Tài liệu A study on difficulties that 11th grade students at nguyen viet xuan high school encounter when learning listening skills

VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ***************** NGUYỄN CÔNG HIỆU A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES THAT 11TH GRADE STUDENTS AT NGUYEN VIET XUAN HIGH SCHOOL ENCOUNTER WHEN LEARNING LISTENING SKILLS (NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN MÀ HỌC SINH LỚP 11 TRƯỜNG THPT NGUYỄN VIẾT XUÂN GẶP PHẢI TRONG QUÁ TRÌNH HỌC KỸ NĂNG NGHE) M.A.MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 HA NOI – 2016 VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ***************** NGUYỄN CÔNG HIỆU A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES THAT 11TH GRADE STUDENTS AT NGUYEN VIET XUAN HIGH SCHOOL ENCOUNTER WHEN LEARNING LISTENING SKILLS (NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN MÀ HỌC SINH LỚP 11 TRƯỜNG THPT NGUYỄN VIẾT XUÂN GẶP PHẢI TRONG QUÁ TRÌNH HỌC KỸ NĂNG NGHE) M.A.MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. KIỀU THỊ THU HƯƠNG HA NOI – 2016 DECLARATION I hereby state that I – Nguyễn Công Hiệu, being an M.A candidate of the Faculty of Post-graduate Studies, ULIS, VNU, certify my authorship of the study entitled A study on difficulties that 11th grade students at Nguyen Viet Xuan High School encounter when learning listening skills I certify that this thesis is entirely my own work and that all the information in this paper was presented in accordance with academic rules and ethical conduct. As required in the rules, I fully cited all the sources of the results that were not original to this work. Hanoi, November 2016 Nguyễn Công Hiệu i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Kieu Thi Thu Huong for her guidance, comments, enthusiasm, encouragement and heartfelt sympathy throughout the whole research process. Without her assistance, this thesis could not have been completed. Second, my big thanks go to all the lecturers and staff of the Faculty of PostGraduate Studies, Hanoi University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, for their profound knowledge and guidance during my two years of studying at the Faculty. Third, I would like to thank all the librarians for their helping me with the reference materials and their efforts to make the atmosphere of reading rooms as pleasant as possible. Especially, I wish to express my special thanks to the students and teachers at Nguyen Viet Xuan High School for their full support in completing the questionnaires and their detailed answers to the questions in the interview. I also wish to send my grateful thanks to examiners who will spend their time reading and making comments on this thesis. And finally, I wish to send my thanks to my family, relatives and friends who always cheer me up and support me at hard time. ii ABSTRACT This study aims at discovering difficulties that the students of class 11D2 at Nguyen Viet Xuan High School encounter when they study listening skills and suggesting solutions for the teacher to improve students‟ listening competence. To collect the data for analysis, two instruments have been used: the questionnaire and classroom observations. The findings show that there are fourteen problems that cause difficulties to the students of class 11D2. The problems have been classified into four categories, namely (i) problems related to the bottom-up processing, (ii) problems related to top-down processing, (iii) problems related to materials and listening tasks, and (iv) other problems. Based on the findings, the researcher has offered some solutions to the teacher, so that he will make changes in his approaches, methods and techniques to help his students overcome the problems and become better listeners. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION ....................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...................................... Error! Bookmark not defined. ABSTRACT ............................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined. LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ............................................................................ viii LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS ..................................................................... ix PART I: INTRODUCTION .................................................................................. 1 1. Rationale of the study .................................................................................... 1 2. Objectives of the study ................................................................................... 2 3. Research question ......................................................................................... 2 4. Scope of the study .......................................................................................... 2 5. Methodology of the study .............................................................................. 3 6. Significance of the study ............................................................................... 3 7. Design of the study ........................................................................................ 3 PART II: DEVELOPMENT ................................................................................. 5 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW .......................................................... 5 1.1. Notions of listening ....................................................................................... 5 1.1.1. Nature of listening .............................................................................. 5 1.1.2. Importance of listening skills .............................................................. 6 1.1.3. Types of listening ............................................................................... 7 1.1.4. Listening processes ............................................................................. 8 1.2. Procedures of a listening lesson in a language classroom......................... 10 1.2.1. Pre-listening.......................................................................................10 1.2.2. While-listening ..................................................................................10 1.2.3. Post-listening .....................................................................................10 1.3. Problems related to bottom-up processing ............................................... 11 1.3.1. Problem related to hearing sounds .....................................................11 1.3.2. Problem of understanding stress and intonation .................................13 iv 1.3.3. Problem of understanding different accents........................................13 1.3.4. Problem of mismatch between learners‟ vocabulary and vocabulary used in listening texts ......................................................................................14 1.3.5. Problem of mismatch between learners‟ syntactic knowledge and syntax used in listening texts ...........................................................................15 1.4. Problems related to top-down processing ................................................. 16 1.4.1. Problem of cultural differences ..........................................................16 1.4.2. Problem of unfamiliar topics ..............................................................16 1.5. Problems related to materials and listening tasks .................................... 17 1.5.1. Problem related to length and density of the text ................................17 1.5.2. Problem related to delivery speed ......................................................17 1.5.3. Problem related to the complexity of the task .....................................18 1.6. Other problems .......................................................................................... 18 1.6.1. Problem of failing to apply effective learning styles and strategies .....18 1.6.2. Problems of fatigue and lack of concentration .......................................19 1.6.3. Problem related to physical settings ...................................................19 1.6.4. Problem related to lack of visibility of the speaker .............................20 1.7. Review of previous works .......................................................................... 20 CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY ............................................................................ 22 2.1. Research context, learning materials, research subjects .......................... 22 2.1.1. Research context ................................................................................22 2.1.2. Learning materials .............................................................................23 2.1.3. Research subjects ...............................................................................23 2.2. Data collection instruments ....................................................................... 24 2.2.1. Reasons for using the questionnaire ...................................................24 2.2.2. Format of the questionnaire ...............................................................24 2.3. Data collection procedure .......................................................................... 25 2.4. Students’ background information ........................................................... 25 2.4.1. Students‟ time experience in learning English ....................................25 v 2.4.2. Students‟ average scores in listening skills last semester ....................25 2.4.3. Students‟ perception of the importance of listening skills...................26 2.4.4. Students‟ perception of the difficulty of listening skills in comparison with other skills ..............................................................................................26 2.5. Students’ responses to the questions about problems related to bottom-up process .............................................................................................................. 28 2.5.1. Students‟ responses related to problem of hearing sounds ..................28 2.5.2. Students‟ responses related to problem of understanding stress and intonation ........................................................................................................29 2.5.3. Students‟ responses related to problem of understanding different accents 30 2.5.4. Students‟ responses related to problem of mismatch between learners‟ vocabulary and vocabulary used in listening texts ...........................................30 2.5.5. Students‟ responses related to problem of mismatch between learners‟ syntactic knowledge and syntax used in listening texts ...................................31 2.6. Students’ responses to questions about the factors related to top-down processing ......................................................................................................... 31 2.6.1. Problem of cultural differences ..........................................................31 2.6.2. Problem of unfamiliar topic ...............................................................32 2.7. Questions about problems caused by materials and tasks ....................... 32 2.7.1. Students‟ responses related to problem concerning length and density of the text, and delivery speed .........................................................................32 2.7.2. Students‟ responses related to problem of the complexity of the task .34 2.8. Students’ responses to questions about other factors ............................... 34 2.8.1. Students‟ responses related to problem of failing to apply effective learning styles and strategies ...........................................................................34 2.8.2. Students‟ responses related to problems of fatigue and lack of concentration ..................................................................................................36 2.8.3. Students‟ responses related to problems of physical settings ..............37 vi 2.8.4. Students‟ responses related to problems related to lack of invisibility of the speaker ......................................................................................................37 2.9. Summary .................................................................................................... 38 PART III. CONCLUSION .................................................................................. 41 3.1. Recapitulations .......................................................................................... 41 3.1.1. Students‟ listening performance and their assessment of listening skills 41 3.1.2. Difficulties 11D2 students at NVXHS encounter when studying listening skills .................................................................................................41 3.2. Suggestive recommendations ..................................................................... 42 3.2.1. Problems related to bottom-up processing ..........................................42 3.2.2. Problems related to bottom-up processing ..........................................43 3.2.3. Problems related to listening materials and tasks................................43 3.2.4. Other problems ..................................................................................43 3.3. Limitations and suggestions for further studies ....................................... 44 REFERENCES .................................................................................................... 45 APPENDICES ....................................................................................................... I vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS NVXHS: Nguyen Viet Xuan High School L2: Second Language ESL: English as a second language EFL: English as a foreign language viii LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Students‟ responses related to problem of hearing sounds ……………...31 Table 2. Students‟ responses related to problem of understanding stress and intonation ……………………………………………………….32 Table 3. Students‟ responses related to problem of understanding different accents…………………………………………………………….32 Table 4. Questions about problem of mismatch between learners‟ vocabulary range and vocabulary used in listening texts ………………….33 Table 5. Students‟ responses related to mismatch between learners‟ syntax and that used in listening texts ……………………………………...33 Table 6. Students‟ responses related to problems of cultural differences and unfamiliar topics ………………………………………….34 Table 7. Students‟ responses related to complexity of the task …………………..36 Table 8. Students‟ responses related to problem of failing to apply effective learning styles and strategies ……………………………...36 Table 9. Students‟ responses related to problems of fatigue and lack of concentration …………………………………………………….....37 Table 10. Students‟ responses related to problem related to physical settings …..38 Table 11. Students‟ responses related to problem related to lack of invisibility of the speaker …………………………………………………..38 Table 12. Summary of students‟ responses to questions about problems related to bottom- up processing …………………………………………...40 Table 13. Summary of students‟ responses to questions about problems related to top- down processing ……………………………………………40 Table 14. Summary of students‟ responses to questions about problems caused by materials and tasks ……………………………………………...40 Table 15. Summary of students‟ responses to questions about other problems …41 ix LIST OF CHARTS Chart 1: Students‟ time experience in learning English ………………………30 Chart 2: Students‟ average scores in listening skills last semester……………30 Chart 3: Students‟ perception of the importance of listening skills……….…. 30 Chart 4: Students‟ perception of the difficulty level of listening skills in comparison with other skills ……….……………………….30 Chart 5. Students‟ responses to problem of the mismatch between learners‟ vocabulary range and that used in listening texts ………….30 Chart 6. Students‟ responses related to length and density of the text and delivery speed ……………………………………………………35 x PART I: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale of the study There was a time when most English textbooks in Vietnam paid most attention to grammar, translation and reading materials. It was almost impossible to find anything related to teaching listening skills, so listening comprehension skill teaching and learning were hardly practiced by teachers and students. Things have changed since 2008 when The Ministry of Education and Training made a decision on approval of the project “Teaching and learning foreign languages in the national education system period 2008-2020”. Since then listening lessons has been integrated in official syllabuses at all levels. However, little achievement has been gained even though many efforts have been made for the last six years. The majority of school students, especially those in rural areas, still show very little improvement in listening ability during their school years. As a result, when attending universities in big cities or even after graduating from universities, they have to rush to language centers with a hope to find a quick way to improve their listening capacity. With a view to discovering reasons for the problem, we have decided to conduct research into factors that lead to students‟ difficulties in listening. The research is carried out at Nguyen Viet Xuan High School (NVXHS from now on), a school in a rural area of Vinh Phuc Province. In recent years, English has been a compulsory requirement in the school entrance examinations here. Throughout the school year, students have to do different English tests, each of which consists of four parts, namely listening, grammar and structure, reading comprehension and writing. The listening section is often in the form of multiple choice questions or gap fillings. In the final test last year, many students in this school performed poorly in the listening test though their reading and grammar results were quite good. A large number of students said that they could not understand what the speakers in the tape were saying. The situation has not changed in the first few weeks this school year. 1 This was observable when students took the pre-test at the beginning of the school year to be placed in suitable classes. Students‟ low ability to understand spoken English was also visible when there was a native teacher working at NVXHS. Most students failed to communicate with him; therefore, they were unable to fulfil the tasks given by this native teacher of English. It always took him plenty of time and efforts to make himself understood by illustrating his ideas with visual aid, writing them down or even asking for help from Vietnamese teachers. All of the above-mentioned problems have led to a great necessity for the researcher to conduct an action research into difficulties that 11th grade students at NVXHS encounter in leaning listening and suggestive solutions for improving their listening comprehension skills. 2. Objectives of the study The present study takes as its main focus the following objective: - Identifying difficulties that class 11D2 students at Nguyen Viet Xuan High School, Vinh Phuc Province experience in studying listening comprehension skills. 3. Research question To fulfill the above mentioned objectives, this study aims at finding out answers to the following question: - What difficulties do the students from class 11D2, Nguyen Viet Xuan High School, face in studying listening skills in class? 4. Scope of the study Although many students in NVXHS encounter difficulties in acquiring listening comprehension skills, this research is only carried out on a small scale due to the limitation of time and the narrow scope of an M.A thesis. The subjects of the study are 40 students from class 11D2, where the researcher himself is teaching. Accordingly, the researcher will make out major difficulties these students run into in their listening lessons. Based on the findings, some suggestions for the 2 teacher will be offered to deal with the students‟ problems and to help them become better listeners. 5. Methodology of the study Conducting the study, the researcher makes use of both quantitative and qualitative methods with a wish to explore the matter thoroughly. The data have been collected from two sources: the questionnaire for students and class observations. The questionnaire was designed into two parts: part one consists of questions about students‟ background and part two consists of questions about difficulties that students encountered when they studied listening comprehension at school. The second part of the questionnaire was adapted from that of Hamouda (2013). The questionnaire was responded by students within 30 minutes. The classroom observation was carried during listening lessons and its aim is to confirm and supplement the result of the questionnaire. 6. Significance of the study The study helps the researcher himself recognize the problems coming up in his listening lessons, so that he will bring about radical changes in his approaches, methods and techniques of teaching listening skills. The result of this study is supposedly beneficial not only to the teacher and students of the surveyed class but to other teachers and students working in the same conditions as well. By making teachers and students aware of some problematic areas in learning listening skills, the researcher hopes to provide them with necessary understanding of as well as the right attitude toward listening skills to find suitable ways to teach and learn listening comprehension skills. 7. Design of the study The study is organized into three main parts and several subdivisions as follows: Part 1 (Introduction) deals with the rationale, objectives, research question, scope, methodology, significance and design of the study. Part 2 (Development) is subdivided into two chapters. 3 Chapter 1 (Literature Review) provides the theoretical framework, presenting the terms and theories related to the nature and importance of listening, as well as types, processes and procedure of listening. In addition, factors affecting listening are discussed and a short review of previous works is given. Chapter 2 (The Study) presents the context of the study, the learning material, the subjects of the study and data collection instruments. Together with those parts are the data collection procedure and the analysis of the results. Part 3 (Conclusion) recapitulates the study, sums up major findings, points out the limitations, and proposes some suggestions for further studies. 4 PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1. Notions of listening 1.1.1. Nature of listening The term listening is used in language teaching to refer to a complex process that allows people to understand spoken language. In the early days of English Language Teaching (ELT), listening chiefly served as a means of introducing new grammar through model dialogues. Commentators have sometimes implied that it was not until the late 1970s and the advent of communicative approaches that the skill was first taught in its own right (Field, 2009). It was once widely seen as a „passive‟ skill that takes place in the hidden reaches of the learners‟ mind. It was not tangible in the way that speaking and writing were, and a listening text was not easily manipulated like a reading one. However, listening has heatedly been argued by recent linguists as an active skill. According to Saricoban (1999), listening is the ability to identify and understand what others are saying. He cited Bulletin (1952) that listening is a medium through which children, young people and adults gain a large portion of their education – their information, their understanding of the world and of human affairs, their ideas, sense of values, and their appreciation. Rost (1991), as cited in Nunan (2011), suggests that listening is not only a skill area in language performance, but is also a means of acquiring a second language. Listening is the channel in which we process language in real time – employing pacing, units of encoding and pausing that are unique to spoken language. Steinberg (2007), cited in Bingol (2014), mentions listening process as “the ability of one individual perceiving another via sense, aural organs, assigning a meaning to the message and comprehending it”. From another aspect, Lucas (2007) differentiates listening and hearing in the way that hearing is a physiological process, and listening is a psychological process in 5 which we pay close attention to what we hear in order to make sense out of the information. Meanwhile, Saricoban (1999) notices the difference between listening and speaking. He argues that listening is as active as speaking, and in some ways, is even more difficult. It well requires attention, thought, interpretation, and imagination. Listening also differs from other skills in the way that listeners cannot control the text as can speakers, readers and writers. They cannot make a break or slow down the speed of spoken speech when they are dealing with listening text as others can. In short, listening is a cognitive process in which listeners hear sounds, analyze them and make use of other linguistic factors to grasp information or ideas that speakers would like to mean. 1.1.2. Importance of listening skills In our communication oriented age, listening is more important than ever. This is why in most companies, effective listeners hold higher positions and are promoted more often than ineffective listeners (Lucas, 2008). In terms of language learning, listening is an integral part in the process of mastering a language. It does not stand alone, but is used together with other skills. Saricoban (1999) argues that listening is one of the fundamental language skills, and it is the first step in the process of acquiring a language in the way that it supplies a necessary input for language learners. Talking about the fact that listening is closely related to speaking, Field (2009) foregrounds the relationship between them. According to him, communication requires a two-way traffic, and unless the non-native speaker has a listening competence as developed as his/her command of speech, it will be impossible for him/her to sustain a conversation. This may seem a blindingly obvious point. But the briefest review of listening proficiency in a language class will identify more than a few learners whose ability to interpret what is said to them lags well behind the level of language that they are capable of producing. 6 Through their communication experiments in which a speaker had to instruct a listener in drawing a diagram or in arranging a set of objects, Anderson and Linch (1998) suggest that effective speaking depends on successful listening. They find that the most effective spoken performance comes from speakers who have previously been listeners on a similar task. Listening also has its influence on process of learning reading and writing as Nunan mentions in his book The Cambridge guide to teaching English to speakers of other languages (2011, p. 7) “listening, the most widely used language skill, is often used in conjunction with other skills of speaking, reading and writing.” 1.1.3. Types of listening Based on the patterns of interaction between the listener and the speaker, Anderson and Lynch (1988) classify listening into two types, namely reciprocal listening – listening where there is at least an opportunity for speakers and listeners to exchange roles and non-reciprocal listening or one way listening – which happens when the listener is engaged in listening passively to a monologue, or speech, or even conversation. According to Rubin and Thomson (1994), reciprocal listening situations include face-to-face conversations and telephone calls in which the listener has a chance to ask for clarification, repetition, or slower speech from his/her conversation partner. In the meantime, in non-interactive listening situations, the listener does not usually have the opportunity to ask for clarification, slower speech, or repetition. Some examples of non-interactive listening situations are listening to the radio, CDs, TV, films, lectures, etc. On the other hand, Field (2009) bases on listener’s goals to suggest four types of listening (1) shallow attention focus – skimming and unfocused scanning skills; (2) medium attention focus – listening for plots, listening to commentaries, conversational listening, information exchanges; (3) deep attention focus – close listening to establish the speaker‟s main points and to trace connections between them; (4) very deep attention focus – listening to check critical facts. 7 1.1.4. Listening processes So far, there have been many linguists studying about listening such as Anderson and Lynch (1988), Underwood (1989); Brown (1990) or Saricoban (1999). All of them agreed that listening process is not a simple process of a single activity but a complex one consisting of various activities. After hearing process with various stages involving physical processing of the auditory system with the outer ear, the middle ear, the inner ear, the nerve impulses and so on. the listening process occurs inside the brain with a lot of sub-processes. In terms of the nature of those sub-processes, Duzer (1997) suggests nine successive activities in listening process. (1) determining a reason for listening; (2) taking the raw speech and deposits an image of it in short-term memory; (3) attempting to organize the information by identifying the type of speech event (a conversation, a lecture, a radio advertisement) and the function of the message (to persuade/ inform/ request); (4) predicting information expected to be included in the message; (5) recalling background information (schemata) to help interpret the message; (6) assigning a meaning to the message; (7) checking that the message has been understood; (8) determining the information to be held in long-term memory; and (9) deleting the original form of the message that has been received into short term memory. Looking at the issue from another angle, other scientists assign listening process to a parallel processing model with bottom-up processing and top-down processing. Helgesen and Brown, cited in Nunan (2007), suggest that the bottom-up processing is the process that hearers try to make sense of what they hear by focusing on different parts: the vocabulary, the grammar or functional phrases, sounds, etc. The top-down processing, on the other hand, starts with background knowledge called schema. This can be content schema (general knowledge based on life experience and previous learning) or textual schema (knowledge of language and content used in a particular situation; for example, the language you need at a bank is different than the language you need when socializing with friends). 8