VIETNAM ACADEMY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES
GRADUATE ACADEMY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES
Trần Thị Thanh Trâm
USING VIDEO CLIPS TO ENHANCE
FIRST YEAR NON-ENGLISH MAJOR
STUDENTS’ PARTICIPATION IN
PRE-LISTENING STAGE
MA THESIS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE
HO CHI MINH CITY, 2020
VIETNAM ACADEMY OF OCIAL SCIENCES
GRADUATE ACADEMY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES
Trần Thị Thanh Trâm
USING VIDEO CLIPS TO ENHANCE
FIRST YEAR NON-ENGLISH MAJOR
STUDENTS’ PARTICIPATION IN
PRE-LISTENING STAGE
Field: English Language
Code: 8220201
Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Phạm Hữu Đức
HO CHI MINH CITY, 2020
DECLARATION BY AUTHOR
I declare that this “Using Video Clips To Enhance First Year Non-English
Major Students’ Participation In Pre-Listening Stage” is created by my own
findings and I am the sole author of this thesis. To the best of my knowledge, with
the exception of the indication of reference, this is carried out without using any
other author’s work and is submitted after a carefully checking progress in order to
fulfill the requirements of the M.A degree.
Author’s signature
Trần Thị Thanh Trâm
Approved by
SUPERVISOR
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Phạm Hữu Đức
Date: ………………………………
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my gratitude to all those who have encouraged and
supported me to complete this thesis.
First of all, I am deeply grateful to my supervisor, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Phạm
Hữu Đức for his boundlessly enthusiastic support. I really learnt a lot from his
serious and thorough attitude towards working and his great mind.
I would like to thank all lecturers at Foreign Languages Department,
Graduate Academy Of Social Sciences for their valuable teaching and tremendous
assistance that have enlightened my study path. They also provided me with
necessary references for the study.
I also send my special thanks to all faculty and staffs of Dong Nai
Technology University. In addition, I also would like to give my special thanks to
the students at Dong Nai Technology University who have provided the
indispensable with me.
I am grateful to my family whose support has been especially important to
the success of my educational endeavors; especially my husband, who also
encourages and shares the hardship with me.
Finally, warm appreciation is reserved for my classmates at the Master
Course at Foreign Languages Department, Graduate Academy Of Social Sciences
for their friendliness, generous assistance which contributed significantly to the
completion of the study.
These people deserve all the credit. I highly appreciate all their support and
contribution.
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ABSTRACT
This study is created and completed on the purpose of researching the way
of using Video clips in the pre-listening stage as an effective teaching method,
especially in the scope of teaching English at universities. The aim of this is to
enhance the English-listening of first year non - English major students of the
university. Furthermore, applying video clips is becoming more and more popular
in teaching and guiding English listening skill to the students, therefore, this
focuses on analyzing the necessity as well as the way of using this helpful method
in universities, particularly Dong Nai Technology University. According to the
results of data analysis of the survey questionnaire and interview which was
conducted by 60 first year non - English major students and 8 English teachers at
Dong Nai Technology University I found that using video clips in the pre-listening
motivates students to learn easily listening better. Besides, the background
information is also activated in all stages of listening process. The benefits,
positive effects, as well as challenges of applying this teaching method are
analyzed in this. Furthermore, some suggestions for overcoming these difficulties
are also mentioned.
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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
L1: first language
L2: second language
EFL: English as a foreign language
ELT: English language teaching
CALL: Computer Assisted Language Learning
DNTU: Dong Nai Technology University
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
DECLARATION BY AUTHOR ............................................................................. i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................... ii
ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................ iii
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS................................................................................ iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS ........................................................................................ v
LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS .................................................................... viii
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION .......................................................................... 1
1.1. Rationale .......................................................................................................... 1
1.2. Aims of the Study ............................................................................................ 2
1.3. Research Questions ......................................................................................... 2
1.4. Scope of the Study ........................................................................................... 2
1.5. Significance of the Study ................................................................................ 3
1.6. Research Methods ........................................................................................... 3
1.7. Structure of the Study ...................................................................................... 3
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW .............................................................. 5
2.1. Listening skills................................................................................................. 5
2.1.1. Definition of listening skill........................................................................... 5
2.1.2 Importance of listening skill .......................................................................... 6
2.1.3. Listening Types ............................................................................................ 7
2.1.4 Sub- skills in listening ................................................................................... 8
2.1.5. Principles for teaching listening ................................................................... 9
2.1.5.1. Open prediction ......................................................................................... 9
2.1.5.2. Listen & draw ............................................................................................ 9
2.1.5.3. Recall the story .......................................................................................... 9
2.1.5.4. Further practice .......................................................................................... 9
2.1.5.5. Pre-questions ........................................................................................... 10
2.1.5.6. Comprehension questions........................................................................ 10
2.1.5.7. Grids ........................................................................................................ 10
2.1.5.8. Role-play ................................................................................................. 10
2.1.6. Listening stages .......................................................................................... 10
2.1.6.1. Pre-Listening ........................................................................................... 10
2.1.6.2. While-listening ........................................................................................ 11
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2.1.6.3. Post- listening .......................................................................................... 12
2.2. Detail pre-listening task................................................................................. 15
2.2.1. Definition of pre-listening task................................................................... 15
2.2.2. Pre-Listening types ..................................................................................... 15
2.2.3. The role of pre-listening task...................................................................... 17
2.3. Visual techniques........................................................................................... 21
2.3.1. Use of technology in language teaching .................................................... 22
2.3.2. Use of Visual aids in the direct Method ..................................................... 23
2.3.3. Using video as audio-visual aids ................................................................ 24
2.4. Use of video clips in teaching listening ........................................................ 25
2.5. Planning for teaching listening ...................................................................... 27
2.6. Previous research ........................................................................................... 28
2.7. Chapter summary........................................................................................... 29
CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY ....................................................................... 30
3.1. Overview of the survey ................................................................................. 30
3.2. Research Design ............................................................................................ 30
3.3. Research questions ........................................................................................ 31
3.4. Participants .................................................................................................... 31
3.5. Instruments of Collecting Data...................................................................... 32
3.5.1. Data collection instruments ........................................................................ 32
3.5.2. Interviews ................................................................................................... 33
3.5.3. Class room observations ............................................................................. 34
3.6. Data collection procedures ............................................................................ 34
3.7. An introduction to the current Textbook Learning to Listen 1 ..................... 35
3.8. Chapter summary........................................................................................... 36
CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS .............................................. 37
4.1. Results and analysis from questionnaires...................................................... 37
4.1.1. Questionnaires for students ........................................................................ 37
4.1.2. Questionnaires for teachers ........................................................................ 48
4.2. Results and analysis from classroom observation ......................................... 50
4.3. Results and analysis from interviews ............................................................ 53
4.4. Factors making students unwilling to listening English in class .................. 56
4.5. Difficulties teachers have encountered in teaching listening ........................ 57
4.6. Video clips used by teachers ......................................................................... 57
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4.7. Chapter summary........................................................................................... 57
CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION ............................................................................. 58
5.1. Recapitulation ................................................................................................ 58
5.2. Conclusion Remarks...................................................................................... 59
5.3. Implications ................................................................................................... 60
5.4. Limitations ..................................................................................................... 61
5.5. Suggestions for Further Studies .................................................................... 62
REFERENCES ...................................................................................................... 63
Appendix-1 ................................................................................................................I
Appendix-2 ............................................................................................................. IV
Appendix-3 ............................................................................................................. VI
Appendix-4 ..........................................................................................................VIII
Appendix-5 ........................................................................................................... XII
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LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS
List of tables
Table 4.1: Summary of the results of questions 1 to 4
Table 4.2: Students’ attitudes towards learning English listening skill
Table 4.3: The objective factors affecting to learning listening skill
Table 4.4: Students’ developing listening skill
Table 4.5: Feeling when students listen to the tape after doing pre-listening
activities.
Table 4.6: Students’ activities enjoy listening lesson
Table 4.7: Students’ problems often face in listening
Table 4.8: Students’ doing activities before listening
Table 4.9: Using video clips technique in the pre-listening activities in
listening process.
Table 4.10: Frequency task in pre-listening
Table 4.11: Using visual aids can develop students’ listening skill
Table 4.12: Thinking of video clips help developing listening skill
Table 4.13: Result of class observations (Note: A: Agree; NA: not agree)
List of charts
Chart 4.1: Students’ developing listening skill
Chart 4.2: Students’ thinking about the lessons using video clips in prelistening.
Chart 4.3: Important of video clips in the pre-listening activities in listening
process
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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1. Rationale
Facing the trend of integration and globalization, English is considered the
most popular language in the world when there are nearly 60 countries using
English as the main language, besides their mother tongue and nearly 100 countries
use English as a second language. Therefore, this foreign language plays a very
important role in the current era of globalization integration. Human relationships
as well as cooperation and investment in many fields from business, commerce,
transportation, technology, media, tourism ... to opportunities in learning and
working, the expansion of relationships for cooperation is not only confined to
Vietnam but also to other countries in the world. English is one of the effective
tools, playing a big role in helping foreigners understand Vietnamese in the period
of international integration. Today, Vietnam integrates deeper and deeper into the
world, the need for English communication is essential for everyone, thus English
learning and teaching gains more and more attention.
Listening skill is important among the four skills in English for language
acquisition. The review of early theories and research revealed that listening
instruction and listening strategy training has received partial attention. The
English subject was conducted in 45 periods in a course. Students must study in 3
courses; they have to develop four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing.
If you do not understand when you listen, you cannot speak. So being a teacher of
English, I realize that pre - listening is very important. It helps students to
understand and analyze easily general situations with video clips.
At Dong Nai Technology University, although teachers have used several
methods in pre-listening stage, students still find it difficult to listen during class
time.
The things mentioned above are the reason why “using video clips to
enhance the first year non-English majored students’ participation in pre - listening
stage” is chosen. By doing this, I believe that it can help teachers, especially
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teachers working with first year non-English majored students of universities a
method of enhancing their English listening.
1.2. Aims of the Study
Aim: To explore the non-majored English students’ attitude toward the use
of video clips in pre-listening stage;
To enhance the listening comprehension by using video clips.
In order to reach the aim, the study is expected to meet the following
objectives:
To find out the difficult situation of students when learning listening
skills and the solution for applying video clips in the pre-listening stage to improve
listening skills for non - English major students at DNTU;
To investigate the current situation of applying video clips in pre
listening skills for non-English major students at DNTU.
1.3. Research Questions
To achieve the aims which are mentioned above, the following research
questions (RQ) is raised for study:
Question 1: What is the first year non-English major students’ attitude
toward video clips in pre-listening stage?
Question 2: In what way do video clips improve first year non-English major
students' listening skill at Dong Nai Technology University?
1.4. Scope of the Study
In spite of the fact that there are many different techniques to improve the
students’ listening skill but it is impossible to cover all of them in this thesis.
Therefore, this study only focuses on finding out the difficult situation of students
when learning listening skills and the solution for applying video clips in the prelistening stage to improve listening skills for non - English major students at
DNTU. Due to time constraints, the study cannot cover all the topics to stimulate
students’ listening ability in class. Therefore, it mainly focuses on some daily
topics of Learning To Listen 1 Book such as free time, at home and let’s eat which
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may close to students. The data of the research was collected via questionnaires,
interview and class observations.
1.5. Significance of the Study
This study is expected to be helpful for teachers and students at DNTU. The
teachers may make their listening lessons effectively. Beside the advantages of this
method could help students to study by themselves. Hopefully, the research will
make a small contribution to the application of video clips in improving non –
English major students’ ability in learning listening at DNTU in particular.
1.6. Research Methods
With the aim to explore the non-majored English students’ attitude toward
the use of video clips in pre-listening stage and enhance the listening
comprehension by using video clips, we have to study some theoretical
methodologies; and outstandingly, to achieve the objectives, a survey research will
be conducted. The data will be collected via questionnaires, interview and class
observation. The first step which is used to collect the data is questionnaires. There
were 60 the first year non – majored English students at DNTU participated in the
questionnaire. Besides, there are eight English teachers at DNTU taken part in an
interview to get information about learning English listening and students' use
video clips to improve listening skill. Listing, analyzing and synthesizing the data
collected, giving some application and suggestions to teachers and learners about
teaching and learning listening. After that, with a view to recognizing the way of
applying and the effect, as well as difficulties of this method in classes, the author
observed a certain amount of lessons in classes.
1.7. Structure of the Study
The thesis consists of 5 chapters:
Chapter 1: Introduction
It presents the rationale, the aim, the scope, the methods, the significance,
the research questions, and the organization.
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Chapter 2: Literature review
This chapter presents theoretical background of the study including theory
related to language learning listening. Especially, a review of the theory related
pre-listening.
Chapter 3: Methodology
This part presents the method employed to collect data and provides the
description of the subjects of the study, the research instrument and data collection
procedures.
Chapter 4: Finding and Discussions
It presents the author’s finding basing on results of the survey
questionnaires, interviews, data analysis and provides some suggestions for
teachers and students in using video clips in learning pre-listening stage.
Chapter 5: Conclusion
This chapter holds responsible for providing an overview of the whole,
including benefits and limitations of the study as well. By analyzing this
information, some recommendations for further research are also suggested.
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CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
When people talk about the ability to use a language, people often think
about speaking it. Not many people think about their ability to hear languages.
However, in fact, a person can create the pronunciation of sentences; He or she
must understand it. Therefore, listening is an extremely important skill in learning
a language. It can be used to assess a person's linguistic competence.
2.1. Listening skills
2.1.1. Definition of listening skill
According to Ron Forseth and others (1994) in their “Methodology
Handbook for English teachers in Vietnam”, “Listening is a language skill, which
involves a wide range of sub- skills. It is much more than simply hearing. It is
decoding sounds and understanding the meaning behind those sounds”.
Listening is not same as hearing, which is psychological process. When
listening, we not only hear the words, sentences, and passages but also understand
them. Listening consists of the processes of choosing, understanding and
remembering. Therefore, students should notice those.
Listening is not a passive skill but an active activity as Littlewood (1981)
claimed. “In order to reconstruct the message that the speaker intends, the hearers
must actively contribute knowledge from linguistic and non-linguistic sources”.
Obviously, people cannot understand the speaker unless they actively use language
to decode a message based on linguistic and non-verbal signals.
Language skills are often integrated with each other in the use of language.
Listening is not just listening to words in learning English as a foreign language.
Listening has been defined in many ways as:
- The first language skill. It precedes speaking, reading, and writing and is used
more than the other three together.
- More than just hearing: Good listening involves an active conscious effort to
understand, to evaluate and to appreciate what is heard.
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- A powerful communication tool that puts us closer to being in charge of our lives
by enabling us to make decisions based on evaluated information, insight and
understanding.
- A vital mental capacity that involves both social and cognitive processes.
2.1.2 Importance of listening skill
As a rule, we always refer to the main skills when learning English as well
as any second language in the following order: Listening, speaking, reading and
writing. However, this does not mean that compared to listening skills, other skills
are less important, but it implies that listening is a basic skill that needs the most
attention to improve other skills can be better promoted.
In daily life listening is the most common communicative activity. People
spend much time on listening, children listen to their parents, office workers listen
to their boss’s talk, students listen to their teachers and adults listen to the news on
television, etc. Thus, listening is said to be the most common communicative
activity in the daily life. Listening is a way for children, youth and adults to gain a
part of education, information, understanding of the world and human issues,
ideals, feelings about values and their appreciation.
According to the theory of second language learning is interested, listening
skill has interaction relationships with other ones. With a good listening skill a
second language learner will acquire other proficient skills faster. The importance
of listening in language learning is worthwhile because when you cannot hear, you
will never learn anything new.
To learn English as a foreign language, students can only develop speaking
skills if they develop listening skills. In order to have a successful conversation,
they must understand what is said to them. Then, the ability to understand native
speakers in live conversations, on radio or on tapes can be very important for
studying more languages and communication. Finally, listening to spoken
structure, if you do not listen, you will not be able to speak. Therefore, teaching
listening is of prime importance.
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2.1.3. Listening Types
There are two ways to listen in real life. They are casual listening and
listening according to the purpose.
Casual listening, means listening without specific purpose. When we listen,
we do not pay much attention to information unless there is something that
interests us. Therefore, we don't seem to remember the content of what we hear.
Often we do this type of listening when listening to news on the radio, listening to
music, or TV while chatting with friends or doing some chores.
Another type of listening is listening according to the purpose. That is when
we listen to a specific purpose to understand the information we need to know,
situations that are common in real life. With this way of listening, we listen much
more focused and try to get as much information as possible. However, we did not
hear every word. We know in advance what we will listen to so we just need to
capture the most important information from lecture or speech. In the classroom,
learners also use this type of listening.
In the real life, there are various listening situations. The following is a list
of some of the more common situations in which people could need to use their
listening skill Mc Donough & Shaw (1993):
- Listening to announcements in airports, stations as a passenger.
- Listening to the radio news, weather forecast, and sport report, songs to get
information or entertain.
- Participating in a face to face conversation, discussing work as a partner.
- Watching a movie, a play or a TV program to entertain.
- Participating in the meeting, seminar or discussion as a member of them.
- Listening to a talk, a lecture or taking part in a lesson as a student.
- Making arrangements or exchanging news over the phone as a listener.
- Receiving instructions on how to do something or get somewhere.
- Being interviewed or interviewing.
- Getting professional advice (from the doctor).
- Being tested orally in a subject of study.
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- Chatting at a party or other social gathering.
- Shopping as a customer
These situations vary greatly in input type - length or subject. Moreover, in
some situations we are just listeners like watching TV or listening to songs, in
other situations our listening skills are only part of the whole intersection, and the
ability to answer likes The match is just as important as in an oral interview. The
purpose of listening is also different, so the level of attention and maybe the
strategies used will vary. Moreover, whether we are listening directly to the
situation or through another means such as radio or radio communication, there
will be a certain amount of noise or background noise that may affect the ability to
handle what is being said. Finally, in many situations there is a visual element
which gives important clues beyond the words actually used Mc Donough & Shaw
(1993).
2.1.4 Sub- skills in listening
Listening is a complex, multi-dimensional process, and some theorists have
tried to include it in the classification aspects of sub - skills that underlie this
process. However, it should be emphasized from the outset that empirical support
for these classification principles is often lacking. Although there is no doubt that
many components are very important in listening, there is no evidence that any of
these categories constitutes a consistent description of the listening process. In
general, they are useful because they tell us what scholars in this area think are
important in listening skills.
Listening is a language skill that encompasses a variety of sub - skills. Some
of them are as follows:
- Comprehension of structures
- Predicting what a speaker will say next
- Ability to infer information that is not directly stated
- Skimming main idea
- Scanning specific information
- Summarizing the main points into fewer words
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- Recognizing differences between phonological sound
- Recognizing discourse markers and cohesive words which help hold the
discourse together
- Guessing at unknown words or recognizing words that are unnecessary for
understanding
- Critical listening
- Recognizing different styles
- Infer information that is not directly stated
2.1.5. Principles for teaching listening
2.1.5.1. Open prediction
The teacher does not show students any situations, just sets the scene and
makes students predict some of the things they will listen in the text. Students
write down their predictions. In this point, students have made listening
instructions themselves. Teachers read listening texts and students mark their
correct guesses
2.1.5.2. Listen & draw
The teacher gives the student a diagram or a map or images which student
can draw on them such as draws a route, marks the changes. Images can be given
as image predictions. Students listen to the text and answer by drawing,
numbering.
2.1.5.3. Recall the story
Students retell the story in their words. Teachers can help them by
performing an operation small drill first, usually the same images or a simple
statements that is used to predict the tasks before listening or order, or choose in
while listening. Students can practice speaking with their partner or in groups.
2.1.5.4. Further practice
Teachers choose a topic related to the topic of listening and design an
activity for students to do. After the implementation the student will describe it to
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classmates, or students can retell stories similar to listening texts - things that
happened to them personally.
2.1.5.5. Pre-questions
Teacher asks a few pre - questions for the main point in the listening text.
Students read and think about these questions. These pre - questions focus on
students' attention, but students do not need to predict answers if they do not want
to. After the first time listening teacher asks student answer the questions.
2.1.5.6. Comprehension questions
This is the most important technique in while-listening. Students are
provided a set of questions- True/False statements, multiple choice, and ‘Wh’ or
‘Yes-No’ questions.
2.1.5.7. Grids
The teacher places a table on the board and the student copies it. This table
lets students listen to events or details in the text. Some information has been filled
in the table cells to guide their listening. Students listen and fill in the rest in the
form of notes. Students work in pairs or groups and compare their answers
2.1.5.8. Role-play
Students take on the role of the characters in the story they just heard. This is
especially good for students to use in the past tense. Role-playing games turn a past
tale into the present tense. Teachers organize role-playing students by combining
all the characters together, provoking and then letting them practice what they will
say
2.1.6. Listening stages
The teacher can divide a listening text into 3 main stages: Pre-listening, whilelistening, post-listening. Each stage has its own goals and activities.
2.1.6.1. Pre-Listening
Before listening, students should join into pre-listening activities to be able
to listen more effectively. Teachers should introduce the topic and make their
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