students‘ listening comprehension before and after the project. The pre-test is delivered to students before the intervention and the post- test is made used of to collect the scores and then compared to the scores of the pre- test. 3 z The qualitative research method is used to measure students‘ perception of the effects of TED Talks on their listening comprehension.
Students presents how they are aware of the merits as well as obstacles they might have when dealing with TED Talks‘ Journals.