VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES TRẦN MAI LIÊN A STUDY ON THE EFFECTS OF DIGITAL STORIES ON STUDENTS’ LISTENING COMPREHENSION AT ELEMENTARY LEVEL Nghiên cứu ảnh hưởng việc sử dụng câu chuyện kỹ thuật số khả nghe hiểu sinh viên trình độ sơ cấp M.A Minor Program Thesis Major: Theory and methodology in teaching English Code: 11045226 HANOI - 2018 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES TRẦN MAI LIÊN A STUDY ON THE EFFECTS OF DIGITAL STORIES ON STUDENTS’ LISTENING COMPREHENSION AT ELEMENTARY LEVEL Nghiên cứu ảnh hưởng việc sử dụng câu chuyện kỹ thuật số khả nghe hiểu sinh viên trình độ sơ cấp M.A Minor Program Thesis Major: Theory and methodology in teaching English Code: 11045226 Supervisor: Nguyen Thu Hanh, Ph.D HANOI - 2018 Declaration I certify that the work presented in this research report has been performed and interpreted solely by myself I confirm that this paperis submitted in fulfillment of the requirement for the M.A Degree and has not been submitted elsewhere in any other form for the fulfillment of any other degree or qualification Hanoi, 2018 Trần Mai Liên i Acknowledgements This M.A thesis could not have been accomplished without the invaluable help, encouragement and support form a number of people who I would like to show my sincerest gratitude and appreciation To begin with, I would like to express my greatest and deepest thankfulness to Mrs.Nguyễn Thu Hạnh, my supervisor, for her enthusiastic and precious guideline and advice throughout the duration of my thesis Without her instruction and supervision, this thesis could not have reached the fulfillment Moreover, my honest thanks also come to studentsat Military University of Culture and Arts, especially students in experimental and control group who participated in my quasi-experimental research Last but not least, I owe a great debt of gratitude to my familyand relatives who have always supported me and supplied the best conditions for me to complete this thesis ii Abstract Among the four skills of the English language, listening has been claimed to be the most difficult English language skill to a majority of Vietnamese students Particularly, many students have trouble catching main ideas or dealing with listening comprehension tasks in their exams, especiallylistening A2 level is a really challenging test for university students This study was conducted to examine the effectiveness of Digital stories on helping students summarizing events and recognizing main ideas in doing listening tasks On the basics of a quasiexperimental research, two groups of first-year students at Military University of Culture and Arts, who were learning English as a non-major subject, participated in this research in the role of the experimental group and control group Student‟s diary, semi-structured interview and listening tests were employed to collect data for the research Before the treatment, no significant difference was founded between both groups in their descriptive writing ability Due to the restricted schedule, the researcher could only pilot eight Digital stories in listening lessons for the experimental students, and the same two to teach students in the control group using traditional method Interestingly, the post-test results indicated that experimental students who are taught with Digital stories attained higher in scores when doing listening tasks in terms of summarizing events and recognizing main ideas Besides, via results gathered from diary and semi-structured interview, it revealed that although participants encountered with various problems related to their attitudes and engagement, the higher levels they had, the more they were interested in the innovation iii Table of contents Declaration i Acknowledgements ii Abstract iii List of tables vi List of graphs vii INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale Significance of the study Aims and objectives of the study Scope of the study Research questions Research method Structure of the study CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Theoretical background of listening and listening comprehension 1.1.1 Definition of Listening 1.1.2 Definition of Listening comprehension 1.1.3 Teaching Listening Comprehension 1.2 Theoretical background of Digital stories 10 1.2.1 Definition of Digital stories 10 1.2.2 Types of Digital Stories 12 1.3 Digital Stories in Teaching Listening Comprehension 13 1.4 How to make a digital story 18 1.5 Summary 20 CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 21 2.1 Population and sample 21 iv 2.2 Research method 21 2.3 Data collection instruments 23 2.3.1 Semi-structured interview .23 2.3.2 Students‟ diaries 24 2.3.3 Listening comprehension Test 26 2.4 Data collection procedure 27 2.5 Data analysis procedures 28 2.6 Summary 28 CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 29 3.1 Data collected from diaries and semi-structured interview 29 3.2 Data collected from listening tests 35 3.2.1 Pre-listening test 35 3.2.2 Post-listening test 39 3.3 Summary 45 CHAPTER 4: CONCLUSION 46 4.1 A summary of the major findings 46 4.2 Limitations of the study 47 4.3 Suggestions for further study 47 REFERENCES 49 APPENDIXES I v List of tables Table 3.1 Test of normality of data of the pre-test 36 Table 3.2 Group statistics of pre-test 37 Table 3.3 Independent samples test of pre-test 37 Table 3.4 Pre-test cross tabulation 38 Table 3.5 Test of normality of data of the post-listening test 39 Table 3.6 Group Statistics of the post-listening test 40 Table 3.7 Independent samples t-test of the post-listening test 40 Table 3.8 Post-test cross tabulation 41 Table 3.9 Effect size value 44 vi List of graphs Graph 3.1 Mark frequency in the pre-test of both groups 38 Graph 3.2 Mark frequency in the post-test of both groups 41 Graph 3.3 Students‟ mean score in the pre-test and post-test 43 vii INTRODUCTION Rationale Listening is considered as a key role in communication In fact, listening skills are acquired and developed naturally at pre-school An effective mother tongue education at school makes it possible to raise students who can comprehend, synthesize and evaluate what they listen to Despite its critical role in language acquisition and effective communication, listening in educational environments does not get enough emphasis and is generally neglected Wacker and Hawkins (1995) stated that listening skill is the most commonly used skill at a rate of 45% in daily life Listening is the only comprehension skill used by individuals during their preschool period, and also in school, before they learn to read and write However, the teaching of listening comprehension seems to be neglected and poorly taught aspect of English in many EFL programs (Mendelsohn, 1994) EFL learners have serious problems in English listening comprehension due to the fact that universities pay more attention to English grammar, reading and vocabulary Moreover, the progress made in English training and learning in Vietnam is behind the shift in ideology Obstacles such as overcrowded classes and the ongoing overuse of traditional grammar-translation methods prohibit the country‟s language education from achieving its goal In recent years, with the development of media and computer technology, educators have begun to make use of multimedia and technology to improve their teaching and consequently students‟ language learning as Chang (1991) put it the vast majority of the published research on the effectiveness of media and technology in language instruction is encouraging With the increase of more sophisticated multimedia technology, there is renewed interest in the complementary relationship of visual and auditory channels in listening comprehension (Brett, 1995; Felix, 1995) According to Brett (1995), digital storytelling for foreign language learning can provide a more realistic picture of the limited time for applying Digital stories tool in listening lessons is likely the explanation for the value of effect size Truthfully, it can be considered the biggest imperfection in this current quasi-experimental study 3.3 Summary This chapter has presented the findings of quasi-experimental research on the application of Digital stories in teaching listening The findings are collected from different stages of the study through students‟ diaries, semi-structured interview and pre-post listening tests From the reports of students‟ diaries and interview, it can be conveyed that students give positive responses to the application of Digital stories in listening lessons as they believe that the lessons become more and more visual and they are supported in guessing new words via pictures This innovation turned out to be an amazing language learning methodology More importantly, data analysis from the listening tests indicates that there is improvement in students „listening ability in terms of summarizing events and recognizing main ideas However, the size effect of Digital stories on students‟ listening achievement is notlarger enough It may be due to the insufficient time during the teaching practice with the application of Digital stories Likewise, there is a minor percent of the experimental students who are not eager with Digital stories tool as well as not attain improvement As a result, justification in further research methodology and teaching practice is of great essence to obtain more expected results 45 CHAPTER 4: CONCLUSION 4.1 A summary of the major findings The principal goal of this research is to implement and examine whether there is a significant improvement in students‟ listening comprehension in terms of recognizing main ideas and summarizing events between students who are taught with Digital stories tool and those are taught with traditional method Furthermore, this study also aims at exploring students‟ opinions of using Digital Stories in listening comprehension and difficulties they encounter in listening comprehension with Digital Stories The major findings would be recapitulated and subsumed under the two research questions Question 1: What are students’ opinions of using Digital Stories in listening comprehension? Using Digital Stories in listening comprehension was a high technological teaching technique that seemed to be unpopular in Vietnamese educational context, in general However, when the author applied this methodology, to some extent it helped to improve her students‟ listening skills Although participants encountered with various problems related to their attitudes and engagement, the higher levels they had, the more they were interested in the innovation Especially, students‟ learning experience was a main factor in their own performances Question 2.To what extent is there a significant difference between the experimental and control group in their listening comprehension test results? From the teaching and testing period along with the analysis of students‟ pretest and post-test scores, experimental group of students shows a substantial increase in their overall scores of their listening test after being taught with Digital stories tool More importantly, the findings reflected the significant difference between the two groups‟ attainment in dealing with listening comprehension tasks after intervention Particularly, students in the experimental group who are taught with Digital stories during weeks get better results in their listening 46 comprehension test in term of summarizing events and recognizing main ideas than those of the control group who not Obviously, with Digital stories, the students are facilitated to focus more on listening tasks Nevertheless, the progress of experimental students is notlarger enough since the effect size of Digital stories tool is calculated to be at medium extent 4.2 Limitations of the study Despite the significant efforts of the researcher during the research procedure and data analysis, certain limitations of the study should be noted due to time limitation and other unforeseen factors Firstly, due to the tight and fixed teaching schedule of the researcher at university, students have relatively limited opportunity to be trained and practiced with Digital stories Eight listening lessons with the application of Digital stories in the experimental group seem insufficient for students to familiarize themselves with this tool Secondly, there is likely to be a threat of drawing definitive conclusions for the whole population of the study since the sample is notlarger enough Thirdly, pre-post listening tests employed in the research are all multiple choices and not evaluate other aspects of listening comprehension except for summarizing events and recognizing main ideas; consequently, students‟ listening ability is not assessed adequately It is of importance to take these mentioned limitations of the study into 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