An exploratory study on the teaching and learning at post-listening stage by International Standard Program students, ULIS-VNU = Nghiên cứu thực trạng dạy và họ

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

BÙI THỊ HẰNG

AN EXPLORATORY STUDY ON THE TEACHING AND
LEARNING AT POST-LISTENING STAGE BY
INTERNATIONAL STANDARD PROGRAM STUDENTS,
ULIS-VNU


(NGHIÊN CỨU THỰC TRẠNG DẠY VÀ HỌC Ở GIAI ĐOẠN SAU
KHI NGHE CHO SINH VIÊN NHIỆM VỤ CHIẾN LƯỢC
TRƯỜNG ĐHNN, ĐHQGHN)

M.A. MINOR THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 60.14.10


Hanoi- 2013

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDY

BÙI THỊ HẰNG

AN EXPLORATORY STUDY ON THE TEACHING AND
LEARNING AT POST-LISTENING STAGE BY
INTERNATIONAL STANDARD PROGRAM STUDENTS,
ULIS-VNU

((NGHIÊN CỨU THỰC TRẠNG DẠY VÀ HỌC Ở GIAI ĐOẠN SAU
KHI NGHE CHO SINH VIÊN NHIỆM VỤ CHIẾN LƯỢC
TRƯỜNG ĐHNN, ĐHQGHN)

M.A. MINOR THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 60.14.10
Supervisor: Dr. Nguyễn Thị Ngọc Quỳnh

Hanoi- 2013
i

DECLARATION

I certify that this thesis entitled: “An exploratory study on the teaching and
learning at post-listening stage by International Standard Program students,
ULIS-VNU” which is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
degree of Master of Arts, is the result of my own work. I have provided fully
documented references to the work of others. The material in this thesis has not
been submitted for any other formal course

Bui Thi Hang
Hanoi,2013

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My words of thanks go to all the people who have contributed to the
accomplishment of this graduation paper.
First of all, it is with affection and appreciation that I would love to express my
heartfelt gratitude to my supervisor Dr. Nguyen Ngoc Quynh, without whose
valuable advice and enthusiastic guidance, this research would not have become a
reality.
Secondly, I would be honestly grateful to Mrs. Nguyen Thi Thu Hien, M.A my old
teacher as well as my beloved colleague, who was very busy with her work but still
spent precious time discussing and sharing her teaching experiences relating to my
research field.
Also, I owe a great debt to my family, teachers and friends for their continuous
support, advice and encouragement whenever I was in need of.
Last but not least, my sincere thanks are warmly sent to the teachers of ISP division
and ISP students who enthusiastically and patiently helped me collect significant
data for the study.

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ABSTRACT
The recent education reform, most obviously in ELT has brought a new identity
to the teaching procedure of language skills, comprising three stages: Pre, While
and Post stage. However, the importance of the post stage tends to be lowered as the
optional part of an English lesson and poorly or even ineffectively carried out due to
a number of factors. Post-listening stage is not excluded. In response to this
depressing fact, “An exploratory study on the teaching and learning at post-
listening stage by International Standard Program students, ULIS-VNU” was
initiated, carried out and completed. Taking into consideration the importance of
post-listening stage as well as the research gap in this field, the paper focuses
primarily on the current situation of teaching and learning at this phase, especially
the utilization of follow-up activities, students‟ preferences and their perceived
benefits of these activities.
In an attempt to realize aforementioned objectives, this graduation paper is
conducted by means of class observation, teachers‟ interview and survey
questionnaire which are described in detail in chapter 3 after the theoretical
background knowledge of the subject matter has been provided in chapter 2. The
findings presented in chapter 4 reveal that post-listening activities have been widely
conducted but not as effectively as expected mostly due to the lack of time and
students‟ enthusiasm. The most preferable follow-up activities were reflection and
creative tasks. Also, there was a mismatch between teachers‟ objectives for post-
listening stage and students‟ perceived benefits of the activities carried out during

this stage.
It is the great ambition of the researcher that this study will function as a useful
reference for teachers of English who take interest in the subject matter.

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND TABLES

CLT: Communicative Language Teaching
ELT: English Language Teaching
ISP: International Standard Program
ULIS: University of Language and International Studies
VNU: Vietnam National University
Table 1: Post-listening form and activities in accordance with ISP teachers‟ objectives
Table 2: Types of post-listening activities exploited in observed classes
Table 3: Frequency of the utilization of post-listening activities
Table 4: Students‟ preferences for post-listening activities.









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TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1. Rationale 1
2. Aims of the study 2
3. Methods of the study 2
4. Significance of the study 4
5. Scope of the study 4
6. Organization of the study 5
PART B: DEVELOPMENT 6
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 6
1. The nature of listening 6
1.1. What is listening? 6
1.2. The process of listening 7
1.3. The importance of listening skill in language teaching and learning 8
1.4. The relationship between listening and other language skills 9
2. The teaching of listening in Communicative Language Teaching Approach. 10
3. Teaching listening procedure 11
3.1. Pre-listening 12
3.2. While-listening 12
3.3. Post-listening 12
4. An in-depth overview of post-listening activities 13
4.1. Purposes of post-listening activities 13
4.2. Factors affecting the choice of post-listening activities 14
4.3. Forms of post-listening activities 15
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4.4. Integration in post-listening activities 15
5. Related studies 15
6. Summary 17
CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 18
1. Setting 18
1.1. Introduction of International Standard Program (ISP) 18

1.2. Listening materials 18
2. Participants 19
2.1. ISP Teachers 19
2.2. ISP students 19
3. Data collection instruments 19
3.1. Classroom observation 20
3.2. Interview 20
3.3. Questionnaires 21
4. Data Collection Procedures 21
5. Data Analysis Procedure 22
CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 23
1. Research question 1- The general situation of teaching and learning at post-
listening stage for ISP students in ULIS, VNU. 23
1.1. Teachers‟ objectives for conducting post-listening stage 23
1.2. Duration of post-listening stage 24
1.3. Types of exploited post-listening activities 25
1.4. Students‟ participation during post-listening stage 30
1.5. Teacher‟s perceived difficulties in conducting post-listening stage 30
2. Research question 2- Students‟ preferences for post-listening activities 31
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3. Research Question 3- Students‟ perceived benefits of post-listening activities 34
4. Summary 35
PART C: CONCLUSION 37
1. Conclusions 37
2. Recommendations for overcoming difficulties . 39
3. Limitations of the study 41
4. Suggestions for further studies 41
REFERENCES 43
APPENDICES I

1

PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale
The ultimate goal of teaching and learning English for International Standard
Program students is learners‟ ability to use English for communicative purposes. In
an attempt to obtain this aim, together with learning English grammar and
pronunciation, students have chances to practice the four fundamental skills:
listening, speaking, reading and writing, among which listening makes a significant
contribution to the process of language acquisition.
In fact, the listening score of ISP students has always been disappointing and
alarming. The theory, which was initiated by Rixon (1981) as a result of Task-based
Language Teaching and later supported by Underwood (1989), is that every
listening section is subdivided into three main parts: pre-, while-, post-listening.
Nevertheless, in reality, the problem is that the teaching and learning of listening
skill for ISP students appear not to be effective as not all the teachers cover the
three stages of a listening class, most notably the post-listening stage. The main
focus of almost all listening lessons is to make students listen to the text with

exercises to be completed during the while-listening stage. Noticeably, the post-
listening stage is said to be ineffective and irrelevant to what students have listened
to or even ignored in some listening classes notwithstanding that this stage is as
important as all other stages. In addition, most of the activities at this stage are
initiated and controlled by the teachers and listening skill is frequently isolated from
other language skills.
In terms of pedagogical view, there has been a lack of proper research interests
and investigations into the post-listening stage even though studies on pre-listening
and while-listening strategies as well as activities have been constantly carried out.
This stems partially from the inherent conception that the post-listening stage
merely deals with checking listening comprehension exercises.
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The above-stated facts generate strong motivation in the researcher to conduct a
study titled “An exploratory study on the teaching and learning at post-listening
stage by International Standard Program students, ULIS-VNU”. She desires to
take a closer look into the current situation of teaching and learning listening,
especially at post-listening stage among ISP students, ULIS-VNU. Her hope is also
to figure out useful post-listening activities and possible solutions to teachers‟
difficulties during this stage.
2. Aims of the study
In carrying out this research, the researcher desires to explore two main issues.
First, the study aims to investigate the real situation of teaching and learning at the
post-listening stage among ISP students. The goal is to find out the most commonly
utilized post-listening activities, the length of this follow-up stage, the involvement
of students as well as problems facing teachers while carrying out this stage.
Second, the author would like to detect students‟ preferences for effectively-
exploited activities at post-listening stage and their perceived benefits brought about
by the activities conducted at this stage. These objectives can be achieved by
answering the following research questions:

What is the current situation of teaching and learning at post-listening stage
among ISP students, ULIS-VNU?
What post-listening activities do ISP students prefer?
What do students perceive to be the benefits of post-listening activities?
3. Methods of the study
3.1 Subjects
As mentioned in the title of the study, the surveyed participants were ISP
students and teachers at Vietnam National University, Hanoi. This research
attempted to investigate three ISP groups of 70 students with the average of 23
students for each. These participants are supposed to achieve Band 6.0 for IELTS
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test after one year being taught at ISP division. Moreover, the researcher also
interviewed ten teachers who have been teaching these groups to enhance the
reliability and validity of the study.
3.2 Instruments
With the aim of finding the answers to three research questions, the researcher
used three different instruments namely Classroom Observation, Interview and
Student Questionnaire at ISP division.
* Classroom observation
The researcher carried out ten listening class observations at ten chosen ISP
groups. In this study, scheduled-based observations were used to find the answer to
the first research question of the current practice of post-listening stage among ISP
students.
* Interview
The researcher also used the semi-structured interviews with open-ended
questions to collect the information about different types of post-listening activities
exploited by the teachers. Subsequently, on the basis of teachers‟ response and
adaptation from Underwood‟s framework, the researcher made a list of follow-up
activities which would be used in students‟ questionnaire to answer the second

research question. Besides, the interview aimed at gaining more information about
teachers‟ purposes set for the implementation of post-listening stage and the
challenges facing them in this stage.
* Questionnaire
Questionnaire was employed to seek the answers to the two last questions. The
researcher distributed the questionnaire papers to 70 students of three ISP groups at
medium level of English. In this study, all the questions and instructions were
written in Vietnamese to avoid possible misunderstanding which might affect the
accuracy of the outcomes.
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4. Significance of the study
As one of the under-researched issues in teaching listening for ISP students in
ULIS-VNU, the present study on post-listening stage will make certain
contributions to university students, teachers, educationists and researchers of the
related fields.
Firstly, as for teachers and students at ISP division, they may have an overall
look into the current situation of teaching and learning at the post-listening stage.
Besides, the teachers will certainly realize the difficulties facing them during this
stage and students‟ preferences as well as perceived benefits of post-listening
activities. This study is beneficial for students in the sense that they tend to become
fully aware of the importance of the follow-up stage and their responsibilities to
actively take part in this stage.
Second, since obstacles to the implementation of post-listening stage, along
with measures are clearly demonstrated in the research, educationists may base on
them to make necessary changes in terms of curriculum, facilities to exploit post-
listening activities to the full.
Last, the research will serve as the foundation for further related researches.
Other researchers may also take the strengths and weaknesses of the study into
account to better theirs.

5. Scope of the study
This study lays great stress on common activities used for post-listening stage
for ISP students in ULIS-VNU. Therefore, the pre-listening and while-listening
stage will not be taken serious view. Besides, due to time pressure and other
inconveniences, the research is to stay within the confines of several ISP classes and
there is a limitation in the number of participants who have been working at ISP
division for a period of time.

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6. Organization of the study
The thesis consists of three main parts:
Part A: Introduction
The rationale, aims, scope of the study, methods and significance are presented in
this part.
Part B: Development
This is the main part of the study which is divided into three chapters.
Chapter 1: Literature Review
Chapter 2: Methodology
Chapter 3: Data analysis: Findings and Discussions
The first chapter presents the relevant literature underlying the subject matter
involving listening in general and post-listening stage in particular. Following is the
methodology of the research in which the author has in-depth discussions about the
questionnaires and the informants. After that, in chapter III, the researcher provides
the analysis of the data collected from the research instruments
Part C: Conclusion
In this part, the major findings are summarized, conclusions drawn and suggestions
for further study made.

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PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter provides a detailed insight into theoretical background underlying
the subject matter involving the nature of listening, the teaching of listening viewed
by the Communicative Language Teaching approach and notably the post-listening
activities.
1. The nature of listening
1.1. What is listening?
First and foremost, there is an essential need to mention that listening here is
associated mainly with listening and understanding what we hear at the same time.
In fact, through the years, various definitions of listening have been proposed but
"there indeed appears to be no universally accepted definition" (Dunkel, 1986, p.
433).
Rost (1990) may be the person who defined listening in the most
comprehensible way: “Listening is one of fundamental language abilities that allow
users of language get not only information but also instruction.” (p. 82). In addition,
Brown‟s simplest definition stated that “Listening is the ability to identify and
understand what others are saying. This involves understanding a speaker‟s accent
or pronunciation, his grammar and his vocabulary and grasping his meaning”.
(Brown, 1994, p.151)
However, one of the most complete and detailed definition of listening is the

one provided by Brownell (1996):
“ it is not a skill, but a set of skills all marked by the fact that they involve
the aural perception of oral signals [it] is not passive. A person can hear
something, but not be listening it is absolutely necessary for almost any other
work with language, especially for speaking and even for writing.” (p. 129)
It is noteworthy to emphasize three points in this definition by which some
typical features of listening can be revealed. First, listening requires full
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interpretation of oral sounds. In other words, the person should be capable of
distinguishing the smallest units of sound of phonemes. Second, listening is not a
passive skill but a receptive one since it calls for as much attention and mental
activity as other language skills. Far from passively receiving and recording aural
input, listeners actively involve themselves in the interpretation of what they hear,
bringing their own background knowledge and linguistic knowledge to deal with the
information contained in the aural text. Last but not least, “a person can hear
something, but not be listening” means that there is a great difference between
hearing and listening. Specifically, hearing is simply a physical ability whereas
listening is a highly complex, interactive process “by which spoken language is
converted to meaning in the mind” (Wolvin & Coakly, 1992, p.19). Hence,
Saricoban (1999) stressed that “Listening is more than merely hearing words. It is a
process in which students receive, construct meaning from, and respond to spoken
or nonverbal messages”.
In brief, no matter how variously listening is defined; it is worth noting that
listening is a fundamental language skill making a significant contribution to
learners‟ process of language acquisition.
1.2. The process of listening
There have existed quite a few assumptions considering listening as a complex
active process which requires much attention, thought, interpretation and
imagination. Janset and Pekin (1985) stated that listening is a highly complex,

interactive process by which spoken language is converted to meaning in the mind.
Besides, H. Douglas Brown revealed in his research in 1994 that listening
comprehension is not only the process of sending and receiving sounds but also the
conscious process to send and transmit the message to the brain which will
influence the process of communication.
Probably the most detailed and comprehensive theory of listening process is the
one recommended by Wolvin and Coakly (1992). From their perspectives, listening
8

is the process involving three basic steps: “receiving, understanding; judging and
responding” (p.40). The first step means listening to catch what speaker is saying.
After receiving the message, the listener must understand and interpret the
information. The next step is to judge whether the message makes sense and can be
reliable to believe in. The listening can not end without the last step: “responding”.
It is the form of feedback that completes the communication transaction and results
in the listeners‟ actions.
1.3. The importance of listening skill in language teaching and learning
In the era of mass communication, undeniably, it is of vital importance that
listening skill be taught in the teaching process and students be trained to become
effective and critical listeners.
Quite a few efforts have been made to reinforce the significance of listening in
everyday communication. According to Byrnes H. (1984), more than 40% of people
daily communication is devoted to listening, approximately 35% to speaking, 16%
to reading and only 9% on writing. In a report delivered by Rost (1990), it is
estimated that adults spend almost half their communication time listening and
students may receive as much as 90% of their in-school information through
listening to instructors and to one another. In Harmer‟s words, “Listening is a
medium through which children, young people and adults gain a large portion of
their education, their information, their understanding of the world and of human
affairs, their ideals, senses of values and their appreciation” (Harmer, 2001, p.115).

Seeing the importance of listening in real-life interaction, Nunan and Miller
(1995) emphasized that “listening skill is one of the basic skills in language
teaching and learning” (p.140). Nevertheless, in the areas of second language
acquisition research and second language teaching, there used to be times when
“listening has always been the most forgotten and least researched of the four macro
skills”. (Underwood, 1989, p.18). In the viewpoint of some researchers and
teachers, listening was something which could just be “picked up” and there was
9

little need for developing a specific research agenda or approaches to teach
listening. Luckily, until recent years listening has received wider attention and is not
considered a separate and independent skill but an activity or means by which the
other language skills could be taught and acquired. In fact, learners‟ receptive
language abilities like listening precede their productive ones (speaking and
writing), so they need to spend a great deal of time listening before and as they
develop other abilities. Mendelsohn (1995) argued that listening skill is at the core
of second language acquisition and therefore demands greater emphasis and
concern from both teachers and students.
In a word, since listening is a continuous complex process which can not be
mastered easily, it is crucial that language teachers give the learners many
opportunities to listen to spoken foreign language as well as necessary strategies to
become effective and critical listeners.
1.4. The relationship between listening and other language skills
Researchers have indicated for many years that there is a strong relationship
between listening and other language abilities. (Gass, 1988, p.34). It is commonly
acknowledged that listening, speaking, reading and writing are four vital
components of English language arts curriculum and each one provides the base for
the growth for the others. Traditionally, the integration of these four skills was not
taken serious view for the reason that it might diminish the importance of each
separate language skill. However, in the light of communicative approach, the four-

skill incorporation appears to be a preferable choice in almost all lesson plans of
language teachers not only to provide a variety in classroom but also to allow the
recycling and revision of language taught separately in each skill. Thus, “An
integrated approach to learning enables students and teachers to participate in new
dialogues and pathways to learning”. (Tchudi & Mitchell, 1989, p. 36).
There is no doubt that improving listening serves as the base on which the
development of speaking, reading and writing abilities is formed. Listening is the
10

first and foremost language art. It is true that babies start identifying sounds and
speech patterns before they are born. According to Peterson (1991), listening is also
a receptive skill which gives way to productive skills of speaking and writing.
Speaking is closely related with listening because one cannot speak until he/she
knows the sounds of the language and has some understanding that these sounds
represent things in the real world. In addition, whether ideas in written forms can
diversify depends on the great amount of language that learners speak and listen.
How the two receptive skills of listening and reading are correlated is worth
answering. Both of them are phases of language information acquisition and require
higher mental process. Peterson also assumes that if the child listened to a simple
story in his first reading book, he would have no difficulty understanding it.
All things considered, listening skill can reinforce the other three skills and they
are all inextricably linked with one another.
Wolvin and Coakly (1992) suggested that listening is the process involving three
basic steps: “receiving, understanding; judging and responding”. The first step
means listening to catch what speaker is saying. After receiving the message, the
listener must understand and interpret the information. The next step is to judge
whether the message makes sense and can be reliable to believe in. The listening
cannot end without the last step: “responding”. It is the form of feedback that
completes the communication transaction and results in the listener‟ actions.
2. The teaching of listening in Communicative Language Teaching Approach.

According to Brumfit & Johnson (1979), language is more than simply a system
of rules rather it is seen as a dynamic resource for the creation of meaning. As
revealed through its name, CLT stands firm in the belief that teaching students how
to use the language and how to communicate in a language is considered the most
important. Students in communicative classrooms are seen as active participants in
the construction of knowledge rather than passive receivers of information provided
by teachers and textbooks. Besides, teachers are no longer viewed as the authority
11

of the knowledge but the roles of a facilitator, a participant and a counselor to create
more fascinating experience for their students.
David Nunan (1995) offered five features to characterize CLT as follows:
 An emphasis on learning to communicate through interaction in the
target language.
 The introduction of authentic texts into the learning situation.
 The provision of opportunities for learners to focus, not only on the
language but also on the learning process itself.
 An enhancement of the learner‟s own personal experiences as
important elements to classroom learning.
 An attempt to link classroom language learning with language
activation outside the classroom.
The teaching of listening is mainly attached to these above features. More
specifically speaking, listening is a means of communication and a communicative
behavior in which listeners try to construct a reasonable interpretation of a text for
real-life communicative purposes. As a result, CLT methodologists realize the
imperative need to teach listening basing on communicative principles and
involving more active participation of the learners rather than teachers. That is to
say listening provides learners with following features of the target language:
 How the language is organized
 How native speakers use the language

 How to communicate in the language
Under the light of CLT, the notion of three-stage format listening class and
integration of different language skills are first introduced. These issues will be
given further concern in the following parts.
3. Teaching listening procedure
One of the main advancements of research into listening strategies was the
understanding that a listening class could be divided into three main parts: Pre-
12

listening, While-listening and Post-listening stage. Each phase is separately carried
out to “deal with listeners‟ problems in the listening process and help them build up
their skills and strategies for later real-life listening situations”. (Nunan & Miller,
1995, p.124)
3.1. Pre-listening
According to Underwood (1989), pre-listening is defined as a phase of
preparation or warm-up for listening in several ways. It is vital that students know
some details of what they are about to hear, why they are listening, how many times
they will hear the speech. Unfamiliar vocabulary should be elicited/pre-taught. In
other words, this stage supplies students with context, motivation, the purposes for
the forth-coming listening input and activates their background knowledge.
3.2. While-listening
While-listening stage is the focus of a listening class. During this stage, students
are given time to listen silently and independently without interruption, which
enables them to build up hypotheses with the help of well-designed listening
comprehension questions. Activities in this stage must follow the learners‟ specific
needs, instructional goal, listening purposes and learners‟ proficiency level.
“They can run a mental commentary on it; they can doubt it, talk back to it, or
extend it. They can rehearse it in order to remember it; that is, they repeat
interesting points back to themselves. They can formulate questions to ask the
speaker jot down key words or key phrases They can wonder if what they

are listening to is true, or what motives the speaker has in saying it, or whether
the speaker is revealing personal feelings rather than objective assessments.”
(Saricoban, 1999, p. 55)
3.3. Post-listening
To define the boundary for post-listening stage, Underwood (1989, p.74)
claimed that “Post-listening activities embrace all the work related to a particular
listening text which are done after the listening is completed”
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Saricoban (1999) assumed that well-planned post-listening activities are as
significant as those before and during since they deals with students‟ reflection on
the language of what they have listened. “In this stage, students take the information
they have gained from the listening passage and use it for another purpose”. (Rixon,
1981, p.72). Students may work in groups to exchange opinions or debate the
relating topics. Sometimes it is a good idea to discuss how they found the answers
because this is a way of developing their awareness of successful listening
strategies. However, in order to provide authentic assessment of students' listening
proficiency, a post-listening activity must reflect the real-life uses to which students
might put information they have gained through listening.
4. An in-depth overview of post-listening activities
4.1. Purposes of post-listening activities
Post-listening activities are considered effective when implemented
immediately after the listening experience, becoming a direct extension of it. The
overall goals of these activities, as pointed out by Tchudi & Mitchell (1989) are:
“to give students an opportunity to relate what they have just listened to their
own ideas and experiences; encourage interpretive, critical listening and
reflective thinking; provide opportunities for teachers to assess students'
comprehension, check their perceptions, and clarify their understandings.”
(p.85)
In fact, the follow-up activities are of great importance since they extend

students‟ learning by emphasizing that the information gained will be useful later
on. Generally, as proposed by Mowbray & George (1992), there are six main
purposes of this stage:
To check students’ comprehension, correct inaccurate concepts: Teacher helps
students correct their exercises and answer their wonderings about the task.
Through discussion and response activities, students are able to develop a clearer
understanding of the topic and of the listening experience.
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To scrutinize the relationship between prior knowledge and new ideas and
information gained through listening: Students' comprehension can be enhanced if
post-listening activities encourage them to make connections between what the
speaker says and their own knowledge and experience.
To invite and encourage student reflection and response: Students may be
either for or against the point of the speaker. However, it is essential that they stand
on their ground and give convincing reasons to protect their view
To extend and clarify comprehension beyond the surface meaning: to help
students „listen between the lines‟, evaluate the value of the information via analysis
of speaker‟s ideas.
To help students apply new information immediately: Thanks to these activities,
students tend to become attentive and active listeners instead of passively listening
to the recording as assigned.
To integrate listening with other language skill: Post-listening activities are
carried out in various forms: reading, writing and speaking in order to develop the
link between listening and other skills as well as help students move easily from
listening to other skill. (
4.2. Factors affecting the choice of post-listening activities
As specified by Brownell (1996), the teachers should take into account these
following factors before selecting the post-listening activity in their listening
lessons:

 The amount of time left to implement post-listening work at the end of the
listening lesson.
 The type of other language skills (reading, writing or speaking) that should
be carried out after the main process of listening.
 The work pattern (whether students should work in pairs, groups or
individually)
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 The level of motivation and interest that students can benefit.
4.3. Forms of post-listening activities
As categorized by Underwood (1989), post-listening tasks take two basic forms.
They are reaction to the context and analysis of the linguistic features used to
express the content of the text. The former which focus on students‟ response is
exploited more commonly since this is something people do in real-life
communication for specific purposes. Some examples can be shown as follows
 To begin with, students can work in groups to express their opinions and
debate relevant topics. Mendelsohn (1995) suggest that students should
analyse and evaluate critically what they have heard
 Students can be given opportunities to engage activities in that build on and
develop concepts acquired during an oral presentation. These may include
writing (e.g., response journal, learning log, or composition), reading (e.g.,
further research on a topic or a contradictory viewpoint), art or drama (e.g.,
designing a cover jacket after a book talk or developing a mock trial
concerning the topic through drama in role).
Follow-up activities as analysis of linguistic features also play a crucial role
because they offer students opportunities to recycle and review the language in the
listening text. For instance, it could take the form of an analysis of sentence
elements, vocabulary or collocation work.
4.4. Integration in post-listening activities
It is commonly acknowledged that language must be taught in an integrative

way where all four skills are focused. On the basis of a strong link between listening
and other language skills, methodologists recognize that one of the most important
principles of teaching listening is to combine listening with speaking or writing
(Tchudi & Mitchell, 1989, p.124). Why so? Listening is a receptive skill which
provides the support for productive skills. Production and reception are two sides of
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a coin and cannot be split. And if teachers give students chances to produce
something, the teaching of listening will be more communicative. Among the three
stages of a listening class, post-listening is probably the stage where the four-skill
link is clearly demonstrated and consolidated.
There is no doubt that post-listening integrated activities offer a number of
benefits. They practice and extend the learners' use of a certain language structure
and function; develop the learners' ability in the use of more than two skills within
real contexts and communicative framework. Moreover, integrated activities
provide a variety in the classroom and thus maintain motivation for students.
5. Related studies
The four English skills, namely reading, speaking, writing and listening have
continuously become the great concern for many researchers in recent years.
Concerning listening skill, the procedure of teaching listening comprising pre-,
while-, and especially post-listening phase has triggered a lot of research interest
and investment.
Rixon (1981) stressed the tremendous importance of after-listening stage since
it enables students to connect what they have heard to their own ideas or
experiences and extend their critical thinking.
Another study of Brownell (1996) investigates the most common activities
exploited in post-listening stage such as giving opinions, answering teachers‟
questions, critically analyzing the information and using the notes to summarize the
listening text. Also, the factors affecting teachers‟ choice of types of post-listening
activities are put forth including the amount of time, the combined skill, the work

pattern as well as the degree of students‟ motivation.
Also, a study on “New ways in teaching listening” by Nunan & Miller (1995)
suggests that each stage of listening class should design appropriate listening tasks