Những khó khăn của giáo viên trong việc giảng dạy và khích lệ sinh viên người dân tộc thiểu số học kỹ năng nghe hiểu tại trường Cao đẳng Sư phạm Lạng Sơn và một

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

TRUONG THI THANH HUYEN

CHALLENGES PERCEIVED BY TEACHERS IN HOW TO TEACH
AND MOTIVATE ETHNIC MINORITY STUDENTS TO LEARN
LISTENING COMPREHENSION SKILL AT LANG SON
TEACHERS’ TRAINING COLLEGE AND SOLUTIONS
(NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN CỦA GIÁO VIÊN TRONG VIỆC GIẢNG
DẠY VÀ KHÍCH LỆ SINH VIÊN NGƯỜI DÂN TỘC THIỂU SỐ
HỌC KỸ NĂNG NGHE HIỂU TẠI TRƯỜNG CAO ĐẲNG SƯ
PHẠM LẠNG SƠN VÀ MỘT SỐ GIẢI PHÁP)

MA. MINOR THESIS
FIELD: ENGLISH METHODOLOGY
CODE: 601410
SUPERVISOR: LE THE NGHIEP, M.A

LANGSON, 2010


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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT......................................................................................................i
DECLARATION...................................................................................................................ii

PART I: INTRODUCTION...................................................................1

1. Rationale............................................................................................................................1
2. Aims and significance of the study.....................................................................................2
3. Scope of the study...............................................................................................................2
4. Methods of the study...........................................................................................................2
5. Organization of the thesis...................................................................................................3

PART II: THE DEVELOPMENT.........................................................4
CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW...........................................................................4
I.1. Theoretical background of listening comprehension.................................................4
I.1.1.What is listening?.........................................................................................................4
I.1.2. Nature of listening .....................................................................................................5
I.1.3. Significance of listening..............................................................................................5
I.2. Teaching listening skills...............................................................................................5
I.2.1.The process of listening .............................................................................................5
I.2.2. Strategies of listening..................................................................................................6
I.2.3. Stages of a listening lesson..........................................................................................7
I.2.3.1. Pre-listening stage.....................................................................................................7
I.2.3.2. While-listening stage..................................................................................................7
I.2.3.4. Post-listening stage....................................................................................................8
I.2.4. Potential problems in teaching and learning to listen to English............................8
I.2.5. Teacher’s roles in teaching listening comprehension..............................................9
I.3. Motivation.....................................................................................................................10
I.3.1.What is motivation?....................................................................................................10
I.3.2.The importance of motivation in listening classes....................................................10
I.4. Current challenges in teaching and learning listening comprehension..................11
1.4.1. Students’ psychological obstacles influence their listening capacity......................11
1.4.2. Grammar knowledge affects listening comprehension............................................12
1.4.3. Cultural background knowledge and thinking affect listening comprehension.....12

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CHAPTER II: METHODOLOGY..................................................................................14
II.1. General description of the current course-book and participants’ background
information..........................................................................................................................14
II.1.1. General description of the current course-book .......................................................14
II.1.2. Participants’ background information......................................................................14
II.1.2.1. English Major Students...........................................................................................14
II.1.2.2. The teachers............................................................................................................15
II.2. Methods of data collection.........................................................................................16
II.2.1. Questionnaires...........................................................................................................16
II.2.2. Class observation......................................................................................................16
CHAPTER III: DICUSSIONS AND FINDINGS............................................................18
III.1. Questionnaires...........................................................................................................18
III.1.1. Questionnaire for the Teachers ...............................................................................18
III.1.2. Questionnaire for the Students.................................................................................24
III. 2. Class observations....................................................................................................28

III.3. Findings…………………………………………………………………….30
III.3.1. Teachers’ challenges when dealing with listening techniques and some
suggested solutions to those techniques………………………………………………… 30
III.3.2.Students’ preferences for listening techniques…….…………………………….33
III.3.3. Teachers’ and students opinions about listening activities in the course-book
‘Listen in 1’ by David Nunan they are using……………………………………………34
CHAPTER

IV:

SUGGESTED

SOLUTIONS

TO

THE

TEACHING

PROCEDURES..................................................................................................................35
IV.1. For the teachers.........................................................................................................35
IV.2. Some useful activities used for students during the class -time...............................38

PART III: CONCLUSION...................................................................41
I. Summary of the study....................................................................................................41
II. Limitations of the study and suggestions for further study......................................42

REFERENCES............................................................................................................43
APPENDIXE I..........................................................................................I


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APPENDIXE II....................................................................................VII
APPENDIXE III.....................................................................................X
APPENDIX IV..................................................................................XVI


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LIST OF ABBRIVIATIONS

-

LSTTC: Langson Teachers’ Training College

-

DFL: Department of Foreign Languages

-

CFL: College of Foreign Languages

-

VNU: Vietnam National University

-

T: Teacher

-

Ss: Students


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LIST OF CHARTS AND TABLES
Page
Table 1: Teachers’ pre-listening techniques…………………………………………..…..21

Table 2: Teachers’ while- listening techniques…………………………………..………22
Table 3: Teachers’ post-listening techniques………………………………………….….24
Table 4: Teachers’ difficulties in pre-listening techniques…………………………….…25
Table 5: Teachers’ difficulties in while- listening techniques…………………………....26
Table 6: Teachers’ difficulties in post-listening techniques……………………………...27
Table 7: Students’ preferences for pre-listening techniques……………………………...30
Table 8: Students’ preferences for while-listening techniques…………………………...31
Chart 1: Teachers’ comments on the listening activities in the coursebook……………...27
Chart 2: Causes that make students uninterested in listening……………………………..28
Chart 3: Students’ preferences for post-listening techniques……………………………..32
Chart 4: Students’ comments on the listening activities in the coursebook………………33


1

PART I. INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale
English is, nowadays, needed in every field of our lives and for a long time it has been not
only a compulsory subject in schools in Vietnam but one of three major subjects in the
entrance exam to some Universities and Colleges as well.
Among the four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing, listening is always
considered to be the most difficult for teachers to teach and for students to learn. This leads to
the fact that learners are afraid of learning listening skills. There are various reasons for this:
students‟ poor background knowledge, their limited reservoir of vocabulary and structures,
their lack of motivation and preparations for the task, etc.(Boyle, 1984). Many students have
associated listening courses with pain and boredom and usually complain that they benefit
little from listening lessons. This is also true to students at Lang Son Teachers‟ Training
College. Therefore, it is necessary for teachers of English language to realize the importance
of how to make listening classes more interesting and know how to motivate students so that
they can make progress and feel interested in listening comprehension courses.

In fact, in the process of teaching and learning English, listening plays an important role
since it involves various kinds of the listener‟s knowledge and it is closely related to other
skills, especially the speaking skill. While, G (1998) pointed out that being a good listener
involves collaborating with speakers and taking an active role in asking for clarification when
you do not understand. However, in the process of teaching listening of teachers at LSTTC,
the students‟ motivation in learning this skill is sometimes low and the listening lesson is said
to be boring despite the teacher‟s much effort in their teaching time. Consequently, these
students‟ listening skills are poor since they are not interested in the subject, and they find it
difficult to focus on listening if there are many distractions. They do not know much about the
tasks of the lesson. Thus, creating a motivating learning environment for ethnic minority
students in a listening class is a challenging task for teachers.
This fact has encouraged the author to investigate into the challenges perceived by
teachers in how to teach and motivate ethnic minority students to learn Listening
Comprehension Skill at LSTTC, to find out more reasons for those problems, and then, to
give some suggestions for mostly meeting and solving those challenges. Hopefully, the study
will be helpful in some way for the author and other teachers to find out most suitable
techniques to stimulate their students in listening lessons.


2

2. Aims and significance of the study
The purpose of this study is to find out the most suitable teaching techniques and solutions
to the challenges perceived by the teachers, in order to teach and motivate ethnic minority
students at LSTTC to learn listening comprehension skill effectively. To be specific, the
major aims of the study are as follows:
- to find out current challenges faced by teachers and ethnic minority students at LSTTC
in their process of teaching and learning English listening comprehension skill.
- to study teaching techniques used by these teachers to teach their students listening
comprehension skill.

- to investigate students‟ attitudes and their feedbacks on the teaching techniques used by
their teachers.
- to provide some suggestions and practical recommendations to help in the process of
teaching and learning listening comprehension skills of ethnic minority students and teachers
at this college.
The study hopes to give an insight into the ways used and problems faced by teachers in
how to teach listening comprehension skill for ethnic minority students at LSTTC. The result
of the study is also useful for teachers at this college in reviewing their teaching practices,
thus paying more attention to the issue of teaching listening skills.
3. Scope of the study
The scope of this thesis is limited to the teachers‟ challenges in how to teach and motivate
ethnic minority students to learn listening comprehension skill and the recommendations to
overcome these challenges at Lang Son Teachers‟ Training College. The result from this
thesis could also be used to inform concerned educational administrators in Lang Son in
particular and in various regions throughout the country in general.
With that intention, this study is designed to cover the following issues:
- Description of the course-book used for students in listening and its teaching and
learning context.
- Challenges teachers often face in teaching and motivating their students to learn
listening.
- Recommendations on how to support teachers so that they can teach more effectively
4. Methods of the study
The study was carried out on the basis of quantities research method including
questionnaire and class observation


3

Questionnaires are designed as a means to make the researcher‟s evaluation more
objective. The questionnaires are given to first-year ethnic minority students and teachers of

English Department at LSTTC with the hope to find out their attitudes towards their current
learning and teaching listening comprehension as well as their comments and suggestions for
the problems they often face.
In addition, more information needed for the findings of the study will be gathered
from class observation.
5. Organization of the thesis
The study consists of three parts: the introduction, the development and the conclusion.
The introduction provides the basis information such as rationale, aims, significance,
scope and methods of the study.
The development consists of 4 chapters. Chapter I, Literature Review, conceptualizes the
nature of listening and listening comprehension skills, teaching listening skills, motivation,
and current challenges in teaching and learning listening comprehension. Chapter II presents
the general description of the course-book, participants‟ background information, and the
methodology used in the study. Chapter III shows the detailed results of the surveys and
covers a comprehensive analysis on the data collected from the questionnaires and class
observations. The last chapter offers some suggested solutions to the teaching procedures that
can help motivate students to learn the listening comprehension skill.
The conclusion is a review of the study, future directions for further research and limitations
of the study.


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PART II.THE DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1.LITERATURE REVIEW

I.1. Theoretical background of listening comprehension
In language teaching, the phrase „listening skills‟ is often used to mean „listening and
understanding skills‟ or „listening comprehension skills‟. And this is the sense in which
„listening skill‟ is used in this thesis, where „listening‟ is taken as meaning trying to

understand the oral messages people are conveying.
I.1.1.What is listening?
There are different definitions of listening
“Listening is the activity of paying attention to and trying to get meaning from

something we hear.

To listen successfully to spoken language, we need to be able to work out what speakers mean when
they use particular words in particular ways on particular occasions, and not simply to understand the
words themselves.”

(Mary Underwood, 1989)
The quotation above suggests that listening can be done in a narrow and limited way
or it can be done in a way that enriches communication.
Thomlison‟s (1984) definition of listening includes “active listening,” which goes
beyond comprehending as understanding the message content, to comprehension as an act of
empathetic understanding of the speaker. According to Ronald and Roskelly (1985), listening
is an active process requiring the same skills of prediction, hypothesizing, checking, revising,
and generalizing that writing and reading demand.
“Listening is an invisible mental process, making it difficult to describe. Listeners must
discriminate between sounds, understand vocabulary and grammatical structures, interpret stress and
intention, retain and interpret this within the immediate as well as the larger socio-cultural context of the
utterance.

” (Field, 1998:38)

All in all, listening involves a multiplicity of skills. It is a complex, active process of
interpretation, in which listeners match what they hear with what they already know.
I.1.2. Nature of listening
Since listening is, according to Wang Shouyuan (2003), the most important

component in the five aspects of overall English competence he suggests as listening,
speaking, reading, writing and translation, it deserves particular attention. Educators must
actively explore the nature and process of listening comprehension and study the theory and
methodology of listening comprehension in order to improve listening teaching outcomes and


5

make students recognize that listening comprehension is the crucial part of English learning.
From the point of view of constructivist linguistics, foreign language teaching should focus on
language form and structure, thus, listening teaching is undertaken in each of the four aspects
of language form (including sounds, words, sentences and discourses). When students are
taught to understand a passage of text, teachers first let them discriminate between the
pronunciation of vowels and consonants, then understand vocabulary, sentences and
discourses. The goals of this listening teaching model from the “bottom-up” is to help
students understand the meaning of vocabulary by discriminating sounds, to understand
sentence meaning, and to monitor and control the meaning of discourses by understanding
sentence meaning.
Since the 1970s, with the development of functional language theory, there has been
an emphasis on the research of language function in society. Functional linguistic experts
recognize language as a communicative tool, but not an isolated structure system.
Consequently the teaching of listening is not simply intended to make students hear a sound, a
word or a sentence, rather, the goal is to cultivate students‟ abilities to understand speakers‟
intentions accurately and communicate with each other effectively.
I.1.3. Significance of listening
According to Robin Wills (2005), language learning depends on listening since it
provides the aural input that serves as the basis for language acquisition and enables learners
to interact in spoken communication. Listening is the first language mode that children
acquire. It provides the foundation for all aspects of language and cognitive development, and
it plays a life-long role in the process of communication. Thus language acquisition is

achieved mainly through receiving understandable input and listening ability is the critical
component in achieving understandable language input. Therefore, it is of vital importance
that students are taught to listen effectively and critically.
Given the importance of listening in language learning and teaching, it is essential for
language teachers to help students become effective listeners. In the communicative approach
to language teaching, this means building model listening strategies and providing listening
practice in authentic situations: precisely those that learners are likely to encounter when they
use the language outside classroom.

I.2. Teaching listening skills
I.2.1. The process of listening


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With a greater understanding of language quality and the development of teaching
theory, there has been a recognition of the process of listening comprehension as needing
greater emphasis. Listening is an invisible mental process, making it difficult to describe.
However, it is recognized by Wipf (1984) that listeners must discriminate between sounds,
understand vocabulary and grammatical structures, interpret stress and intonation, understand
intention and retain and interpret this within the immediate as well as the larger socio-cultural
context of the utterance.
Rost (2002) defines listening, in its broadest sense, as a process of receiving what the
speaker actually says (receptive orientation); constructing and representing meaning
(constructive orientation); negotiating meaning with the speaker and responding
(collaborative orientation); and, creating meaning through involvement, imagination and
empathy (transformative orientation). Listening, then, is a complex, active processes of
interpretation in which listeners match what they hear with what they already know.
I.2.2. Strategies of listening
Listening strategies are techniques or activities that contribute directly to the

comprehension and recall of listening input. According to Peterson (1991) and Brown (2001),
listening strategies can be classified by how the listener processes the input.
(1) Top-down strategies are listener-based: The listener taps into background knowledge of
the topic, the situation or context, the type of text, and the language. This background
knowledge activates a set of expectations that help the listener to interpret what is heard and
anticipate what will come next. Top-down strategies include: (getting the gist, recognizing the
topic, using discourse structure to enhance listening strategies, identifying the speaker, finding
the main ideas (listening for the main idea),finding supporting details, predicting, making
inferences (drawing inferences),understanding organizing principles of extended speech,
summarizing)
(2) Bottom-up strategies are text-based, in which the listener relies on the language in the
message, that is, the combination of sounds, words, and grammar that creates meaning.
Bottom-up strategies include:(discriminating between intonation contours in sentences,
recognizing syllable patterns, being aware of sentence fillers in informal speech, picking out
details (listening for specific details),differentiating between content and function words by
stress patterns, recognizing words with weak or central vowels)
Listening comprehension tends to be an interactive, interpretive process in which
listeners use prior knowledge and linguistic knowledge in understanding messages. Moreover,


7

O‟Malley et al. also showed that the use of these strategies types differed according to a
division of the students into effective and ineffective listeners. The more effective listeners
used a more “top-down” approach, the less effective concentrated on a word-by-word
approach, “bottom-up”.
According to Noonan. D (1999:218) “Key strategies that can be taught in the listening
classroom include selective listening, listening for different purposes, predicting, progressive
structuring, inferencing and personalizing”. Noonan. D (1999) also introduces a list of
important strategies, along with examples.

Strategies
Listening for gist
Listening for purposes

Examples
Is the radio report about news or weather?
Are the speakers making a reservation or
ordering food?
Listening for main idea
Why is the speaker asking the man
questions?
Listening for inference
What are the speakers implying by what
they said?
Listening for specific information
How much did they say the ticket cost?
Listening for phonemic distinctions
Did the speaker say first or four?
Listening for tone pitch to identify Did the speaker enjoy the wedding or not?
speaker‟s attitude
Listening for stress
What is more important, where he bought
the watch or when?
I.2.3. Stages of a listening lesson
The teaching of a listening text can be divided into three main stages: pre-listening,
while-listening and post-listening. Each stage has its own aims, activities and time location.
I.2.3.1. Pre-listening stage
This stage is carried out before students begin listening to the listening text. It plays an
essential part in the whole process of a listening lesson. The pre-listening activities are aimed
at preparing learners with everything necessary for listening and understanding the listening

text. Normally, pre-listening stage often lasts from five to twelve minutes depending on each
lesson. Hedge, T(2000) argues that “At the pre-listening stage, the teacher will need to decide
what kind of listening purpose is appropriate to the text. The learners will need to tune into
the context and the topic of the text, perhaps express attitudes towards that topic, certainly
bring to the front of their minds anything that they already know about the topic and most
probably hear and use some of the less familiar language in the text which would otherwise
distract or create anxiety during listening”.
I.2.3.2. While-listening stage


8

This stage is the main part of a listening lesson aiming at facilitating learners‟ listening
and checking their comprehension. Time allocation for this stage is nearly two-thirds of the
whole lesson. The work at the while-listening stage needs to link in relevant ways to the prelistening work. While they listen, learners will need to be involved in an authentic purpose for
listening and encouraged to attend to the text more intensively or extensively, for gist or for
specific information. (Hedge.T, 2000)
I.2.3.4. Post-listening stage
It is the last step of a listening lesson so it is the time for students‟ production. The
activities at this stage are aimed at helping learners to use what they have had from the
listening text. The teacher should make up and vary the activities for learners to do depending
on their level of English. This stage often occupies ten or fifteen minutes. Post-listening
activities can take the students into a more intensive phase of study in which aspects of
bottom-up listening are practised. (Hedge, T 2000). It is important to note that post-listening
work can also usefully involve integration with other skills through development of the topic
into reading, speaking or writing activities.
I.2.4. Potential problems in teaching and learning to listen to English
Language learners often feel worried about problems when they first attempt to listen
to a new language. Although the problems are many and various, they are not all experienced
by all students from different backgrounds. So that in this part, I just focus on some of the

most common problems that listeners may encounter in learning to listen.
- Lack of control over the speed at which speakers speak.
Many English language learners believe the greatest difficulty of listening
comprehension is that the listener can not control how quickly a speaker speaks. They feel
that the utterances disappear before they can sort them out. This frequently means that
students who are learning to listen can not keep up. They are so busy working out the
meaning of one part of what they hear that they miss the next part. Or they simply ignore a
whole chunk because they fail to sort it all out quickly enough. Either way, they fail.
- The listener‟s limited vocabulary
We know that choice of vocabulary is in the hands of the speaker, not the listener. The
listener has to do the best he/she can to follow. For people listening to a foreign language, an
unknown word can be likely a suddenly dropped barrier causing them to stop and think about
the meaning of the word and thus making them miss the next part of the speech. It is believed
that this tendency to stop listening and concentrate on the immediate problem often results


9

when learners have been taught their English in a way which has given more emphasis to
accuracy than fluency and which has been more concerned with mastery of the forms of
language rather than with how it is used. This style of teaching leads students to focus on the
language word by word, to work out its structure, and then to decide on its meaning.
- Failure to recognize the „signals‟
There are many ways in which a speaker can indicate that he/she is moving from one
point to another, or giving an example, or repeating a point, or whatever. These signals are not
immediately self-evident to a person listening to a foreign language and can easily be missed.
And when speakers show clearly that they are about to begin a new point, they may pause or
make a gesture or move slightly. They may mark a change to a new point by increased
loudness or a clear change of pitch. In spontaneous conversation, a speaker will make use of
different intonation to indicate whether he/she is introducing a new idea or saying something

the listener already knows.
- Problems of interpretation
Students who are unfamiliar with the context may have considerable difficulty in
interpreting the words they hear even if they can understand their „surface‟ meaning.
Problems of interpretation can even occur when the speaker and the listener are from the same
background and use the same language. For example, if you have an appointment with
somebody you do not know and then that person phones you and says „I‟ll be a bit late‟, you
will not know what „a bit‟ means, but if an old friend with whom you have an appointment
phones and says the same thing, you will probably know how long you will have to wait
because the friend in question is always about half an hour late.
- Inability to concentrate
Inability to concentrate can be caused a number of things, but in listening work it is a
major problem, because even the shortest break in attention can seriously impair
comprehension. If the students find the topic interesting, they will find the concentration
easier. But sometimes, even when the topic is interesting, students simply find listening work
very tiring, because they make enormous effort to follow what they hear word by word. In
addition, outside factors may well make concentration difficult, too. If recorded material is
being used, an inferior machine or poor recording can make it very hard for the students.
Some rooms are acoustically unsuitable for the use of recorded materials.
I.2.5. Teacher’s roles in teaching listening comprehension


10

As many students feel afraid of listening, teachers should be a guide to help them, to
encourage them. Rost, M (1994) states that language teachers need to provide various types of
support to their learners to help them to develop listening skills. This includes talking to
learners in the target language, raising learners‟ awareness of their listening styles and
strategies and introducing a range of materials, speaking styles and listening situations.
Another important part of teacher‟s role is to ensure that the lesson proceeds in an orderly and

productive way so that the students feel secure and relaxed and unthreatened by the listening
tasks. Thus, it is very essential for the teachers to plan and conduct listening sessions in a
suitable way which can help their students grow in confidence and soon begin to experience
the pleasure that listening successfully can bring them.

I.3. Motivation
I.3.1.What is motivation?
However simple and easy the word "motivation" might appear, it is in fact very
difficult to define. It seems to have been impossible for theorists to reach consensus on a
single definition but I personally pay most attention to the followings.
Motivation is a desire to achieve a goal, combined with the energy to work towards
that goal. Sometimes a distinction is made between positive and negative motivation: Positive
motivation is a response which includes enjoyment and optimism about the tasks that you are
involved in. Negative motivation involves undertaking tasks for fear that there should be
undesirable outcomes, eg, failing a subject, if tasks are not completed (Ngeow, Karen YeokHwa, 1998). Motivation is also defined as the impetus to create and sustain intentions and
goal-seeking acts (Ames & Ames, 1989). It is important because it determines the extent of
the learner's active involvement and attitude toward learning.
I.3.2.The importance of motivation in listening classes
Many researchers consider motivation as one of the main elements that determine
success in developing a second or foreign language; it determines the extent of active,
personal involvement in L2 learning. (Oxford & Shearin, 1994) Listening to English is
regarded to be hard for students who are either English majors or not. From the researcher‟s
observation and discussion with students, she has realized that many students have associated
listening courses with pain and boredom and often complain that they become tired of
listening to the tape from the beginning to the end and benefit little from listening lessons.
Therefore, it is necessary for English teachers to realize the importance of how to make
listening classes more interesting and to know how to motivate students so that they can


11

develop their listening comprehension. It can be seen that the traditional way of teaching,
such as listening to the tape again and again and then giving correct answers, still remains.
Such an approach to „teaching‟ listening is more like „testing‟ listening as listeners are simply
exposed to a succession of listening texts on a tape, and then are tested how much they have
understood in terms of a lot of comprehension exercises rather than being taught how to listen
and how to cope with their listening problems in the class (Brown, 1990; Anderson and
Lynch, 1988). So, how to keep students interest in learning must be focused. Without interest,
motivation and variation in teaching and learning, students certainly feel bored with listening.
To sum up, it is known that motivation is difficult to be measured, but teachers can
notice when their students are motivated by their facial expressions, attitudes and also by their
participation in class. Motivation is an important factor that contribute to the success in
teaching and learning foreign languages in general and in teaching and learning listening
skills in particular.

I.4. Current challenges in teaching and learning listening comprehension
Listening comprehension is a complex psychological process of listeners‟
understanding language by sense of hearing (Robin Wills:2004). It is an interactive process of
language knowledge and psychological activities. However, this process is not simply
decoding the message; it also involves the combining of the decoding of the message process
with its reconstruction as meaning (Ma Lihua, 2002). Although teachers of English at Lang
Son Teachers‟ Training College have attempted to teach listening and listening
comprehensive competence, all too often, the teaching outcomes have proved less than
adequate. The results have shown that even when teachers have doubled their efforts the
results have been consistently disappointing. And the reasons for these outcomes are explored
as follows
1.4.1. Students’ psychological obstacles influence their listening capacity
Psychological factors refer to those non-mental factors not directly involving cognitive
process, such as students‟ interests, attention, learning emotion, attitudes, and willpower.
These non-mental factors are directly influential in the students‟ learning process, they,

therefore, play a part in promoting and controlling learning effectiveness. For example, two
students‟ listening levels might be similar, and, while their test results may be quite different,
the explanation for their difference is seen to lie in their different psychological states.
The cultural attitude of students is particularly influential in the way that students
address their studies. There is, in Vietnam, a long history of reverence for written text, and


12

this attitude has influenced the official assessment processes. Thus students generally pay less
attention to developing listening comprehension because they recognize it gains a lower
percentage of marks in examinations, while reading and writing are highly rewarded. Students
understand they will gain high scores only if they master the prescribed knowledge of
grammar and writing.
As a direct consequence of the factors mentioned above, many students in this college
lack confidence in their oral English language capability and they frequently have a selfdefeating and defensive attitude to their engagement in it. In the listening classroom, teachers
expect students‟ active participation but, having so many students who lack confidence and
who feel nervous and anxious, makes the task of generating discussion and conversation
particularly difficult. Thus, it is unsurprising that college students, who are under pressure for
a considerable period of time, are often stressed and depressed in their efforts to improve their
English proficiency.
1.4.2. Grammar knowledge affects listening comprehension
Language knowledge is the foundation of learning English. If students‟ knowledge of
pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary is insufficient, it is probable that their English
listening comprehension will be negatively affected by lack of language knowledge.
However, the most basic outward shell of language is pronunciation. Therefore, the first step
of listening comprehension is learning how to identify and select sound signals according to
pronunciation, and pronunciation knowledge must be developed. When students‟
pronunciation knowledge is inadequate, their capacity to discriminate will be weak and will
affect listening comprehension.

For the students of English in this college, the challenge of listening poses particular
demands because there are many sentence types that are complex and very different from the
native language. For example, if the student is unable to distinguish the main clause from a
subordinate clause and is unable to understand their relationships, despite understanding the
meaning of every word in the sentences, he/she becomes confused about relationships in a
sentence and connections between sentences and this student is often unsure of relationship
within sentences. To conclude, lack of grammatical knowledge can reduce English listening
levels.
1.4.3. Cultural background knowledge and thinking affect listening comprehension
According to Trudgill (1983), language is rather like a mirror that reflects the national
culture of its speakers. The American linguist Sapir (1921: 60-90) maintains that language


13

cannot exist without culture…Culture can be explained as what the society thinks and does,
and the language is the expression of the ideas of the society. Thus, the marriage between
language and culture is inseparable: language is the carrier of culture and the capsule that
holds a way of thinking.
Language carries knowledge and cultural information and it reflects the substantial
and particular ways of thinking of that person. And, culture is embedded in even the simplest
act of language (Liddicoat, 2000), it is an inseparable part of the way in which we live our
lives and the way we use language. As found by O‟Malley and Chamot (1989), the effective
listener was the one who was able to draw on a knowledge of the world, on personal
experiences and by asking questions of themselves.
Therefore, the student with no background knowledge of culture in English speaking
countries, he/she is unlikely to understand Anglophone modes of thinking as expressed in
English language. Kramsch (1993) maintains that every time we speak we perform a cultural
act. An important requirement, then, for learning spoken English, is the acquisition of cultural
knowledge. And, if students‟ pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary and cultural knowledge are

to prosper, they must be grounded in a sound knowledge of the society in which the language
is based.


14

CHAPTER II. METHODOLOGY

II.1. General description of the current course-book and participants’
background information
II.1.1. General description of the current course-book
The course-book mainly used for first-year students of English-major to practice their
listening comprehension skill at LSTTC is the one named Listen in 1. This book is the first
volume of the three books Listen in 1,2,3 by David Nunan, which are used for developing
listening skill ranging from basic to advanced level. Each book covers 20 topics, which are
arranged from very easier to more complex ones. There is a Review Unit which is designed
after every five units with the aim of revising vocabularies and skills of the previous ones.
Objectively, this book is a good one for students to practice and improve their listening skill
in general, but some parts of the book‟s contents in each unit are rather long and difficult for
most of the first year students in LSTTC. The reasons for this problem are the students‟ poor
background knowledge, their limited reservoir of vocabulary and structures, their lack of
motivation and preparations for the task, etc. Beside the main course-book, teachers at DFL,
LSTTC sometimes use the book Tactics for Listening by Jack C Richards in their teaching
process. The teachers often apply some parts of this book in every Review Unit of the main
course-book Listen in 1. They regard the exercises in this book as extra activities aiming at
improving the students‟ listening skill. In short, this book is also a good reference source for
students to make new progress in their listening skill, but it is not used regularly in their
lessons.
II.1.2. Participants’ background information
The study was carried out with the participation of 9 teachers and 90 students whose

major is English from the Department of Foreign Languages (DFL), LSTTC.
II.1.2.1. English - Major Students
As the author mentioned earlier, there were ninety English-major students who took
part in the research. All of them are first year students and come from three different classes
(K13D1, K13D2, and K13D3) at DFL. Among them, the ethnic minority students account for
95%. These ethnic minority students mostly come from remote areas whose current
difficulties are low incomes, poor economic conditions, badly-built- roads, etc. These
difficulties may be the factors which can make these students have some limitations in their
background knowledge and competence for foreign languages acquisition. All of the selected
students in the study are aged from 18-25, and the rate of female students is 90%, while that


15

of male ones is only 10%.Of ninety students, seventy spent only three years at their secondary
schools learning English with the old text books. Ten students had learned English for 5 years
with the old text-books and 2 years with the new ones. These students were also focused on
grammar translation method before they started this course of English. The last students are
chosen from some of the most difficult areas of Langson, where there is a big shortage of
Junior High School teachers. Besides, their secondary years were mostly spent with the old
text books and the grammar translation method. This may be the reason why only some
students are good at grammar, and most of them are bad at listening and speaking the target
language due to some of their difficulties introduced earlier. Even some can do written
exercises on English grammar they can hardly listen and communicate in English.
As the researcher has just introduced earlier, most of the students at DFL, LSTTC
were mainly affected by the grammar translation method when they were at secondary school.
This best explains why they always try to listen to every word or sentence of the utterances
when they are asked to listen to any listening text. In addition to that, they are so busy
working out the meaning of one part of what they hear that they miss the next part. As a
result, they usually find it very difficult to catch up with the speed of recorded speech or

listening text, and they often fail to finish the listening task. Like any foreign language
learners, most of the first year students of English at DFL, LSTTC often feel worried about
problems when they first attempt to listen to a new language. Although the problems are
various, they are not all experienced by all students from different backgrounds. Thus, during
their process of practicing listening, most of these students often find the followings the most
difficult:(Lack of control over the speed at which speakers speak, Limited vocabulary and
grammar structure, Inability to concentrate, Failure to recognize the „signals‟.)
II.1.2.2.The teachers
There are twelve teachers of English at LSTTC but only nine teachers participated in
the study. The reason is that three of them are doing their post-graduate at present. Among
these three teachers, one is doing her PhD degree in Australia and two others are doing their
M.A in the CFL, VNU. Of nine teachers, four of them graduated from CFL,VNU; three from
Thai Nguyen Teachers‟ Training College, and two from in-serviced courses in some other
universities.

Three teachers are in their late forties with more than 15 years of teaching

experience, two others in their late thirties with 10 years of teaching experience, two others in
their early thirties with 6 years of teaching experience, the last two aged 24 and 27 with only 3
years of teaching experience.


16

The researcher selected all these teachers as the subjects of the first questionnaire
with the hope of finding out what listening techniques are currently applied, their problems of
using listening techniques in teaching listening skill, and their suggested solutions to their
existing problems.

II.2. Methods of data collection

This research is conducted by using survey questionnaires and classroom observation.
The procedure of collecting data is the survey method employing self-administered
questionnaire for both teachers and students. In addition to the questionnaire, class
observations are also carried out to support the findings.
II.2.1. Questionnaire
There are two types of questionnaire: closed and opened-ended questions for both
teachers and students. Questionnaire for teacher is written in English while the one for
students is in Vietnamese so that students understand the questions without extra explanation.
The survey method allows the researcher to collect the data needed in “quantitative form”.
Questionnaire designed for the teachers aimed at finding out the challenges perceived by these
teachers when they use listening techniques to teach and motivate their students to listening
skills, and their suggestions to improve the listening activities in the course-book they are
using. Whereas, questionnaire designed for the students tends to explore students‟
unwillingness to take part in listening activities, their preferences for listening techniques, and
their comments on the listening techniques in the course-book they are using with the hope
that the researcher can suggest some ways to improve the material to increase students
motivation for listening comprehension.
Totally 9 copies of the questionnaire are delivered to the teachers and 90 to the
students.
II.2.2. Class observation
The researcher attended 3 different classes, to which the researcher distributed the
questionnaire, in order to observe some important points such as the teachers‟ use of teaching
techniques, the problems in teaching and learning listening, and their students‟ attitudes
towards the teaching techniques currently used by the teachers, etc. The observation also aims
at checking the reliability of the data collected from the questionnaire and clarifies what has
not been done through the questionnaire. The reason for choosing these classes is also the
same as for the subjects of the study. Three observation sessions were carried out 3 times in
these three classes with 3 different units of “Listen in 1” course-book. For each class, the

17

researcher observed a 90-minute period. The checklist for listening class observation made by
the researcher includes the teachers‟ pre, while and post-listening activities, the students‟
participation in the teachers‟ activities. The three teachers under observation are different in
terms of their ages and teaching experience. One is 49 years old, the second 42 and the last
32.
The following chapter of the thesis is the treatment of all the data collected from the
survey questionnaire conducted on 9 teachers and 90 students of the English Department at
LSTTC and from the author‟s observation in 3 classes. The collected data will be presented in
tables and charts. The scheme and coding tables and charts emerged from an examination of
the data rather than being determined beforehand and imposed on the data.
The questionnaires and class observations are represented in Appendix I and II,
respectively at the end of the study.


18

CHAPTER III. DICUSSIONS AND FINDINGS

III.1. Questionnaires
III.1.1. Questionnaire for the Teachers
III.1.1.1. Teacher’s opinions about the necessity of motivating students to listen before a
listening lesson
According to the survey, 100% of the teachers report that they never go straight to a
listening lesson without preparing something interesting for their students to do. All of them
highly appreciate the necessity of doing lead-in activities to motivate their students to actively
take part in each listening lesson.
As Lewis and Hill (1992) suggested, when teachers organize some lead-in activities
before listening, they themselves create an active and relaxing teaching and learning

environment. That should be one of the first and foremost things foreign language teachers
need to remember. Actually, several listening techniques, which include brainstorming,
prediction, gap-filling, summarizing, etc, have been used for some activities which the
teachers do in the listening lessons. That explains why the next questions of the survey are
raised to find out which techniques the nine teachers use to motivate and teach their students
listening comprehension skill at the Department of Foreign Languages (DFL)- LSTTC.
III.1.1.2. The situation of employing listening techniques at DFL
a. Teacher‟s pre-listening techniques
Pre-listening techniques

Number
of users
a. Brainstorming words, structures or ideas
9
b. Making students discuss in pairs or group the topic, the title or the
6
pictures about the item they are going to listen.
c. Asking students some questions about the topic before they listen
9
d. Pre-teaching new words or difficult key words.
7
e. Making students predict the content of the text.
3
f. Give students time to read and understand the listening tasks
3
Table 1: Teacher’s pre -listening techniques
It can be seen from Table 1 that nine teachers apply the techniques of brainstorming
words, structures or ideas; and asking students some questions about the topic before they
listen. These techniques are clearly their most popular ones. Seven out of nine teachers
respond that before listening, they pre-teach new words or difficult key words so that students

would better understand the topic of the listening text and find it easier to listen. 6 out of 9
teachers confirm that they make their students discuss in pairs or groups the topic they are


19

going to listen. After doing this task, their students would be able to both know more about
what they will listen and improve their speaking skill. Making students predict the content of
the text and studying the listening task appears to be used by only 3 teachers.
According to Boyle (1984), Baker and Westrupt (2000), each pre-listening techniques
has its own advantages and benefits‟ to students motivation, which can lead to the success of
listening comprehension. If the students lack motivation right from the beginning of the
lesson, their listening process may be negatively affected. For example, if the students feel
bored with the listening text, they will probably take no participation in it, or the teacher can
not make them pay attention to the lesson and so on. However, different teachers apply
different pre-listening techniques to motivate their students.
b. Teacher‟s while -listening techniques
While-listening techniques
a. Marking/ checking items in pictures.
b. Storyline picture sets
c. Putting pictures in order
d. Completing pictures
e. Making models/ arranging items in patterns
f. Completing grids
g. Form/ chart completion
h. True/false information
i. Multiple-choice questions
j. Text completion (gap-filling)
k. Spotting mistakes
l. Seeking specific items of information

Table 2: Teacher’s while -listening techniques

Number
of users
2
2
7
1
2
1
1
8
7
5
0
2

Table 2 shows the author a very surprising fact of the teachers‟ uses of while-listening
techniques. Most respondents (8,7,7 out of 9 teachers) choose to use true/false activities,
multiple-choice questions and ordering pictures exercises respectively during the whilelistening stage time. The reason is very simple, the listening tasks are available in the course
book so that they do not need to prepare. It, therefore, does not take time for the teachers to
design the tasks for the students. Text completion (gap-filling) exercises are used by 5 out of 9
teachers in this stage. They explain it very confidently. This type of exercise would not be
very difficult for their students as they have been provided with important or key words
related before listening. Only 1 or 2 out of 9 teachers apply the rest activities, including
marking/ checking items in pictures, storyline picture sets, completing pictures and others.
They think these activities are very difficult because they are unfamiliar with their students.