vinh university foreign languages department - - phạm thị thu mai problems in learning English listening skill at high school and suggested solutions (Những vấn đề viƯc häc kÜ n·ng nghe tiÕng Anh ë trêng phỉ thông giải pháp gợi ý) graduation thesis field: methodology Vinh, 2009 Acknowledgements My graduation thesis has been completed with a lot of encouragement and support from my teachers, friends and family First of all, I would like to express my deep grate to my supervisor, Mrs Nguyen Thi Van Lam, M.A for her indispensable and useful advice, suggestions and support But for her, this graduation thesis would not have been completed In addition, I want to give my sincere thanks to the Dean and the teachers in the Foreign Language Department for their precious support and encouragement I also cannot forget the support of the students from Nguyen Xuan On high school Without them, I could not have carried out the survey Lastly, I wish to thank my family and my good friends who have been very helpful and encouraged me during doing this graduation thesis Vinh May 10th 2009 Pham Thi Thu Mai Vinh University TABLE OF CONTENT ACKNOWLEDGEMENT………………………………………………… TABLE OF CONTENT…………………………………………………… LIST OF FIGURES………………………………………………………….5 PART 1: INTRODUCTION Reasons for Choosing the Topic .6 Aims of the Study Scope of the Study Methods of the Study Design of the Study PART 2: DEVELOPMENT .9 Chapter 1: Theoretical Background 1.1 What is Listening Skill? 1.1.1 Definition of Listening Skill 1.12 Importance of Listening Skill 1.1.3 Types of Listening 10 1.2 Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) .11 1.2.1 Characteristics of CLT 11 1.2.2 Teacher Roles in CLT 11 1.2.3 Student Roles in CLT .12 1.3 Teaching English Listening in CLT 13 1.3.1 Principles of Teaching English Listening Skill .13 1.3.2 Subskills in Listening 15 1.3.3 Types of Listening Activities 17 1.3.3.1 No Overt Responses .17 1.3.3.2 Short Responses 17 1.3.3.3 Longer Responses 18 1.3.3.4 Extended Responses .18 1.4 Summary 18 CHAPTER 2: REAL SITUATION OF LEARING LISTENING SKILL AT NGUYEN XUAN ON HIGH SCHOOL .19 2.1 Overall View about Real Situations of Teaching and Learning English Listening at Vietnamese High Schools 19 2.1.1 Some Comments on Listening Exercises and Activities in High School Textbooks 19 Vinh University 2.1.2 Difficulties in Teaching and Learning English Listening 20 2.1.3 Real Situation of Learning and Teaching English Listening at Nguyen Xuan On high school 21 2.2 Main Reasons for the Difficulties in Learning Listening Skill 22 2.2.1 Subjective Reasons 22 2.2.2 Objective Reasons 23 2.3 Survey on Learning English Listening Skill at Nguyen Xuan On high school 24 2.3.1 Aims of the Survey 24 2.3.2 Description of the Survey 24 2.3.3 Results of the Survey 25 2.4 Summary 35 CHAPTER 3: Suggested Activities to Improve Learning Listening Skill at High School 37 3.1 Introduction 37 3.2 Suggested Solutions 37 3.3 Some Suggested Kinds of Listening Exercises to Motivate Students into Listening .39 3.3.1.Chain Game- Retelling a Short Story 39 3.3.2 Drawings 41 3.3.3 Cross-words .41 3.3.4 Lucky Listening Topics .43 3.3.5 Guessing the Content of the Lesson 44 3.3.6 Rearranging the Order of the Conversation .45 3.3.7 Choosing the Right Topics 45 3.3.8 Making T/F Statements .46 3.3.9 Listening to Short English Songs .47 3.4 Summary 47 PART 3: CONCLUSION .48 3.1 Recapitulation .48 3.2 Suggestions for Further Study 49 REFERENCES 50 APPENDIX 52 Vinh University Vinh University LISTS OF FIGURES Figure 2.1 Students’ Interest in Learning English ……………………… 25 Figure2.2 Students’ Opinions about Degrees of Difficulty of Listening Skill…………………………………………………………………………26 Figure 2.3 Factors Affecting Students’ Listening…………………… .26 Figure 2.4 Students’ Amount of Time for Practicing Listening Skill…… 27 Figure 2.5 Students’ Frequency of the Guessing Habit……………………28 Figure 2.6 Students’ Ways of Listening……………………… ………….28 Figure 2.7 Students’ Frequency of Distraction…………………………….29 Figure 2.8 Students’ Times of Listening per Lesson………………… 30 Figure 2.9 Influence of Listening Equipments on Students’ Listening… 31 Figure 2.10 Students’ Opinions about Listening Topics and Exercises… 32 Figure 2.11 Students’ Favorite Types of Listening Exercises…………… 33 Figure 2.12 Students’ Opinions about Extra Listening Activities…… 34 Figure 2.13 Motivating Factors………………………………………… 35 Vinh University Part 1: INTRODUCTION Reasons for Choosing the Topic English Teaching Methodology is a very important subject for everyone who wants to become teachers of English In this subject, students of English who are being trained to become teachers will be provided with necessary information about techniques and methods of teaching four language skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing Of all these four skills, listening skill is considered to be one of the most difficult skills to teach and to learn As students of English, the author herself and others have met a lot of difficulties in learning this skill She has chosen the topic about “Problems in LearningProblems in Learning English Listening Skill at High School and Suggested Solutions ” for several reasons Firstly, listening skill is thought to be the most difficult in teaching and learning a language in general and English in particular A lot of teachers and students meet many problems and difficulties in teaching and learning this skill Therefore, the author studies this topic to point out the main problems and difficulties which teachers and students have met and then can find out the important reasons for these matters Secondly, listening skill plays a very important role in teaching and learning a language so it should be paid much more attention to However, it seems that this skill is not really focused on in many high schools in Vietnam and the qualities of teaching and learning this skill are not very good Thus, this topic is chosen to study in order to find out some suggested solutions to partly improve this matter Moreover, although learning English listening skill is significant, the fact is that not many students like learning this skill for many reasons such as the difficulty in learning it well or listening lessons are quite boring Thus, the purpose of studying this topic is to create some new and interesting listening activities to motivate students into listening skill Aims of the Study The study is conducted with the following aims: because teaching listening skill is one of the most difficult tasks for any ESL teacher, the first aim is to find out the problems and difficulties in learning and teaching English listening skill at high school Additionally, the study is carried out so as to get more information about the qualities of teaching and learning English Vinh University listening skill at Vietnamese high schools It is also necessary to find out the main reasons for these problems and difficulties Last but not least, the study suggests some solutions to these problems to partly improve the qualities of teaching listening skill and motivate students into listening lessons Scope of the Study The topic about “Problems in LearningProblems in Learning English Listening Skill at High School and Suggested Solutions” is a broad topic and it cannot be exploited in the study due to the limitation of a B.A thesis Therefore, the study only focuses on the main problems which cause difficulties for both teachers and students and the real situations of teaching and learning English listening skill according to a survey done in three grades of a high school Besides, from this survey, some suggestions and solutions are given in order to partly improve the quality of teaching and learning English listening skill at high school Methods of the Study Due to the scope and the characteristics of the study, the author follows the procedures:  Collecting and analyzing the materials  Synthesizing the information First, some materials referring to the issue are collected and analyzed Then, basing on the theoretical background described and analyzed, the survey will be carried out Next, the information from the survey will be analyzed in detail and the results will be categorized to synthesize From the results collected, it will come to the general conclusion and some comments and solutions will be given Design of the Study The thesis consists of three main parts: the first part is Introduction This part provides the information about the reasons for choosing the topic, the aims of the topic, the scope of the study, the method of the study and the design of the study In the second part – Development, there are three chapters Chapter 1- Theoretical background discusses some main points relating to the topic: definition of listening skill and its importance, CLT with teachers’ roles and students’ roles, the main principles of teaching listening and the main kinds of listening activities This chapter focuses on the theory about the main types of listening activities and teaching it in CLT Chapter The real situation of learning English listening skill at Nguyen Xuan On high school describes the whole picture about the real situation of learning English Vinh University listening skill of the students in this school through the survey done in three grades In chapter - Suggested activities to improve learning listening skill at high school, some solutions to the problems students have when learning listening are suggested and some listening activities are recommended to be applied in teaching and learning this skill with the aim to motivating students into learning this skill The last part is Conclusion This part summarizes the main points discussed in the previous parts and offers some suggestions for further study The study ends up with references which are the materials collected to find necessary information for the study and appendix which is the questionnaire used in the survey Vinh University Part 2: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: Theoretical Background 1.1 What is Listening Skill? 1.1.1 Definition of Listening Skill Listening skill can be defined in different ways According to MC Milan Dictionary, listening is to pay attention to a sound or to try to hear a sound or to pay attention to what someone tells you and what they suggest Babylon Dictionary views listening as an attempt to hear something, an act of paying careful attention to one who is speaking Similarly, in the New Era EnglishEnglish-Vietnamese Dictionary, listening is to make an effort to hear somebody or something Thus, listening is the language modality that is used most frequently Listening involves a sender (a person, radio, and television), a message, and a receiver (the listener) Listeners often must process messages as they come, even if they are still processing what they have just heard, without backtracking or looking ahead In addition, listeners must cope with the sender's choice of vocabulary, structure, and rate of delivery The complexity of the listening process is magnified in second language contexts, where the receiver also has incomplete control of the language Listening skill is integrated with the other skills in language use Like reading, listening is a receptive skill where the purpose is to comprehend or understand what someone might be saying or writing 1.12 Importance of Listening Skill In daily life, people spend a lot of time listening: officers listen to their boss’ talks, students listen to their teachers, old people listen to news on TV and radio It has been estimated that adults spend almost half of their communication time listening In language use, listening skill plays a very important role: it includes various kinds of listener’s knowledge: knowledge of phonology, vocabulary, semantics of the language in use, culture of its people, his life experience in the topic, his ability to predict and respond It decides his comprehension, content and attitudes in response to the speaker’s speech as well Therefore, if we are bad at listening, we will fail to communicate with others In addition, there is a very close relationship between listening and speaking skills: in learning English as a foreign language, students cannot develop speaking skill unless they develop listening skill To have a successful conversation, they Vinh University 10 ... herself and others have met a lot of difficulties in learning this skill She has chosen the topic about ? ?Problems in LearningProblems in Learning English Listening Skill at High School and Suggested. .. REAL SITUATION OF LEARING LISTENING SKILL AT NGUYEN XUAN ON HIGH SCHOOL .19 2.1 Overall View about Real Situations of Teaching and Learning English Listening at Vietnamese High Schools ... chapter - Suggested activities to improve learning listening skill at high school, some solutions to the problems students have when learning listening are suggested and some listening activities