MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HUE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES ------------ MA THESIS IN THEORY AND METHODOLOGY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING SUPERVISOR: Assoc. LE PHAM HOAI HUONG HUE, 2014 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HUE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES ------------ AN INVESTIGATION INTO FACTORS MOTIVATING STUDENTS TO LEARN LISTENING SKILL IN SOME HIGH SCHOOLS IN KY ANH DISTRICT, HA TINH PROVINCE MA THESIS IN THEORY AND METHODOLOGY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING CODE: 60. LE PHAM HOAI HUONG HUE, 2014 i BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO ĐẠI HỌC HUẾ TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ -------- NGHIÊN CỨU CÁC YẾU TỐ THÚC ĐẨY HỌC SINH HỌC KỸ NĂNG NGHE TẠI MỘT SỐ TRƯỜNG CẤP III KỲ ANH, HÀ TĨNH LUẬN VĂN THẠC SĨ LÝ LUẬN VÀ PHƯƠNG PHÁP DẠY HỌC BỘ MÔN TIẾNG ANH MÃ SỐ: 60.11 NGƯỜI HƯỚNG DẪN KHOA HỌC: Phó giáo sư, tiến sĩ: Lê Phạm Hoài Hương HUẾ, 2014 ii STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I hereby acknowledge that this study is mine. The data and findings discussed in the thesis are true, used with permission from associates and have not been published anywhere.
Author Nguyen Thi Trang Nhung iii ABSTRACT This study aims to explore the factors that motivate students to learn listening skill in Ky Anh high schools. Besides, the reality of teaching and learning listening skill in those schools were also investigated. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were used. The data collection instruments included questionnaires, classroom observations, and interviews.
The findings of the study indicate that both teachers and students in Ky Anh high schools got clear understanding about the importance of listening skill as well as the significance of motivation in teaching and learning listening skill. Unfortunately, they also got many obstacles in teaching and learning listening skill; Not only intrinsic but also extrinsic motivation had influences on learning listening skill of students but the extrinsic factors of motivation had stronger impacts with the term of “compulsoriness”. Base on the findings, some practical suggestions were put for teachers and students at Ky Anh high schools to maintain motivation as well as improve listening skill for students in learning English. Based on factors motivating students to learn listening skill, teachers have to develop their teaching experiences, try to adapt teaching materials and change teaching methods to meet students’ interest.
Besides, the suggestions were given out for students that they have to follow the SMART guideline to set the goal for effort and focus on their ability and interest in the process of learning. iv First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Assoc. Le Pham Hoai Huong, for her invaluable guidance, comments, suggestions and encouragement during the completion of the study. I wish to especially thank all teachers of Hue University, College of Foreign Languages for their useful teaching and helpful assistance in my graduate courses there.
My sincere acknowledgments are sent to all teachers and students at two high schools in Ky Anh District, Ha Tinh Province who gave me the data for my research. Without their contribution, the study would not have been completed. Finally, my warmest thanks are devoted to my family and close friends for their warm encouragements and love during the time I fulfilled the study. v TABLE OF CONTENTS SUB COVER.
i, ii STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP .v TABLE OF CONTENTS. ix LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES .2 Aims of the study. Scope of the study. 4 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW .1 What is motivation? .2 The components of motivation.
The influences of motivation on second language learning. Listening skill and their position in English language teaching (ELT).1 What is listening skill?.2 The importance of listening skill in ELT .4 Current situation in English language learning and teaching in Vietnam. Previous studies related to the topic .3 Data collection methods. 24 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION .2 Teaching and learning listening skill at high schools in Ky Anh district .1 Teachers’ and students’ awareness of the importance of listening skill.1 Teachers’ awareness of the importance of listening skill .2 Students’ awareness of the importance of listening skill .2 Students’ attitudes toward learning listening skill .3 Teachers’ and students’ difficulties in teaching and learning listening skill.2 Difficulties faced by students in learning listening skill .4 Factors motivating students to learn listening skill .1 Teachers and students’ opinion about the importance of motivation in teaching and learning listening skill .2 Factors motivating students to learn listening skill .6 Teachers’ suggestions for enhancing motivation for learning listening skill for students by teachers.
42 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION, IMPLICATIONS, LIMITATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY .1 Summary of the key findings. Limitations of the study .5 Suggestions for further research .52 viii ABBREVIATIONS ASEAN : Association of South-East Asian Nations EFL : English as a Foreign Language L2 : Second Language N : Number WTO : World Trade Organization WHO : World Health Organization ix LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 2.1 Spolsky (1989) - Distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation (p.2 Williams and Burden (1997) - internal factors and external factors of motivation (p.1 Teachers’ perceptions of the importance of listening skill (p.2 Reasons for students to learn listening skill (p.3 Teachers and students’ opinion of the importance of motivation in teaching and learning listening skill (p.4 Factors to find out students’ motivation by teachers (p.5 Factors motivating students to learn listening skill (p.6 Frequency of losing motivation (p.7 Ways to get motivation back (p.8 Teachers’ suggestions to improve students’ listening skill (p.1 Time Spent Communicating (Adler, Rosenfeld, and Proctor (2001)) (p.1 Students’ perceptions of the importance of listening skill (p.2 Difficulties faced by teachers in teaching listening skill (p.3 Difficulties faced by students in learning listening skill (p.4 Teachers’ solutions to motivate students to learn listening skill (p.5 Reasons of losing motivation (p.6 Ways to maintain motivation in listening skill (p.1 Rationale As we know, English plays a fundamental role in modern life. It can be true to say that English is a compulsory language for the youth. If they want to get a good job, travel around the world, they have to know English.
It is an effective tool to communicate with others from different countries. Especially, when our country joined some international organizations such as ASEAN, WTO, WHO, and so on, the role of English has become more and more important. English is used in all international events as well as daily communication. Thanks to that, teaching English is one of the most prominent issues in our country.
Nowadays, we are having a tendency to use the communicative language teaching approach. Therefore there is a big change in our awareness about what we should teach the learner. We mainly focus on how learners can communicate effectively in real situations instead of providing them the full and exact grammar systems as before. In other words, we mainly concentrate on teaching skills rather than teaching language.
Besides, in four skills, the listening skill and speaking skill are considered to be more necessary for communicating than reading skill and writing. Communication is continuous interactions between speakers and listeners, therefore, if we cannot hear what speakers say we cannot continue our communicative process. Listening is the ability to identify and understand what others are saying. For learners, listening is how spoken language becomes input in classroom.
It means that students have to find out and get clear understanding about what spoken discourse is and what its features are. In other words, they must identify the sounds; understand intonation and stress, coping with redundancy and noise and so on. In English language classroom, students have to listen their teachers, the tapes, CDs and so on after that they interpret what they listen. As a result, listening is an interpreting messages process.
Because of the frequency of listening in our life in general and in classroom in particular, listening is an essential skill in language teaching. 1 In the world, despite its obvious importance to language learning, listening skill was for a long time relegated to a marginal place in foreign language curricula. They most pay attention to reading and writing skill rather than listening and speaking skill (Wei, 2012, Brown, 2006). In Taiwan, Wei stated that she is an English teacher in about 21 years, but her teaching aims to sharpen her students’ reading and writing skills.
There are many reasons why students usually encounter some difficulties in cultivating their listening abilities such as weak phonemic awareness, test style (focus on reading and writing skills), passive approach to listening and speaking, lack of effective strategies in listening and so on. Laura Wei also said that students in her country often learn reading and speaking skills and that is the reason why they usually recognize a word by sight instead of by sounds. Colloquial vocabulary and different accents contribute the difficulties in learning listening skill. However, in recent years, teaching of listening skill has been receiving a great level of interest.
Most of universities put listening as a compulsory skill for entrance exams (Wei, 2012). Listening has also been examined in relation to not only comprehension but also to language learning (Brown, 2006). Duty of EFL teachers is helping their learners to acquire listening skill effectively. A lot of strategies are given in teaching and learning listening with the aim of developing the proficiency of listening for students in second language learning.
In Vietnam, as a high school student 8 years ago, I am sorry to say that I did not have opportunities to learn listening and speaking skills. My teachers just paid attention to reading, writing and grammar. However, Vietnamese education has been recently changed. They realize the importance of listening skill with the developing of communicative language teaching and the development of proficiency in second language teaching.
A new series of English textbooks for students has been designed and compiled in schools in Vietnam (Hoang Van Van, retrieved on March, 27, 2013). Vietnamese educational policy has also implemented some solutions to overcome this bad condition. One of the most popular solutions is workshops. We conduct workshops in teaching listening to provide the effective ways to teach listening skill effectively.
Unfortunately, some classes being applied 2 the techniques from workshops were successful, most of them still had problem. Both students and teachers still get obstacles in learning and teaching listening skill. According to Hoang Van Van (2013), there are some main reasons for this situation. Firstly, there is no the balance between demand and supply.
We have no enough native speaker or competent non – native speakers for population of our country. Textbook writing and teacher retraining are mentioned as one of reasons. Thirdly, there are classroom constraints: noisy places, large classes, poor facilities. We also mainly focus on developing reading comprehension, structural patterns for examination and ignore the importance of productive skills.
The mismatch between teaching and testing in our educational policy also get contribution into the bad quality of teaching and learning. Motivation is considered as one of the most important elements in second language learning. Without motivation, we cannot get the best result in second language learning as well as second language teaching. In the world, there are a lot of research papers related to motivation in second language learning such as Attitudes and motivations in second language learning (Gardner&Lambert, 1972); Motivation in second and foreign language learning (Dörnyei, 1998);The study of second language acquisition (Ellis,2002); A brief discussion on motivation and ways to motivate students in EFL (Kong, 2009).
Related to the factors to motivate students to learn second language, there are some different divisions. Williams and Burden (1997) divided motivation into two main factors: internal factor and external factor. Meanwhile, Dörnyei (1994) thought that motivation should be divided into three components: language level, learner level and learning situation level. However, both of them show the importance of motivation in second language acquisition.