Tài liệu Diversification of pre listening activities to improve students’ listening skill action research at industrial economics technology college

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES -----*----- NGUYỄN THỊ ÁNH NGUYỆT DIVERSIFICATION OF PRE-LISTENING ACTIVITIES TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’ LISTENING SKILL: ACTION RESEARCH AT INDUSTRIAL ECONOMICS TECHNOLOGY COLLEGE (Đa dạng hóa các hoạt động trước nghe để nâng cao kỹ năng nghe của sinh viên: nghiên cứu hành động tại trường Cao đẳng Công nghệ và Kinh tế Công nghiệp.) M.A. MINOR PROGRAM THESIS Field : English Teaching Methodology Code : 8140231.01 HANOI – 2019 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES -----*----- NGUYỄN THỊ ÁNH NGUYỆT DIVERSIFICATION OF PRE-LISTENING ACTIVITIES TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’ LISTENING SKILL: ACTION RESEARCH AT INDUSTRIAL ECONOMICS TECHNOLOGY COLLEGE (Đa dạng hóa các hoạt động trước nghe để nâng cao kỹ năng nghe của sinh viên: nghiên cứu hành động tại trường Cao đẳng Công nghệ và Kinh tế Công nghiệp.) M.A. MINOR PROGRAM THESIS Field : English Teaching Methodology Code : 8140231.01 Supervisor : Assoc. Prof. Dr. LÂM QUANG ĐÔNG HANOI – 2019 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my supervisor, Assoc.Prof.Dr. Lam Quang Dong for his patient guidance, stimulating suggestions and encouragement throughout my research. I wish to thank all the staff members of the Faculty of Post-Graduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies for providing me the best environment to fulfill my graduate program. My sincere gratitude also goes to my colleague Mrs. Nguyen Mai Linh. The support that she gave me truly helped with my progress and completion of the research project. Especially, I would like to express my special thanks to my family who offered me their love, care, support and encouragement so that I could accomplish my study. Last but not least, I would like to express appreciation to my students in Industrial Economics Technology College who were very enthusiastic to support me by participating in the research and providing me with the needed data without which the study could not have been completed. i ABSTRACT Although listening skill, one of the four core language competences fostered in Industrial Economics Technology College (IETC)‟s English curriculum, has always been promoted, students‟ performance in this aspect of proficiency still remains low. Through practice, the researcher realized that the main reason for this problem is the lack of good preparation for students from the pre-listening stage. Therefore, it is extremely necessary to conduct an action research with the aim of improving students‟ listening comprehension by diversifying pre-listening activities. In the study, a pre-test and post-test were employed to check the students‟ listening comprehension and the questionnaires to gauge students‟ attitudes when the teacher used varied pre-listening activities. The findings of this study suggest that students‟ listening skill was much boosted after they were exposed to various pre-listening activities. The results also showed that the students had improved attitudes towards learning listening skill after the introduction of varied pre-listening activities. Hopefully, the thesis can be considered a practical contribution to more effective teaching practices at IETC and the ongoing process of renovation for teaching and learning listening. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...................................................................................... i ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................. ii LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................................... i LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................. ii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ............................................................................1 1.1. Rationale of the study........................................................................................... 1 1.2. Aims and scope of the study ................................................................................ 3 1.2.1. Research Aims ..................................................................................................3 1.2.2. Scope of the study .............................................................................................3 1.3. Research questions ............................................................................................... 4 1.4. Summary of Chapter 1 ......................................................................................... 4 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................5 2.1. Theoretical background of listening skill............................................................. 5 2.1.1. A brief overview of listening ............................................................................5 2.1.2. Listening comprehension in language learning and teaching process ..............6 2.2. Factors affecting students‟ listening comprehension ........................................... 7 2.2.1 Unfamiliar topics ................................................................................................7 2.2.2. Cultural Differences ..........................................................................................8 2.2.3. Pronunciation, stress, rhythm and intonation ....................................................8 2.2.4 Listeners‟ limited vocabularies ..........................................................................9 2.2.5 Length and Speed of Listening ..........................................................................9 2.2.6 Inability to concentrate .......................................................................................9 2.3. Listening Comprehension in EFL Classrooms .................................................... 9 2.3.1 Pre-listening stage ..............................................................................................9 2.3.2. While-listening stage and post-listening stage ................................................10 2.3.3 The roles of pre-listening activities ..................................................................11 2.3.4 Pre-listening activities ......................................................................................12 iii 2.4. Previous research ............................................................................................... 14 2.8. Summary of chapter 2 ........................................................................................ 17 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY .........................................................................19 3.1. Research methodology ....................................................................................... 19 3.1.1. Definition of action research ...........................................................................19 3.1.2. Characteristic of action research .....................................................................20 3.1.3. Process of action research ...............................................................................20 3.1.4. Benefits of Action Research............................................................................23 3.2. The research questions restated .......................................................................... 23 3.3. The participants .................................................................................................. 23 3.3.1. Students ...........................................................................................................24 3.3.2. Observers .........................................................................................................24 3.4. Data collection instruments ................................................................................ 24 3.4.1 Detailed description of tests .............................................................................24 3.4.2. Questionnaires .................................................................................................25 3.5. Action research procedures ................................................................................ 25 3.5.1. Identifying a problem ......................................................................................25 3.5.2. Collecting the data...........................................................................................26 3.5.3. Analyzing data and generating hypothesis......................................................26 3.5.4. Planning action ................................................................................................26 3.5.5. Implementing the action plan ..........................................................................27 3.5.6. Collecting data to monitor change ..................................................................28 3.5.7. Analyzing data and evaluating the change ......................................................28 3.6. Summary of chapter 3 ........................................................................................ 28 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION ...................................................29 4.1. Results from the pre-test .................................................................................... 29 4.2. Results from the post-tesst ................................................................................. 29 4.3. Comparison of the pre-test and the post-test ...................................................... 30 4.4. Data collected by questionnaire part 1 ............................................................... 32 iv 4.5. Data collected by questionnaire part 2 ............................................................... 33 4.6. Data collected by observation ............................................................................ 34 4.7. Discussion .......................................................................................................... 36 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION ...............................................................................38 5.1. Summary of the Result of the Study .................................................................. 38 5.2. Limitations of the Study ..................................................................................... 39 5.3. Implications for Further Research ...................................................................... 40 5.4. Implications for Teaching and Learning Practice .............................................. 41 5.4.1. Implications for Teachers ................................................................................41 5.4.2. Implications for Students ................................................................................42 5.5. Final remarks ...................................................................................................... 42 REFERENCES ........................................................................................................44 APPENDICES ........................................................................................................... I Appendix 1: The pre-test ............................................................................................. I Appendix 2: The post-test .........................................................................................VI Appendix 4: Observation sheet .............................................................................. XIII Appendix 5: Result from the pre-test and post-test................................................XVI Appendix 6: Result from observation sheet ........................................................... XIX Appendix 7: Results from learner questionnaire..................................................... XX Appendix 8: Action plan implementation of varying pre-listening activities during the experiment ........................................................................................................XXI Appendix 9: a lesson plan of implementation of varying pre-listening activities during the experiment .......................................................................................... XXII v LIST OF TABLES Table 4.1. The pre-test result..................................................................................... 29 Table 4.2. The post-test results ................................................................................. 29 Table 4.3. Comparison of the pre-test and post-test ................................................. 30 Table 4.4. Students‟ comments about pre-listening activities .................................. 32 Table 4.5. Students‟ comments on the diversification of pre-listening activities that the teacher applied ..................................................................................................... 33 i LIST OF FIGURES Figure 3.1. Simple Action Research Model adapted from MacIsaac (1995)............ 21 Figure 3.2. Detailed Action Research Model adapted from Susman (1983) ............22 Figure 4.1. .................................................................................................................29 Figure 4.2. The post-test results ................................................................................30 Figure 4.3. Comparison of the pre-test and post-test ................................................31 Figure 4. 4. Students‟ comments on the varying pre-listening that the teacher applied .......................................................................................................................32 Figure 4. 5. Students‟ comment on the varying pre-listening that the teacher applied ....33 Figure 4. 6. Students‟ on-task behavior ....................................................................34 ii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1. Rationale of the study Listening is an important skill in acquiring a language and it can be defined as the process of understanding speech in a second or foreign language. Listening is the most frequently used in communication. It is stated that during conversations, people spend 50 percent of time on listening, 25 percent on speaking, 15 percent on reading, and 10 percent on writing (Richards, 2008). Moreover, according to Morley (1984), listening is the key to all effective communication. Indeed, without the interlocutors‟ ability to listen effectively, messages are easily misunderstood. However, generally, students are fearful of listening, and can be disheartened when they listen to something they understand very little. It is also harder for them to concentrate on listening if little or no interest in a topic or situation is developed before. The initial pre-listening phase should prepare students by helping them activate their background knowledge and clarify their expectations and assumptions about the listening text by, for example, initiating some discussion about a picture involved in the listening text or discussion of some questions related to the listening passages. An ideal pre-listening task is the one in which the teacher, through carefully constructed questions, helps students activate their background knowledge and language components needed to comprehend the text. In general, pre-listening activities play a critical role and the main aim of this stage is to make learners focus their attention on the following while-listening stage, to build confidence and to facilitate comprehension. As cited in Medley (1977), pre-listening activities can be divided into readiness activities and guidance activities. Readiness activities focus on motivating students‟ preliminary knowledge through asking students to read the title, make predictions or guesses what they are going to hear, explore new and/or key words that may appear in the listening text, look at accompanied pictures, interpret the listening tasks, and providing them with scaffolding support before listening. Guidance activities 1 concentrate on letting students know what they are going to do with the tasks or what they want to do with the tasks. Ur (1984) proposes that listening is an active and complex process and he believes that pre-listening activities activate student‟s background knowledge and provide them with the bases for forming hypotheses, predictions and inference. With diverse pre-listening activities, student feel less anxious, so they will become more confident in the listening lesson. From this perspective, students will be more motivated to listen, and as a consequence, and ultimately gain a higher level of comprehension, success and become effective learners. In my college, many students are from northern midland and mountainous areas of Vietnam whose background knowledge is poor, so it is difficult to help students there improve their listening competence. Moreover, most teachers of English in Industrial Economics Technology College, to my knowledge and in my experience, tend to prepare little for the pre-listening stage due to several reasons: insufficient teaching time, or even their misconception that it is unnecessary to conduct this stage. That may be the reason why students are not motivated to participate in the lessons. Some even feel exhausted and inactive in class, and often complain that listening is the most challenging skill. As previously discussed, the pre-listening stage is very essential in the process of teaching listening. Do teachers and students at my own college understand much about pre-listening tasks? If sufficient understanding has been secured, how do they deal with pre-listening tasks? What kind of activities do they apply and how effective are these activities? Are these activities sufficiently diverse to attract students and maintain their concentration? If not, how to diversify them? These questions require a careful study to seek their answers. For those reasons, the researcher conducted this research under the title “Diversification of pre-listening activities to improve students' listening skill: an action research at Industrial Economics Technology College”. 2 1.2. Aims and scope of the study 1.2.1. Research Aims The long-term goal of the research is to develop a series of appropriate pre-listening activities that help my college‟s students in listening comprehension. However, within the scope of this action research, the author first tried out a variety of prelistening activities for diversification and see how they work, which works well and which not. Based on that, a useful framework or guiding principles can then be built for developing appropriate pre-listening activities for the particular kind of students. Therefore, the objective of this action research is merely to examine whether diversification of pre-listening activities in the pre-listening stage improves my college‟s students‟ listening comprehension; In passing, the study also made some investigation on students‟ reflection towards diversification of pre-listening tasks, because feedbacks from students are highly useful to teachers who always have to design teaching-learning materials, or at least design good lesson plans to deliver the intended objectives of each lesson, especially listening lessons. 1.2.2. Scope of the study The study concentrated on the effects of alternating pre-listening activities on improvement of students‟ listening skill in Industrial Economics Technology College. Participating in the study were 40 second-year students in class K9 at IETC who have studied English for 3 semesters with six 45-minutes lessons per week. After studying 2 semesters of English they are now at pre-intermediate level. The textbook was adapted from Market Leader, which is an extensive business English course designed to bring the real world of international business into the classroom. It has been developed in association with the Financial Times, one of the leading sources of professional information, to ensure the maximum range and authenticity of international business content. The purpose of adaptation is to make it suitable to local students and the instructional curriculum. In the adapted version, English teachers in the Industrial Economics Technology College (IETC) added a wide 3 range of Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC) activities such as reading comprehension, photo choosing listening, listening comprehension, and so on. 1.3. Research questions To examine the effectiveness of pre-listening activities in order to deliver the aforementioned objective, the following question was formulated: 1. To what extent does diversification of pre-listening tasks help students at my college improve their listening comprehension? 2. What are these students‟ attitudes towards diversification of pre-listening tasks? 1.4. Summary of Chapter 1 In summary, listening is an important skill for any English learner but not many can master this skill, which provides a gap for this study to explore. This study mainly focused on the second year students at IETC whose English is at pre-intermediate level. The aim of this study was to access how much diversification of pre-listening activities can help to improve students‟ listening skill. 4 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter will review the literature on listening comprehension. The first section provides basic theories about listening comprehension while the second part discusses the factors that affect students‟ listening comprehension. Next, the stages of the listening lesson are reviewed, especially the pre-listening stage. Naturally, what has been studied concerning pre-listening activities in previous research is briefly described and commented. 2.1. Theoretical background of listening skill 2.1.1. A brief overview of listening Goh (2002) referred to listening as the most frequently used language skill, which accounts for as much as fifty per cent of human‟s everyday communication time. Sharing this opinion, Rubin (1994) stated that listening is used far more than any other single language skill in our daily lives, twice as much as we speak, four times more than we read and five times more than we write. Good listening, therefore, significantly contributes to the success of communicating process. Understanding spoken English is much more challenging to language learners than figuring out meanings of a written text. Thus, the teaching of listening comprehension is of great importance. Rost (1994) stated that listening is a crucial element of communication and it is also an important factor for interaction. A learner can express himself orally but is never able to communicate with speakers of English if he is unable to understand what is said to him. In general, listening is used far more than any other single language skill in our daily lives. We can expect to listen twice as much as we speak, four times than we read, and five times more than we write. Underwood (1989) states that the listening skill includes everything from learning particular sounds to comprehending complicated messages. Without this skill, communication can break down. Therefore, successful communication really depends on listeners or receivers of messages. Listening is defined as the activity of 5 paying attention to and trying to get meaning from something we hear. It is different from hearing which is simply the process of recognizing the sound system of spoken words. Similarly, Emmert, Brandt, Watson, and Barker (1994) stated that listening is an active process. Listening skill is composed of everything from learning particular sounds to comprehending complicated messages. More specifically, listening involves understanding a speaker‟s accent, pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary to grasp his or her meaning (Underwood, 1989). He also believes that listening to spoken language also requires the ability to understand the implicature in a conversation. 2.1.2. Listening comprehension in language learning and teaching process It is believed that listening is a significant and essential area of development in a native or second language; therefore there have been numerous definitions of listening comprehension which present different views towards this concept. For instance, Buck (2001) defines listening comprehension as an active process of construction of meanings, done by applying knowledge to the incoming sound, involving both linguistic and non-linguistic knowledge. In order to construct meanings from what one hears, other researchers agree that context plays an important role and should be taken into appropriate consideration. Garrod (1986) and McDonough and Shaw (1993) share the same idea that listening comprehension requires the activation of contextual information and background knowledge. Meanwhile, Lynch (1995) gives a more detailed description of listening comprehension, which is a process in which listeners interact with the text. Their level of interest, emotional reaction to the content and motivation can either facilitate or interfere with comprehension. Successful listening seems to involve a comparison and integration of new information with established knowledge structures. Similarly, Mendelsohn and Rubin (1995) believe that listeners not only passively understand the text, but also actively construct their own knowledge and then monitor the incoming information in order to keep developing it. 6 The concept of listening and listening comprehension is also defined as everything that impinges on the human processing which mediates between sounds and the construction of meaning (Underwood, 1989). This definition once again emphasizes the activeness of listeners in processing the information heard. Generally, listening is agreed to comprise both top-down and bottom-up processes, with top-down meaning the listener activates his/her previous knowledge to decipher what he/she gets from the listening passages in the „bottom-up‟ process. 2.2. Factors affecting students’ listening comprehension A great number of factors affecting listening have been reported so far. According to Brown and Yule (1983), there are four groups of factors including the speakers (e.g. the number of speakers, speakers‟ speed, accents); the listeners (e.g. the role of listeners, the listeners‟ interest in the subject); the content (e.g. vocabulary, grammar, background knowledge) and the support (e.g. pictures, diagrams, visual aids, etc). Anderson and Lynch (1988) divide the influential factors into three different categories including the type of language, the purpose in listening and the context in which the listening takes place. Their experiments showed a number of factors that may impede students‟ listening performance: the organization of information, the familiarity of the topic, the explicitness and sufficiency of the information, and the type of referring expressions used and the relationships described in the text (dynamic or static relationships). Regarding influential factors affecting listening comprehension results, Helgesen, Brown, and Brown (1994) Dunkel (1991), and Ur (1984) introduced a list of characteristics of spoken language, which are also troubling to listeners. Those factors include clustering, redundancy, reduced form, performance variable, colloquial language, rate of delivery, stress, rhythm and intonation, and interaction. In conclusion, factors affecting listening comprehension could be listed as follows: 2.2.1 Unfamiliar topics Unfamiliar topics have remained one of the most challenging problems to listeners. According to Ur (1984) and Rixon (1986), as we rarely know exactly what we are 7 going to hear although we may have already had some general expectations, it is much easier to process a familiar topic than a strange one. Nunan (1988) also confirms that listening to unfamiliar topics which are not addressed to listeners is much more difficult to comprehend than listening on familiar topics which are addressed to them. Similarly, Rost and Candlin (2014) state that listening to unfamiliar topics which are not addressed to listeners is more problematic than listening to popular ones. As listeners comprehend better with a common topic, it is suggested that teachers‟ selection of input in the early stage should surround themes that frequently occur in real life conversations. This not only facilitates students at the beginning of the course but also helps ease the learning and teaching process (Anderson and Lynch, 1988). 2.2.2. Cultural Differences Learners should be familiar with the cultural knowledge of language that has a significant effect on the learners‟ understanding. If the listening task involves completely different cultural materials then the learners may have critical problems in their comprehension. It is the responsibility of teachers to give background knowledge about the listening activities in advance (Azmi, Celik, Yidliz, & Tugrul, 2014). 2.2.3. Pronunciation, stress, rhythm and intonation Rost (1994) states that pronunciation is one of the major sources of difficulties students encounter in the listening process. Sharing the same idea, Rixon (1986) claims that word stress, strong form and weak form in natural spoken utterances make listening comprehension far more challenging than reading a written text. Assimilation and elision are other sources of complication, as Helgesen et al. (1994) added. These features of spoken English can be a terror to a number of learners. Rhythm and intonation also contribute to making listening more troublesome. The unfamiliarity with rhythm and intonation patterns makes listening become more difficult. Brown (1977) sees rhythm as part of general look of how the speakers of their language speak it. With its own characteristics, the rhythm of English is worth much attention since it is also the guide to the structure of information in the spoken message. 8 2.2.4 Listeners’ limited vocabularies According to Azmi Bingol, Celik, Yidliz, and Tugrul Mart (2014), when listening texts contain known words it would be very easy for students to them. If students know the meaning of words this can arouse their interest and motivation and can have a positive impact on the students‟ listening comprehension ability. A lot of words have more than one meaning and if they are not used appropriately in their appropriate contexts students will get confused. Students may sometimes try to guess the meaning of the word from the context but this strategy isn‟t very helpful when the speed of speaking is fast. 2.2.5 Length and Speed of Listening Azmi Bingol, Celik, Yidliz, and Tugrul Mart (2014) stated that the level of students can have a significant role when they listen to long parts and keep all information in their mind. It is very difficult for lower-level students to listen more than three minutes long and complete the listening tasks. Short listening passages make easy listening comprehension for learners and reduce their tiredness. According to Underwood (1989), speed can make listening passage difficult. If the speakers speak too fast students may have serious problems to understand L2 words. In this situation, listeners are not able to control the speed of speakers and this can create critical problems with listening comprehension. 2.2.6 Inability to concentrate According to Hamouda (2013), during listening lessons students are required to be attentive since in a very restricted time they are required to process and understand a strand of newly introduced information. Failure to concentrate will result in the students missing some of the content, which will eventually affect their understanding of the whole listening task. 2.3. Listening Comprehension in EFL Classrooms 2.3.1 Pre-listening stage Normally the listening lesson is divided into three stages which are pre-listening, while-listening and post-listening. Each stage has its own characteristics and time allocation. 9 Pre-listening stage involves the activities that are often carried out in a short period of time (seven to fifteen minutes) aiming at preparing necessary background for learners to understand the spoken text. They may also elicit students‟ previous knowledge about the topic of listening, making them aware of the vocabulary items, related experience and consequently capture their interest. As summarized by Baker and Westrup (2000) as well as Lewis and Hill (1992), the pre-listening stage contains purposeful activities which can help arouse interest in the topic, provide certain linguistic preparation for the text, then promote and activate a flexible learning environment. Through giving learners a reason for listening, this stage undoubtedly initiates willingness for listening. Before listening, students need assistance to activate what they already know about the ideas they are going to hear. Simply being told the topic is not enough. Teachers must help them to build up prior knowledge, pre-teach some key words or structures and establish purposes for listening. Lewis and Hill (1992) emphasizes that pre-listening stage plays an important role in teaching listening to students. Pre-listening is a preparation of the listening class. In this stage, teachers tend to arouse learners‟ expectation and interest of the language text they are going to listen. They can also motivate learners by providing background knowledge of the text; organizing learners to discuss a picture or a related topic which involves in the text; asking some related questions to the text. In general, pre-listening plays a role of warming-up and the main aim of this stage is to make learners focus their attention on the following while-listening stage and decrease the difficulties of the text. These activities can also promote an active and flexible learning environment, help increase learners‟ motivation for learning, motivate learners by giving a reason for listening and provide them with some language for the listening. 2.3.2. While-listening stage and post-listening stage These are the main stages of the listening process. According to Rost and Candlin (2014), the purpose of while-listening activities is what students are asked to do 10 during the time they are listening to the text. As far as listening comprehension (for example listening for meaning) is concerned, the purpose of while-listening activities is to help learners develop the skill of eliciting messages from spoken language. The nature of while-listening activities should be interesting, so that the students feel they want to listen and carry out the activities. Part of the interest can stem from the topic and the content of what is said, and the listening text should be chosen with the interest of the students in mind. After pure listening process, post activities are usually carried out to provide students with opportunities to practice using the language items acquired. Postlistening activities often fall on information transfer tasks, or summary writing and similar activities. In this research, the writer will investigate the activities which are often made use of in the first stage of listening, the Pre-listening activities. 2.3.3 The roles of pre-listening activities It is obvious that students may find the listening lessons difficult when they do not know what they are going to listen. Although the words are familiar, they may not understand the speaker because they may be lack of basic knowledge, the context of the speaker. Thus, the listeners‟ expectation and purposes should be taken into account. These make listeners feel as in real-life listening situation in their native language. Teachers can help their students to arouse their expectations and see the purpose before a listening lesson. This kind of work is described as “pre-listening activities”. The two main aims of pre-listening is to help to activate students‟ background knowledge, guess the topic of what they are going to hear and provide certain context for the listening task. The teacher should vary the activities such as two people having a conversation about their daily life and ask students to complete the true or false questions or vocabulary building for student before the listening task (Nunan, 2002). 11