Some experiences to teach english listening skill for students in grade 4 in dien bien 1 primary school

thanh hoa education and Training derpartment
Thanh Hoa City education and Training office

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experience initiative

Some EXPERIENCES TO TEACH ENGLISH
LISTENING SKILL FOR students in grade 4
IN Dien bien 1 primary school

Writer: Nguyen Thi
Thu Ha
Position:
Teacher
School: Dien Bien 1
Primary School
Subject: English


Thanh Hoa 2018

INDEX
1. INTRODUCTION

PAGE

1.1. The reasons for choosing the topic

1

1.2. The purpose of research.

2

1.3. The objects of research.

2

1.4. The method of research.

3

1.5. The new points of experience initiative

3

2. CONTENT

4

2.1. Theoretical basis of the experience initiative.

4

2.2 . Situation issues before applying experience initiative.

4

2.3. The solutions of implementation.

6

2.4. The effect of the experience initiative.

14

3. CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS

16

3.1. Conclusion

16

3.2. Suggestions

16

2


1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 The reason for choosing the topic
Nowadays the trend of international integration in many areas
including the field of education has brought English up a very important
position. English as a means of communication is the key to the treasure of
humanity. On the other hand, the wide application of information technology
has made learning English become urgent and indispensable. So learning
English of Elementary School students is particularly concerned by students,
parents, all the teachers of education in our country. English has become one

of the main subjects in the curriculum of students.
Learning and use of English require a diligent process of creative
practice of both learners and teachers. Especially in the situation of education
reform as currently, teaching English in view of communcation methods is
widely supported. According to this method, students have many
opportunities to communicate, to practise language and to participate in
practical situations: Learning coupled with practising.
Primary level English program has been implemented in all regions
across the country. Innovation prominent feature of the content of this
program is to privide maximum opportunities for students to practise four
skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing on the topics and situations,
communication contents related to environments living at home and abroad.
The change in facilitating the teaching and learning of English in secondary
schools becomes teaching living language instead of teaching words as many
years ago. However, in practical English skills forged for students, teachers
confronted with many difficulties, especially listening skill forged. Through
my school in the rural areas, when students started to learn foreign languages,
most of them were very interested in English, but eventually they fell tired of
it. Most of them are very bad at listening skill. It’s difficult for them to
understand the content of an essay or dialogue they hear. After each listening
3


lesson, the teacher meets difficulty checking information that students had
heard and checking old lesson often not easy.
Facing with that situation as a direct teacher to teach English for
students in grade 4, who was exposed to the English language through grade
3, I myself always think of how to help students master, listen comprehention
and maturely manipulate information. During both teaching and observing
the students, I found the discipline and listening skill of the students having a

lot of problems. Most students do not know how to learn listening skill
effectively, students often find most diffcult while they practise listening or
doing listening tests. In the classroom, students often say that although there
are many words in the test they know but they can not hear out. I always ask
myself “ How to help students to use vocabularies and grammaticals
structures itself to effective listening” . Therefore, in the teaching process, I
find a number of methods for positive, simple, easy to understand pratical
ensure to develop thinking ability, speculation and creativity of students. With
my little experience I boldly go into a topic “Some experiences to teach
English listening skill for students in grade 4 in Dien Bien 1 Primary
School”.
1.2 The purpose of research
Learning English requires learners to practice four skills: Listening,
speaking, reading and writing. The ultimate goal of learning a language is to
communicate fluently with everyone. I wrote this topic based on the status of
the study English at my school now. The aim of this research is to help
students learn English more excitedly in order to remove the difficulties that
they have encountered for a long time. I hope my initiative will help my
school eager to learn English subject more and become successful learners.
1.3 The objects of research
Some experiences to teach English listening skill for students in grade
4 in Dien Bien 1 Primary School.
4


1.4 The methods of research
With this topic I have applied the following methodology:
- Observa students .
- Interview students.
- Check and compare learning outcomes of students.

- Studying the textbook program, instruction manuals.
- Discussing with experienced colleagues in professional meettings.
1.5 The new points of experience initiative
This experience initiative is not similar to the content of the solutions
that has registered and admitted before. The content of the solutions has not
applied in the lessons yet as well as has not regulated into the obligatory
methods yet.

5


2. CONTENT EXPERIENCE INITIATIVE
2.1. Theoretical basis of the experience initiative
English, one of the foreign languages, has been being learned by
many Vietnamese people for communicating, learning and research.
Currently, because of new method in learning and teaching, students have
more favorable exposure to the English language. Students have the
opportunity to communicate with people in English and easy to apply in life.
Prominent feature of the innovation agenda for new textbooks is maximum
opportunity for students to practice four skills. In fact, listening skill is one of
the focused skills developments in the new methods of teaching foreign
languages. Listening is important because students can not communicate with
words without understanding what is heard.
2.2 . Situation issues before applying experience initiative
a. Advantages:
- Dien Bien 1 Primary School is located in the center of the city. The
school has a teaching staff who are young, fit, enthusiastic, capable of
teaching and always love their job. Qualifications and standards are on 100%.
In the field of education, my school is always interested, focused on teaching
and learning, always enabling teachers and students to fulfill the duties and

assigned targets. And the school has always received the active support of the
local government so many years, the school was rewarded as the advanced
school in the city.
- Administrators of our primary school always care about and create
favorable facilitities and profestional documents serve as teaching subjects:
projectors, TV.
- Most students prepare books and supplies for learning English
department.

6


b. Disadvantages:
- Although our primary school located in the center of the city, the
situations of the students face many difficulties. There is not enough
investment in English in time. Students also are not familiar with the method
of learning in English listening skill as well as how to make really
effective.Beside that the total number of classes and students are
overcrowded.
- To the parents, also very difficult to check or guide them to learn a
foreign language at home by subjects, parents do not know. They have limited
access to communicate in English outside school hours.
In addition, English is a difficult subject, the knowledge is difficult
but less study time, and in the listening process they do not control what they
will be listened. Words in tape are too fast, not familiar. A lot of new words,
word stress, sentence stress, intonation are very different and difficult for
students to understand the content. The questions is how we overcome these
weaknesses in order to contribute to improve the learning qualityof listening
skill, help students communicate more confident in using English as a second
language, proficient in words, sentences, especially for students in as grade 4

students in Dien Bien 1 Primary School.
In order to solve this problem, the first semester of school year
2017 - 2018, I had a small survey with two classes of grade 4 with a test
within 35 minutes.
Result:
Class

Total

4D
4E
Sum

38
39
78

(fairly good %)
Total
17
18
35

%
44,74%
46,15%
44,87%

Average (%)
Total

18
19
37

%
47,37%
48,72%
47,44%

Weakness (%)
Total
3
2
5

%
7,89%
5,13%
6,41%

7


With this result we can see the results of students in inadequate.
Results good one, is low, while weak results. So requires teachers to find
remedies, to help them improve their learning outcomes.
3. The solutions of implementation
3.1. Flexible use good techniques in listening skill.
The practice listening skill in a class or part of listening is done through 3
stages.

a. Pre-listening
- The purpose of the activities in this phase is to help students focus
their attention on the subject, especially anticipate the information of the topic
they are going to hear. To overcome the difficulties of listening in class,
teachers should introduce the topic, context, situation- related to the content
of listening, especially taking pictures, intuitive furniture to introduce for
students in order to know what students knew and did not know about the
content that they will listen, intrigued, create excitement for all activities.
- Ask students to think, guess what they are going to hear in a certain
context.
- Teach vocabulary, however not introduce all new words. Students
should guess the meaning of word in context, teacher should offer the purpose
of listening, requests and task assignments for the content heard.
- When carrying out the pre-listening activity, the use of visual maps
accompanying illustrations will give very good support to clarify the context
suggests the content that they are going to hear. Pictures is also a means to
check the level of students listening comprehension.
- Show the pictures or questions of exercise to students in order to
figure out all information nedded to hear.
* Some tricks taught in this phase.
True/ False statements prediction.
- Open- prediction.
8


- Ordering.
- Pre- question.
The choice to perform activities in this period will depend on a
number of factors such as time of listening exercises, documentation provided
available or not available, the level and interests of students. Conditions of

classroom teaching is also one of the factors leading to decide what technique.
Besides teaching purposes and objectives of the test are also the basic
elements for teachers to make their selection.
b. While- listening
- The purpose of the activities in this phase is to help students practise
listening skill that is to say verbal drawwn convey information.
- Have students listen and do exercise. If the students previously
guessed the contents of the listening exercise in this section, ask them to
compare what they had guessed with what they have just listened.
- For all hard to hear, the teacher can divide the process into a
listening exercise hear from easy to difficult.
- For long listening exercises, we can make it easier by giving all
kinds of exercises that are suitable for the level of students.
- Some expressions in this phase:Defining True- False, check the
correct answer, matching, filling in the grip/ chart/ gap, answering
comprehension questions, selecting, deliberate mistakes, listen and draw.
c. Post- listening:
- The purpose of the activities after listening are to:
Check to see that if students can understand the information requested or not
and complete the operation in stage “While- listening” or not.
- Find out the reasons why students do not hear or not understand
some of the listening exercises.
- Help students with the opportunity to assess the attitudes of people
who express the intonation of commmunication conversations.
9


- Use extension exercise themed listening skills used to supplement more
ear training.
Some tricks during this period

- Give the answers and feedback.
- Ask students to repeat or say some words or sentences heard. Feedback
(white listening).
- Organize students to say about them or their friends by relying on some
information in the test.
- Have students mention some comments on the results of the listening
group.
- Give students play out conversations heard.
- Use extra exercises to help students have more information about
listening test. Depending on the specific details, teacher can use one of these
activities.
* For example:
- Post- listening
Write it up.
Transformation (writing)
- Ask students to base on the following passage, write another passage about
you.
- Feedback:
- But according to the characteristics of each lesson, teacher can carry out
three step process listening and comprehension practice for students,
especially first step that can help them shape and develop the ability to focus
interest, speculation using information that will listen. Thus students will
actively listen and feel more confident.
- Requests of the listening period are:
+ Quality Assurance hears samples.
+ Good quality of radio.
10


+ Teachers read with average speed, correct pronunciation.

For example: Teaching listening skill.
Unit 12: What does your father do?
Lesson 2: Part 4, 5, 6 - Period 82
Activity 4: Listen and number

Unit 12: What does your father do? – Page 15 (English 4)

a. Pre-listening:
- Elicit Ss to talk about the pictures on page15.
- Tell Ss that they are going to listen to the story about jobs and places
of the people.
- Point to each picture and elicit Ss’answer to the information they
indicate.
Eg: What does he/ she do? What does he/ she work?
- Let Ss’ guess the answers.
b. While -listening
- Play the recording twice.The first listening, Ss to listening all the way
through and the second listening for them to do the task.
11


- Ask all Ss to raise their answers to check their answers. Get Ss to
check the answers in pairs.
- Pause after each part in give Ss sufficient time to select and tick the
right pictures.
- Give answers:

1. c

2. a

3. d

4. b

c. Post-listening:
- Have Ss work in groups to share their answers with their classmates.
- Check Ss’comprehension of the text.
3.2 Combining practice listening to other technical groups
a. The technical team practice facility:
These are tricks premise significants in shaping students listen to
English ability.
*Practice routines focus attention to hear.
Ask students to listen to your sentences and call them to repeat
individual what you read. Teacher referred repeat individual students. Help
students have habits and awareness to listen to the teachers. One way to help
students focus on hearing is to ask students to use the information from what
their friends said to answer.
For example:
Student A says: “Let’s go to the bakery. I want to buy some bread.”
After student A stops talking. I can ask another students to answer the
question:
Where does student A go? Why does student A go to the bakery?
Once a week, have students to play a game focused on listening.
For example:
+ The first game: Find your friend to communicate.
Teacher prepares some questions and answers on paper, pair with
answers to our questions by the numbers: For example, question one

12

corresponds to answer 5. Students find the answer by finding their
corresponding answers from the friends, the pair receiving first will win.
+ The second game: The spread information
If the class has 10 rows of desks, teachers make 10 votes, per share
recorded a statement. Then vote for one student a warded top row. The student
is responsible to whisper in his or her friend’s ear what he or she read.
Continue whispering one by one until the end of the sequence. The last person
will speak loudly what he or she heard from their friend and the first student
will determine if the sentence is correct or not.
• Listening word stress and sentence stress:
When the British listen to a word that has many syllables, they only
listen to the stress of word. When you hear a word having more syllables, you
should practise listening to the accent of the word.When you hear a sentence,
pay attention to hear the accent in question and accents that coordinate to
guess the meaning of the whole sentence.
For example: When listening to this sentence.
Let’s go to the bakery. I want to buy some bread.
Note:
Hear the word accent then guess the meaning of that phrase. Thus,
with this technique I practice for students to both hear and guess the meaning
by grasping accent. The training stress of words or phrases shold be done not
only in the listening exercise that words in many different stages of English
language teaching: practice reading new words, introduce new grammatical
structures, or perform. Before you read but also in the listening and reading or
reading in each unit of study.
*Practise listening and make differences of similar pair sounds,
pronunciation of difficult sounds and sound connecting while the natives say.
In fact, many students receiving an English voice are often not

prepared or do not contain many sounds similar to the pronunciation of the
13


natives. It is also an obstacle for students to hear native speakers say. Thus,
students needs to practice consciously and recognize the difficult
pronunciation sound, or the sound as well as easy connection and sound while
speaking of the natives, the ear training should be implemented and integrated
frequently while reading from the new training, introducing new grammatical
structures, or performing operations listen and read or read in each unit of
study. In addition, teachers can make some games to help children just relax,
just reinforce sound recognition skills and specific way audio connection
closer to the native pronunciation.
b. Stress training technical group:
These measures help students practise listening skills to understand a
conversation or reading the textbook. There are two main measures:
• Combine listening and reading
Teacher help students have opportunities to practice listening by
utilizing language data in this section and designing listening exercise. Part
listen and read, repeat or number is a conversation to introduce thematic
content and vocabularies, new grammar structures. Despite the introduction of
new language, listening and reading part always imply the corpus that
students have learned, so teachers can exploit certain part in this stage of
listening.
- How to proceed:
Before students listen to tape, require students not to use textbooks
teachers create situations using context or the surrounding real environment,
or the real situations in the classroom, or real family life and friends of the
students, or the real thing, the real phenomention, common or map, the
newspaper reports.

In addition, teachers can set up situations and contexts with the
support of visual aids and language, students have learned, they are connected

14


with the content will be listened. This step is to help students feel interested
and realize direction of the listening subject.
For example: Unit 16: Let’s go to the bookshop.
Lesson 2: Part 1: Look, listen and repeat

Unit 16: Let’s go to the bookshop - Page 42 (English 4)

Set the scene:
In pictures a and b, Tony makes a suggetion to go to the zoo, Linda
declines, saying Sorry, I can’t, and Mai accepts, saying Yes, I’d like to. Then
Mai makes another suggestion, asking Can we go to the supermarket first? In
picture C, Tony asks Mai for the reason, using Why do you want to go to the
supermarket? and Mai gives a reason, saying Because I want to buy
something to eat. In picture d, the three of them go to the supermarket
together.
Listen to the dialogue and answer the following question.
15


1. Who are they?
2. Why do you want to go to the supermarket?
Ask students to listen and answer questions. Teachers should organize
to emulate and celebrate for students who achieved results in groups and
organizations. Have students open their books to read and listen to the

conversation and students pay attention to new vocabularies, new structures
and their stress.
* Organize for students to actively listen and listen creative exercises in
the textbook.
The listening exercises in grade three 3 are mostly attached by pictures
and the words and sentences are shorter. By the fourth grade, the amount of
pictures have reduced. There are more difficult words and longer words.
Depending on the characteristics of each article, the teacher can proceed ti
implement three-step process for students to practise listening comprehension,
especially in the first step so that they can help shape and develop the interest,
ability focuse on the need to hear and know the focus using the information
from the questions or pictures, diagrams, in listening exercises to guess what
students are listening. Thus students are active and more confident when they
are listening.
4.The effect of the experienced initiative
The survey was made after Unit 17 of the second semester, grade4school year 2017 - 2018 (about seven months I taught English listening skill
in my teaching)
Result:
Class

Total

4D

(fairly good %)

Average (%)

Weakness (%)

Total

%

Total

%

Total

%

38

22

57,89%

16

42,11%

0

0

4E

39

24

61,54%

15

47,83%

0

0

Sum

78

46

58,97%

31

41,03

0

0
16

%
Basing on the above result, it is clearly to see the better result of the present
survey comparing with the result of the past survey:
Fairly good quality increases from 44,87% to 58,97%.
Average quality reduces from 47,44% to 41,03%.
The weaknees quality reduces from 6,41% to 0%.
Most of students finished well in listening tests periodically.
Experiential lesson:
Teachers need to discover a fundamental deficiency of students in order to
have overcome:
- Teacher need to choose suitable skill for each student. Help students have
the best conditions to learn the subject, especially practice listening skills.
- During the lesson, the teacher should take advantage of time to guide for
students to practice listening.
- Need to know disadvantages in teaching time, class size, teaching aids
and material factors such as class sizes, teaching aids.
- Teachers need to encourage children to practice listening skill. Especially
listening to native speakers when they read.

17


3. CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS
1. Conclusion
Learning is long hard work for students. Thus teacher outside
knowledge transfer task for students have to find ways to make lessons more
effective and attrac the students’ attention. Guiding for children to have good
learning methods is very important, especially, it is necessary to encourage
them to use English in daily life. If we learn a forein language but we do not
pracice communicating daily, our knowledge will be faded tim by time. So I

made some slight ideas to help myself find a method of teaching a listening
more effectively, help students to achieve high quality learning. In a nutshell.
I think, training listening skill for primary school is a positive approach,
optimal and efficient for students because this method has been verified
through actual teaching and members of professional groups analysed,
evaluated and consented.
2.Suggestions
In the era of development, it is the young generation who are the
pioncers to connects Vietnam with international friends, so they are the ones
who need to learn more, devote their best ability for a rich and flourish
country, and compare with the great powerful countries in the world. And so,
the way to lead them to success is to learn, to hear, to speak, and to
communicate in English very well. With that importance, I strongly suggest as
follows:
a.For young learners:
We give them some playgrounds, clubs to speak English at school. By
coordinating with English professional groups, other professional groups as
well as and other organizations, weekly or monthly and special anniversary
holidays of the year, we must have real plan and encourage weaker students to
participate.

18


2. For teachers:
In addition to teaching in the classroom, teachers need to visit class,
supervise colleagues not only in schools but also take time to visit colleagues
in school groups. Regularly organize their teaching subjects in accordance
with the actual situation of the school and classroom. It has to be evaluated,
contributed ideas and give honest and accurate comment each lesson.

Sincerely thank you!
Certified by the principal

Dien Bien1, April 4th, 2018
I declare that this is my experienced
initiative. I do not copy the other
person's content .
Written by

Phạm Thị Mai Hoa
Nguyen Thi Thu Hà

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REFERENCE
1. Vietnamese Educational Publisher – Tieng Anh 4 (2009). Ministry
of Education of Training.
2. Listeners Strategies in Collaborative Discourse of AAU 4 th Year
Students Unpublished M.A. Thesis.
3. Cambridge University Press. Rixon, S. (1986). Developing
Listening skills.
4. Cambridge University Press. Yagang, F. (1993). Listening:
Problems and Solutions. In Thomas Kral(ed).
5. Rost, M. (1990). Listening in Language Learning.
6. Ur, Penny. 1984. Teaching Listening Comprehension. Cambridge
University Press.

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DANH MỤC
SÁNG KIẾN KINH NGHIỆM ĐÃ ĐƯỢC HỘI ĐỒNG SÁNG KIẾN
KINH NGHIỆM NGÀNH GIÁO DỤC & ĐÀO TẠO THÀNH PHỐ,
TỈNH VÀ CÁC CẤP CAO HƠN XẾP LOẠI TỪ C TRỞ LÊN.
Họ và tên: Nguyễn Thị Thu Hà
Chức vụ & đơn vị công tác: Trường TH Điện Biên 1- TP Thanh Hoá.

TT

1
2
3
4
5

Tên đề tài SKKN
Một vài kinh nghiệm giảng dạy
ngữ âm bằng phương pháp thực
hành giao tiếp.
Gây hứng thú và củng cố kiến
thức trong giờ học bằng các bài
hát tiếng anh lớp 3.
Một vài kinh nghiệm giúp học
sinh thích học chương trình
tiếng anh lớp 5.
Một vài thủ thuật giúp học sinh
lớp 4 ghi nhớ từ vựng .
Using simple songs to inspire
and consolidate knowledge in

English lessons for students
grade 4.

Cấp đánh
giá xếp loại
(Phòng, Sở,
Tỉnh…)

Kết quả
đánh giá
xếp loại
(A, B,
hoặc C)

Năm học
đánh giá
xếp loại.

Tỉnh

C

2006 - 2007

Tỉnh

B

2009 - 2010

Tỉnh

B

2011 - 2012

Tỉnh

B

2013 – 2014

Tỉnh

B

2015 – 2016

21