Nguyenthiphuongthaos masterthesis

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MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
VINH UNIVERSITY

NGUYỄN THỊ PHƯƠNG THẢO

THE EFFECTS OF SCAFFOLDING
STRATEGIES ON IMPROVING THE TENTH
GRADER’S LISTENING ABILITY.
Major: Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL)
Code: 60.14.01.11

MASTER’S THESIS IN EDUCATION

SUPERVISOR: Trần Bá Tiến Ph.D

Nghe An, 2017


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STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP
I hereby acknowledge that this study is my own work. The data and
findings discussed in the thesis are true, used with permission, and have not
been published elsewhere.
Author
Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao


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ABSTRACT
This study aims to examine the effects of scaffolding strategies in

improving the English listening ability of tenth graders at high school. The
problem of the study is the effectiveness of scaffolding interactive activities in
improving tenth graders’ listening ability. The subjects in this study were 60
tenth graders at Phan Dinh Phung high school. They were assigned to two
groups: 30 students in the control group and 30 students in the experimental
group. Each group studied the same lessons. The experimental group
participated in the scaffolding activities designed by the researcher.
To determine which listening skills are included in the English textbooks
taught in the tenth grade in high schools, a listening skill list was selected.
Based on these listening skills, the content of the textbooks was analyzed and
then a listening comprehension test was designed and used as a pre-post test.
Before the treatment, the first questionnaire was made to explore what
difficulties students are facing and what they expect from the teachers. The
treatment was designed by the researcher to improve the listening
comprehension skills of the experimental group. The treatment was taught for
one period a week over eight weeks. At the end of the treatment, a post-test was
administered to each group to find out the effect of the treatment on developing
the pupils' listening comprehension skills. And the second questionnaire was
made to find out which scaffolding strategies are suitable for their listening
skills.
The main statistical results of the study showed that:
1. There was a statistically significant difference between the mean scores
of the pupils of the experimental and control groups in the listening
comprehension post-test (as a whole) in favor of the experimental group.


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2. There was statistically significant difference between the mean scores
of the pupils in the experimental group in the pre-test and their mean scores in
the post-test (the total test) in favor of the latter.

It was concluded that the proposed scaffolding strategies were very
effective in improving the listening comprehension skills of tenth graders at
Phan Dinh Phung high school in Hatinh.


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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I gratefully acknowledge the encouragement and support of many
individuals in assisting me to accomplish this study.
First of all, I would like to express my deepest thanks to my beloved
supervisor Dr. Tran Ba Tien for his valuable time, suggestions, guidance, and
assistance in this study. Without his help, the thesis would not have been
completed.
I would also like to thank the students of the classes I conducted the study
in order to collect information for my research. Without their help, this study
could not have been successful.
Finally, my thanks go to my colleagues, friends and especially my
beloved family. I feel greatly indebted to them for their essential help and
encouragement.
Nguyen Thi Phuong Thao


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TABLE OF CONTENTS

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP.........................................................................i
ABSTRACT..........................................................................................................ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS.................................................................................iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS......................................................................................v
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION…………………………………….………….1

1.1 Rationale .........................................................................................................1
1.2. Aims of the study............................................................................................2
1.3. Scope of the study..........................................................................................3
1.4. Research Questions........................................................................................3
1.5. Significance of the study................................................................................3
1.6. The organization of the study.........................................................................4
CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND..........................................5
2.1. Introduction....................................................................................................5
2.2. Literature review............................................................................................5
2.3. Briefing Communicative Language Teaching................................................8
2.3.1. The teaching of listening...........................................................................10
2.3.2. The process of teaching and learning listening comprehension skills......14
2.3.3. Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) and Scaffolding...........................17
2.4. Summary......................................................................................................28
CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY......................................................................29
3.1. Introduction..................................................................................................29
3.2. Research methods.........................................................................................29
3.3. Participants...................................................................................................30
3.4. Research Instruments...................................................................................31
3.4.1. Listening Comprehension Pretest..............................................................31
3.4.2. Interviews..................................................................................................31
3.4.3. Questionnaires...........................................................................................32
3.4.4. Listening Comprehension Posttest............................................................34
3.4.5. Instructional material.................................................................................34
3.4.6. Lesson Plans..............................................................................................36


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3.5. Data Analysis................................................................................................36
3.6. Data Collection Procedures..........................................................................36

3.7. Summary......................................................................................................37
CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS...............................................38
4.1. Introduction..................................................................................................38
4.2. The result of listening pretest of 10th graders at Phan Dinh Phung high
school...................................................................................................................38
4.3. Problems encountered by 10th graders in learning listening skills...............40
4.3.1. Problems from the listeners.......................................................................40
4.3.2. Problems from the listening material........................................................43
4.3.3. Problems result from physical settings......................................................46
4.4. Students’ expectations in term of teachers’ methodology............................47
4.5. Effects of scaffolding on students’ listening skills.......................................49
4.5.1. Effects on listening comprehension results...............................................49
4.5.2. Effects on students’ motivation.................................................................55
4.6. Pedagogical Implications.............................................................................60
4.6.1. For teachers...............................................................................................61
4.6.2. For students...............................................................................................63
4.6.3. For school administrators..........................................................................64
4.7. Summary......................................................................................................64
CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION............................................................................66
5.1. Summary of the key findings.......................................................................66
5.2. Limitations of the study................................................................................68
5.3. Suggestions for further research...................................................................69
REFERENCES....................................................................................................70
APPENDIX 1A...................................................................................................74
APPENDIX 1B....................................................................................................77
APPENDIX 2A...................................................................................................78
APPENDIX 2B....................................................................................................78
APPENDIX 3A...................................................................................................90
APPENDIX 3B....................................................................................................97

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1 Rationale
Being able to understand what one listens is important for learning in
school and for life in general. At Phan Dinh Phung high school, the tenth graders
tend to have low levels of English, which makes listening comprehension
challenging. Often, instructional approaches promote listening as a product
rather than as a process. The former focuses on the text, while the latter explores
the readers, their background knowledge and experience, predictions, and
interaction with the text. Additionally, listening comprehension skills are usually
taught in school in one of two ways. One method is to have students listen a text
and then listen comments or answer questions about the text. This method
stresses important components of listening comprehension, but treats them
purely as products (i.e., interpretations) rather than as processes (i.e.,
constructing interpretations). In particular, it does not teach students what to do
when they have difficulty comprehending parts of the text; nor does it teach
them how to construct and revise hypotheses about what is likely to occur in the
text based on what they have already read. Both of these aspects are important in
constructing an interpretation of the text. In an effort to find an effective method
of teaching listening skills, recent researches emphasize learning by engaging
learners in knowledge construction (Reiser, 2004). The conditions of meaningful
learning require appropriate strategies, where students need to elaborate, or
generate activities, such as activities based on visual cues, information-based
activities, game activities and following instruction activities from a listening
tapescript.

Such

strategies

can

be

considered

effective

in

listening

comprehension. If provided with appropriate assistance, students can attain a
goal or engage in a practice task that is beyond their reach. Reiser (2004) points
that with scaffolding strategies, learners receive support and assistance to


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successfully perform certain tasks and move to more complex ones. Similarly,
Vacca (2008) suggests that when guided, supported and provided with the
necessary attributes, students become more responsible for their learning, more
motivated, and more successful. Scaffolding strategies are, therefore, effective
for teaching listening, and such strategies influence the development of higher
functions and skills beyond the confines of learner.
With more than 15 years of experience in teaching English at high school,
I found that the tenth graders face serious problems in comprehending
information stated or implied in a listening. They are unable to understand the
long question after listening from the tape. Moreover, they find themselves
confronted with a vast variety of information, vocabulary, grammatical

structures, culture aspects, and resources that make it extremely hard for them to
pick their ways through. Consequently, if the teachers do not teach scaffolding
strategies, many students will find listening frustrating.
All the aforementioned reasons urge the author to carry out the study
entitled “The effects of scaffolding strategies on improving the tenth graders’
listening ability”. Hopefully, the results could serve as a useful source of
reference for those who are concerned about the subject matter for my thesis
because this could be a contribution to my teaching profession on the continuum
of its development, and with the hope that the study can be useful for students of
English and also for those who at the pre-intermediate level of English.
1.2. Aims of the study
For the above reasons, the study aims at:
1. Investigating the difficulties faced by 10th graders in learning listening
skills.
2. Evaluating the effectiveness of the application of scaffolding strategies
to improve listening comprehension skills of 10th grade students at high school.


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3. Proposing some suggestions and recommendations to listening
comprehension skills teaching and learning
1.3. Scope of the study
This research focuses on investigating how scaffolding strategies affect
listening comprehension skills for 10th graders at Phan Dinh Phung high school.
Due to the limitation of time, the author only fulfilled the study among sixty 10th
graders at Phan Dinh Phung high school. They were assigned to two groups –
thirty students in one class as the control group, the other thirty students in other
class as the experimental group.
The effects of scaffolding strategies were chosen for 10th graders for the
following reasons. First of all, they are not experiencing final examination

pressure. Second, the listening topics in the book “Tieng Anh 10” are basic and
simple. Finally, the students have time to master listening skill step by step and
consider listening as an essential skill in communication. We also choose to
focus on some scaffolding strategies: Activities based on visual cues,
Information-based activities, Game Activities, and Following Instruction
Activities.
1.4. Research Questions
To achieve the above aims the research tries to answer the following
questions:
1. What are the 10th graders’ difficulties in learning listening skills?
2. Will scaffolding activities help to improve the 10th graders’ listening
ability?
1.5. Significance of the study
The study is expected to be a good reference for teachers and students to
improve students’ listening comprehension skills. In addition, it is also hoped
that the findings of this study will contribute to further understandings of


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scaffolding strategies in improving this receptive skill. Moreover, through this
study, teachers, along with their students, will become more aware of the crucial
role of scaffolding strategies, and be able to use those strategies appropriately to
their learning requirements.
1.6. The organization of the study
The study includes five chapters as follows:
Chapter 1 – Introduction – provides the rationale, the aims of the study,
the scope of the study, the research questions, the significance of the study, and
the organization of the study.
Chapter 2 – Theoretical Background – presents the review of previous
studies related to the thesis and some concepts as theoretical basis for the study.

Chapter 3 – Methodology – describes the research design, instruments for
data collection, data collection, data analysis, and research procedures, which
gives details of the research method and describes how the hypothesis of the
thesis is interpreted and explained.
Chapter 4 – Findings and Discussions – presents the results and
discussions developed after the linguistic figures are analyzed.
Chapter 5 – Conclusion and Implications – summarizes the main issues
touched upon
in the research, the limitations of the research and some suggestions for
further studies
Following the chapters are the references and appendices.


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CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
2.1. Introduction
With the aim of providing a theoretical background to this study, the
chapter also provides a literature review which focuses on previous studies
related to the present research. It then discusses theoretical issues most relevant
to the research: communication language teaching approach, nature of listening,
the process of learning and teaching listening skill, Zone of Proximal
Development (ZPD), scaffolding, and scaffolding strategies.
2.2. Literature review
In the process of teaching and learning English as a foreign language,
listening is considered as an important component because it provides input
language. Listening is crucial to people’s everyday communication. Byrne
(1984, p. 78) suggests that "communication is a two-sided process: a message
cannot be communicated unless there is someone to receive it". In the case of
oral communication, listening is the receiving process.

It is the basis for

building up relationships, making others feel important, and for communicating
understanding. Rivers (1998), and Canale & Swan (1980) agree that more than
forty-five percent of total communication time is spent listening, thirty percent
speaking, sixteen percent reading and nine percent writing. The importance of
communication in different aspects of life urged Adrian (2002) to consider
listening the queen of communication skills because the better listeners
understand what they hear, the better they speak.
Furthermore, different researchers have indicated that listening plays an
effective role in social interaction. For instance, Smith, Finn and Dowdy (1993)
mention that social interaction, and even most jobs, require the ability to listen
and to receive information. They assert that without the ability to listen and to
participate in verbal exchanges, individuals are at a major social disadvantage.


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They add that individuals in a social setting will not be able to interact if they
have limited listening skills. Moreover, Schilling (2002) says that listening is an
essential skill at work; it reduces errors and wasted time. In the home, listening
develops resourceful, self-reliant children who can solve their own problems.
Also, Johnson (1996) refers to the fact that when someone is willing to stop
talking or thinking and begin truly listening to others, all of his/her interactions
become easier, and communication problems are eliminated.
In addition to its general significance, listening has a very effective role in
the processes of language acquisition and learning. Listening is considered the
channel through which language is naturally acquired.

Through listening,

children learn to imitate and produce the sounds that they hear from the people
around them. Then, in time, they construct their mother tongue and are able to
communicate with others while deaf children cannot acquire this skill. The
Natural Approach pioneered by Krashen and Terrell (1984) stressed this belief.
Furthermore, learning a language is not considered “just learning to talk, but
rather learning a language is building a map of meanings in the mind” (Nord,
1985, p. 17). Hence, listening activities in classrooms should provide language
input to the learner but without understanding this input at the right level, any
language learning simply cannot begin (Al-Hariree, 2004).
In addition, Hyslop and Tone (1988), Mee (1999) and Al Khuli (2000)
support the previous view explaining that listening provides the foundation for
learning and for all aspects of language and cognitive development, and it plays
a life- long role in the process of learning and communication essential to
productive participation in life. Moreover, Al Khuli (2000, p. 58) adds that
"unless the learner hears accurately and understands correctly s/he will not be
able to respond adequately". In this respect, Smith, Finn and Dowdy (1993, p.


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142) explain that any deficit in this important skill means a significant reduction
in the cognitive ability of the student to process incoming information.
It has also been proved that listening is a critical element in the
performance of foreign language learners. More precisely, it facilitates the
emergence of the other language skills - speaking, reading and writing. It
provides the basis for developing them (Hassan, 1998; Saricoban, 1999; and
Petrcion, 2003). Listening and speaking are two major parts of communication
in the sense that communication involves the productive skill of speaking and
the receptive skill of listening. Also on this point, these authors assert that
listening is the first step to achieving oral fluency and accuracy and is a way of
developing speaking skills. Moreover, Petrcion (2003) adds that if a learner can

listen effectively, speaking will follow naturally, and if the learner cannot catch
the incoming language, s/he will not be able to speak to the point with her
interlocutors.
Similarly, reading, particularly oral reading, is influenced by the learners'
listening skill. Being receptive skills, both listening and reading share some
similarities; both of them require "the leaner to have a readiness for
accomplishment and this includes mental maturity, vocabulary, ability to follow
a sequence of ideas, and interest in language" (Lapp & Anderson 1998, pp. 9092). Lemlech (1984) states that "the student who does not hear well will not
learn to read well" (p. 104).
Listening is also considered a basic element in the emergence of written
expression. It helps students take notes and activate their prior knowledge to use
in writing activities. Ronald and Roskelly (1985) indicate that if students have
not learned to listen, they cannot write. They explain that listening is an active
process requiring the same skills of prediction, hypothesizing, checking, revising
and generalizing that writing and reading demand.

According to these


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researchers, what people listen for determines the form, style and the content of
the responses they write. From another perspective, Hasan (1998, p.23) reveals
that "both listening and writing skills can be used for supporting each other, in
the sense that writing activities can be developed from listening activities and at
the same time listeners need the help of the written form to comprehend
listening tasks”. Thus, it can be said that listening has a positive effect on the
students' ability to write.
It is now clear that listening is very crucial to communication, social
interaction, language acquisition and the development of the other language
skills - speaking, reading and writing.

Such significance has urged many

researchers, including this researcher, to tackle further areas in the field of
listening in general and of teaching, or more specifically scaffolding, listening
comprehension in particular. These areas include the nature of listening, and
listening and language teaching.
2.3. Briefing Communicative Language Teaching
Also called Communicative Approach, Communicative Language
Teaching (CLT) is an approach to the teaching of second and foreign languages,
emphasizes interaction as both the means and the ultimate goal of learning a
language. Historically, CLT has been seen as a response to the Audio- Lingual
Method and the Situational Language Teaching method which were questioned
by prominent linguistics like Chomsky (1957) during the 1960s. This linguist
rejected the structuralist view of language and demonstrated that there is a
distinction between performance and competence. For Chomsky the focus of
linguistics was to describe the linguistic competence that enables speakers to
produce grammatically correct sentences. Dell Hymes held, however, that such a
view of linguistic theory was sterile and that it failed to picture all the aspects of
language. He advocated the need of a theory that incorporates communication


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competence. It must be a definition of what a speaker needs to know in order to
be communicatively competent in a speech community. Later, Canale and Swain
(1980) described four dimensions of communicative competence as follows:
Grammatical competence: refers to what Chomsky calls linguistic
competence, in other words, the speaker is able to use a structured
comprehensible utterance (including grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and
spelling).

Sociolinguistic competence: refers to an understanding of the social
context in which communication takes place (role relationships, shared beliefs
and information between participants …)
Discourse competence: refers to the interpretation of individual
messsage elements in terms of their interconnectedness and how meaning is
represented in relationship to the entire discourse or text.
Strategic competence: refers to the coping strategies that participants use
to initiate terminate, maintain, repair and redirect communication
At the level of language theory, CLT has a rich theoretical base. Some of
the characteristics of this communicative view of language can be outlined as
follows:
- Language is a system for the expression of meaning.
- The primary function of language is to allow interactions and
communication
- structure of language reflects its functional and communicative uses.
- The primary units of language are not merely its grammatical and
structural features but categories of functional and communicative meaning as
exemplified in discourse.
Nunan (1989) gave a list of most recognized five features of CLT: First,
An emphasis on learning to communicate through interaction in the target


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language. Second, the introduction of authentic texts into the learning situation.
Next, the provision of opportunities for learners to focus, not only on language
but also on the learning process itself. The fourth, an enhancement of the
learner’s own experiences as important contributing elements to classroom
learning. The fifth, an attempt to link classroom language learning with language
activities outside classroom.
In summary, CLT has gained widespread acceptance in the world of

language study. CLT can succeed, providing that teachers don not completely
reject the need for the structure provided by grammar. In other words, CLT, in
the hands of a balanced teacher, can bring new life and joy to the classroom. Its
vitality makes it an important contributor to language learning approaches.
2.3.1. The teaching of listening
2.3.1.1. The nature of listening
To understand the nature of listening, some points should be briefly
explored - listening and hearing, listening as a receptive skill, listening as an
active skill, and lastly, listening as a complex skill.
2.3.1.2. Listening and Hearing
Listening has been misleadingly defined simply as hearing, but a more
thorough distinction should be made between the two concepts. Brown (2004,
p. 72) reveals that many people confuse the term “listening” with the term
“hearing”, then he explains the difference between these two terms saying that
hearing is merely a sense while listening is a learned behavior. He adds that, just
as decoding the written word is not the same as comprehending its meaning
hearing a sound is not the same as understanding and correctly interpreting what
is being said.
Listening involves more than just hearing.

It is an active process

involving perceiving and organizing oral language input. The ability to attend to


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and recall these organized perceptions is required (Seedfeldt & Barbour, 1990, p.
368). Widdowson (1996) provides definitions for both listening and hearing,
highlighting the difference between them:
Hearing is the activity of recognizing the signals conveyed through the

oral medium which have certain significance. Listening is the activity of
recognizing what function sentences have in an interaction, what communicative
value they take on as instances of use. (p. 60)
Orwig (1999) considers hearing as a door for listening. She states that
listening comprehension is the receptive skill in the oral mode. When we speak
of listening, what we really mean is listening to and understanding what we hear.
According to Lapp and Anderson (1988), listening comprehension is a complex
process and this complexity is due to the general categories involved - hearing,
listening and auding. They conceptualize this complex process by describing
these general categories as follows:
1. Hearing is the actual physical ability to hear; it is the act of receiving
sounds through the ears without interpreting it.
2. Listening is broader than hearing since it involves not only sensing but
also interpretation and evaluation of the received message.
3. Auding is a reproduction by students of a previously recorded story
after listening to it once or twice (Mitryaeva, 1989, p. 43).
2.3.1.3. Listening as a Receptive Skill
Listening and speaking are known to be the two oral skills of any
language; speaking is the productive skill while listening is the receptive one.
Widdowson (1996) points to the reciprocal relationship between these two skills
saying:
It is perfectly true that speaking is active, or productive, and makes use of
the aural mode.

Speaking as an instance of use, therefore it is part of a


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reciprocal exchange in which both reception and production play a part. In this
sense, the skill of speaking involves both receptive and productive participation.

(p. 59)
Reception is preliminary to production, thus listening is necessary for
productive language use (Saricoban, 1999). Speaking is not the only oral mode
of responding to listening; there are other ways to respond to 1istening (ElMutawa & Taisser, 1989).

Here is where the role of teachers and course

designers comes in - to work on training pupils to invest their receptive skills in
the acquisition of the foreign language and to learn how to respond effectively.
Brown (2004) notes that: “It is essential to encourage active participation by the
listener - to listen predicatively and critically, watching out for new information
which fits neatly into already existing conceptual structures, and reacting
sharply, and indeed even accusingly, when confronted with information which
does not fit into the preconceived framework.” (p.171)
2.3.1.4. Listening as an Active Skill
The type of listening preferred in the field of applied linguistics and
methodology is
effective listening. Lapp and Anderson (1988, p.16) stress the active
nature of listening and demonstrate the inadequate nature of the "listener as tape
-recorder" view of listening.
Being described as receptive does not imply that listening is a passive
skill. “The term is misleading. Most listening requires a readiness and active
cooperation on the part of the listener" (Discroll & Frost, 1999, p. 70). Learners
have to share and exert effort to listen; they are required to think while listening
in order to be able to decode the encoded message and to respond correctly.
As a way to make listening effective, it is recommended that teachers set a
clear objective or objectives of listening for their pupils and for themselves as


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well. Nunan (1989, p. 23) suggests that "we do not simply take language in like
a tape- recorder, but interpret what we hear according to our purpose in listening
and our background knowledge”. Listeners, then, are always making use of their
mental abilities in order to work out what they are listening to; this is a recent
trend in the research field that has caused an advancement in regard to tackling
the receptive language skills - listening and reading (Stevick, 1994). Listening
demands active processing to decipher the encoded message and to grasp its
meaning in an adequate way; in order to carry this out successfully, the listener
has to depend on his/her previous knowledge. El-Sagheer and Levine (2003)
summarize this operation in the following lines: “Current researchers believe
that listeners use a wide range of knowledge to understand the spoken word.
They need what Widdowson (1996) calls semantic knowledge, which involves
knowledge of phonological (sound), syntactic (grammatical), and semantic
(meaning) aspects of the language system. Listening also requires schematic
knowledge, or knowledge of the world”. (p.95)
Many linguists and methodologists stress the active nature of listening
(Littlewood, 1984; Brown, 2004). Byrne (1984:103) emphasizes the importanc
of paying attention for effective listening, and identifies the characteristics of an
effective listener, saying that the listener should be mentally checked, supported,
challenged, extrapolated

to the stream of information contained in the

discourse.
More recently, Barna (l994) has defined the active listener as a good
listener who “can sum up what has just been said, showing that he has
concentrated on the speakers’ words. He may also ask questions” (p. 77). In this
definition, listening is viewed as a receptive skill that is essential for language
production.

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2.3.1.5. Listening as a Complex Skill
Listening is not a simple skill.

Mee (1999) describes listening as a

complex process which involves two basic levels: recognition and selection. He
explains such complexity as follows: When a learner is first confronted with a
foreign language, s/he hears only a barrage of meaningless noise. Gradually,
after exposure to the language, the learner recognizes the elements and patterns
like phonemes, intonation, words and phrases. When the learner is able to
recognize the phonological, syntactic and semantic codes of the language
automatically, the learner has reached the level of recognition. Next, the learner
sifts out the message bearing units for retention and comprehension without
conscious attention to individual components. This is the level of selection.
According to Rost (1991) and Aly (2001), listening is an interactive, integrative ,
interpretive and a creative process in which listeners play a basic role in
constructing the overall message; learners construct meaning, predict topic
development, anticipate what may be coming next, and analyze and relate the
new information to what they already know or what they listen to constructing
the overall message; learners construct meaning, predict topic development,
anticipate what may be coming next, and analyze and relate the new information
to what they already know or what they listen to. Rivers and Temperly (1998)
reflect this complex cognitive nature of listening which involves perception
based on internalized knowledge of the language in the following figure
2.3.2. The process of teaching and learning listening comprehension
skills
2.3.2.1. The Bottom-up listening Process
According to Catherine Morley, a trainer teacher from Mexico, the

emphasis in EFL listening materials in recent years has been on developing topdown listening processes. There are good reasons for this given that learners


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need to be able to listen effectively even when faced with unfamiliar vocabulary
or structures. However, if the learner understands very few words from the
incoming signal, even knowledge about the context may not be sufficient for her
to understand what is happening, and she can easily get lost. Of course, lowlevel learners may simply not have enough vocabulary or knowledge of the
language yet, but most teachers will be familiar with the situation in which
higher-level students fail to recognise known words in the stream of fast
connected speech. Bottom-up listening activities can help learners to understand
enough linguistic elements of what they hear to then be able to use their topdown skills to fill in the gaps. The following procedure for developing bottomup listening skills draws on dictogloss, and is designed to help learners
recognise the divisions between words, an important bottom-up listening skill.
The teacher reads out a number of sentences, and asks learners to write down
how many words there would be in the written form. While the task might sound
easy, for learners the weak forms in normal connected speech can make it
problematic, so it is very important for the teacher to say the sentences in a very
natural way, rather than dictating them word-by-word.
Some suitable sentences are:
I’m going to the shop.
Do you want some chocolate?
Let’s have a party!
I’d better go soon.
You shouldn’t have told him.
What are you doing?
There isn’t any coffee.
What have you got?
He doesn’t like it.

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It’s quite a long way.
Why did you think you’d be able to?
Can you tell him I called?
Learners can be asked to compare their answers in pairs, before listening
again to check. While listening a third time, they could write what they hear,
before reconstructing the complete sentences in pairs or groups. By comparing
their version with the correct sentences, learners will become more aware of the
sounds of normal spoken English, and how this is different from the written or
carefully spoken form. This will help them to develop the skill of recognising
known words and identifying word divisions in fast connected speech.
2.3.2.2. The Top-down listening Process
Do you ever get your students to predict the content of a listening
activity
beforehand, maybe using information about the topic or situation,
pictures, or key words? If so, you are already helping them to develop their topdown processing skills, by encouraging them to use their knowledge of the topic
to help them understand the content. This is an essential skill given that, in a
real-life listening situation, even advanced learners are likely to come across
some unknown vocabulary. By using their knowledge of context and co-text,
they should either be able to guess the meaning of the unknown word, or
understand the general idea without getting distracted by it.
Other examples of common top-down listening activities include putting a
series of pictures or sequence of events in order, listening to conversations and
identifying where they take place, reading information about a topic then
listening to find whether or not the same points are mentioned, or inferring the
relationships between the people involved.


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Successful listening depends on the ability to combine these two types of

processing. Activities which work on each strategy separately should help
students to combine top-down and bottom-up processes to become more
effective listeners in real-life situations or longer classroom listenings.
2.3.3. Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) and Scaffolding
2.3.3.1. Zone of Proximal Development
The zone of proximal or potential development perhaps is the best known
concept of Vygotsky socio-cultural psychology. Vygotsky defines Zone of
Proximal Development (ZPD) as “the distance between the actual development
level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential
development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance, or in
collaboration with more capable peer” (1978, p.86). Initially, it was elaborated
for psychological testing inschools (Vygotsky, 1962). Vygotsky stated that
testing should be based not only on the current level of a child's achievements
but also (and mainly) on the child's potential development. The actual level of
development (level of independent performance) does not sufficiently describe
development. Rather, it indicates what is already developed or achieved; it is a
“yesterday of development”. The level of assisted performance indicates what a
person can achieve in the near future, what is developing (potential level,
“tomorrow of development”, what a person “can be”) (Vygotsky, 1978). Thus,
the zone of proximal development is the distance between what a person can do
with and without help. The term proximal (nearby) indicates that the assistance
provided goes just slightly beyond the learner’s current competence
complementing and building on their existing abilities (Cole & Cole, 2001) .
The concept of the ZPD can be fully understood only in the context and as
part of Vygotskian theory on the whole. "In fact, failure to see the connections
between the zone and the theory as a whole means that it is difficult to


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differentiate Vygotsky's concept from any instructional technique that

systematically leads children, with the help of an adult, through a number of
steps in the process of learning some set of skills" (Tudge, 1992, p. 156).
There is a consensus that Vygotskian socio-cultural psychology and the
notion of the zone of proximal development are at the heart of the concept of
scaffolding (Berk, 2001; Daniels, 2001; Wells, 1999; McDevitt & Ormrod,
2002). However, the interpretations and explanations of the exact ways that
scaffolding relates to it have been different. These range from understanding
scaffolding as a direct application and operationalization of Vygotsky's concept
of teaching in the zone of proximal development (Wells, 1999), to the view that
the notion of scaffolding only partially reflects the richness of Vygotsky's zone
of proximal development (eg Daniels, 2001).
Mercer and Fisher (1993, in Wells, 1999) view the ZPD characteristic of
transfer of responsibility for the task to the student as the major goal of
scaffolding in teaching. In order to qualify as scaffolding, they propose, a
teaching and learning event should: a) enable the learners to carry out the task
which they would not have been able to manage on their own; b) be intended to
bring the learner to a state of competence which will enable them eventually to
complete such a task on their own; and c) be followed by evidence of the
learners having achieved some greater level of independent competence as a
result of the scaffolding experience (Wells, 1999, p. 221). The emphasis of their
definition is on the collaboration between the teacher and the learner in
constructing knowledge and skill in the former.
Field (2004) describes the relationship between scaffolding and ZPD as
follow: An adult provides help to a developing child by way of prompting his
attention in a task, guiding him toward appropriate goals, marking prominent
features of a task and showing related strategies. Scaffolding has a significant