INTRODUCING AUDIOVISUAL MATERIALS IN LISTENING COMPREHENSION LESSON AT NONG CONG II HIGH SCHOOL

TABLE OF CONTENT
PART A. INTRODUCTION
I. Rationale

2

II. Aims of the study

3

III. Research questions

3

IV. Scope of the study

3

V. Method

3

PART B. DEVELOPMENT
I. Literature review

4

II. Innovation

10

III. Research data and data analysis

11

IV. Discussion

18

V. Experimental Results

20

PART C. CONCLUSION

21

REFERENCE

22

APPENDIX

23

1


PART A

INTRODUCTION

RATIONALE
Nowadays, together with the development of economy and technology in Vietnam,
foreign language, specially, English has become an important mean of international
communication. It has also been considered as a “gold key” to enter the door of
integrative trend. The need of using English fluently is an urgent requirement. Thus, in
recent years, English has been taught and become one of the compulsory subjects in
schools, colleges and universities. There have been many colleges and universities
where train English as major purpose to meet the inquiry of society. With the demands
of learning English for communication has been increasing; one of the urgent
requirements for all English teachers is to be able to help students improve four skills
well.
In recent years, Thanh Hoa province has invested for teaching and learning English.
However, the quality of teaching and learning English is not as good as hope. After
graduating, most students cannot communicate in English fluently, especially speaking
and listening skills. Due to this reason, the requirement of improving English
communication is an urgent duty in this school. This research project will be conducted
with the hope to improve teaching and learning listening skill at Nong Cong 2 High
School in Thanh Hoa province.
Although Richards (1983) realizes the limitation of direct research on second language
listening comprehension, language researchers in recent time have focused much time
on this matter. Listening comprehension is considered as an essential skill. According to
Morley (2001), since 1960’s, listening skill has changed from an incidental and
peripheral status to a significant and central important status in language education.
Thus, it is necessary to improve listening skill for learners. One of the biggest problems
is the inadequacy of authentic materials. Nowadays, teachers can choose useful
materials such as radio, TV, internet, CD, VCD from many resources. In other words,
audiovisual materials are good choice for teachers to improve their students’ listening
skill. As a result, the researcher would like to use audiovisual materials in teaching
listening and see whether audiovisual materials have good effect on students’ listening

skill or not.
I.

AIMS OF THE STUDY
This research project is conducted to investigate the fact of teaching and learning
listening skill at Nong Cong 2 High School in Thanh Hoa province as well as to
examine how audiovisual materials can affect students’ listening skill. Hopefully, this
innovation will be useful method for teaching listening not only for the researcher
herself but also for her colleagues at Nong Cong 2 High School
II.

2


III.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

This research project was designed so that it would answer the following research
questions:
1. How do audiovisual materials improve students listening skill?
2. What are students’ attitudes to audiovisual materials?

IV.

SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The participants of this study were 47 students with different levels who came from
grade 10A4 and 4 teachers who had many experiences in teaching English in English
Department at Nong Cong II High School in Thanh Hoa province. The number of

female students in the class is 42 while there are 5 male students. Their age is from 14
to 15 years old. All students have learnt English for 4 years at Secondary School. They
really wanted to study English well and took part in this study voluntarily.
V.

METHODS

The methods used in the study consisted of classroom observation, small group
interviews and teaching dairy. The first method was classroom observation. Students
were observed while they were doing the listening tasks to examine whether students
listened to the CD attentively and how they did the tasks. The second one was informal
small group interviews to define the difficulties and the students' attitude towards
listening after carrying out listening innovation. Finally, in order to investigate whether
this listening innovation was useful for students and whether it could encourage
students to listen, what the teacher observed and interviewed were noted down on
weekly teaching dairy.

3


PART B

DEVELOPMENT

I. LITERATURE REVIEW
In recent years, language researchers have paid attention to the aspect of listening
skill improvement. Audiovisual materials are suggested to apply in teaching four skills,
especially listening skill.
1. Teaching and learning listening skill.
According to Ralph Nichols (1980), the most basic of all human needs “is the

need to understand and be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to
them”. Moreover, Morley (1991, p.82) points out that people can expect to listen twice
as much as they speak, four times more than they read and five times more than they
write. Thus, listening skill is considered as one of the most common communicative
activities in daily life. In second language of foreign language classrooms, listening is
vital because it provides input for students (Rost, 1990, p.141-142).
In the past time, with the popular of Grammar translation method, most schools
in Vietnam only focused on teaching reading and writing skill. Listening and speaking
skills seemed to be ignored. Brown (1987) states that twenty-five years ago, listening
comprehension was not taken seriously in the process of language teaching. The focus
in teaching as well as in publishing materials at that time was on reading and writing
skill. Since 1960, as the development of communication approach, language learning
could not be limited to writing and reading skill. Language was taught in an integrative
way where all four skills were focused. Then, listening comprehension received more
attention than before (Brown, 1987).
2. Audiovisual materials and language teaching & learning
2.1.Audiovisual materials
In general, audiovisual materials are considered as any device used to help
communicate ideas clearer. Talking about audiovisual materials in language teaching, it
is commonly said that it means modern and recently used of teaching method such as
film, video, radio, television, computer, etc. Audiovisual materials are combined from
two types of materials. The first type is audio material that influences the learners’
auditory organ (hearing or listening). The second one is visual material that influences
students’ sight sense (seeing or viewing). Thus, audiovisual materials are both of
listening and viewing sense.
Today, audiovisual materials are widely used at all degrees and levels of teaching
and learning language. According to Mueller (1980) in his research, most foreign
language teachers believed that the more visual is used the better English is achieved.
Thus, teachers used these visual aids in their daily teaching.

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Audiovisual materials not only make the learning process effective in general,
they also help the weaker students to improve their English level. In his pilot study,
Masako Sato (2006) hoped to explore the effects of using audiovisual materials on the
weaker learners of English. Among many sources of audiovisual materials, he mostly
focused on using film scripts. In his opinion, films were often used as authentic material
and helped to motivate students’ learning. Sato, M pointed out that films encouraged
students’ interest and challenge to understand what happen in the films.
However, Sato complained that films are also too difficult for weaker students.
Because spoken words in films did not wait anyone and it might make the listener find
it difficult to understand many phonetic changes in real utterance. Because of this
reason, Sato suggested that to motivate students learning, film as an audiovisual
material should be used. In addition, students’ listening skill would be improved if they
understood the sound variation system.
2.2. Effect of audiovisual materials on language teaching and learning
As the discussion talked above, audiovisual materials are helpful and necessary
in the following ways.
Firstly, audiovisual materials are considered as the mean of communicating. They
help to supplement for what teachers cannot express well. For example, when the
teacher wants to introduce the meaning of a new word, a picture or a poster will be very
helpful.
Secondly, audiovisual materials are useful in retentive process. Students are
often interested in films, video or pictures so these materials make the lessons more
interesting and enjoyable. When seeing and hearing a visual with interest, students will
remember it for a longer time.
Finally, audiovisual materials are a way of saving time. In the limited time of a
lesson, the teacher cannot speak too much.
Mei-Mei Chang and James D. Lehman (2002), two professors in Taiwan have the

same interest in studying student’s motivation with multimedia and computer-based. In
their experiment study (2002), they investigated relation between learners’ motivation
and interactive multimedia in English as a foreign language (EFL). This research deeply
studied the effects of the relevance component of the ARCS model on learners’
motivation. ARCS model here means attention, relevance, confidence and satisfaction.
According to them, computer-based interactive multimedia was at the center of
language learning technology. It provided students a learning environment that can
satisfy their needs and interest. Chang and Lehman also concluded the ideas of other
researchers about the benefit of audiovisual resources found in computer.
Also talking about multimedia, Khalid Al-Seghayer (2001) focused on its effect
on second language vocabulary acquisition. By briefly summarizing some relevant
research on this area, Khalid Al-Seghayer made clear about the effect and value of
multimedia annotation, the impact of electronic glossing on second language
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vocabulary acquisition and efficaciousness of videos and pictures. The result of his
research showed that video was an effective way to teach new vocabularies.
Studying the other aspect of audiovisual materials, Gina Mikel Petrie (2003), a
doctorial candidate at Washington State University investigated language teachers’
views on visual language. Specially, the researcher focused on the ways that language
teachers experienced visual language in their classrooms. According to her, visualizing
technology such as video, audio, the World Wide Web became more and more popular
today. It not only influenced social lives, it also affected classroom environment. The
result of his research showed that visuals helped to enhance language development.
However, some ideas showed that visual language sometimes distracted the text. In
conclusion, the researcher suggested that the language teachers should acknowledge
soon the role of visual language such as image, graphics in language classroom.
3. Audiovisual materials and listening comprehension
Because audiovisual materials become more popular and useful with both

teachers and learners, they are considered as a helpful tool to teach and learn listening
skill more effectively.
Daniel Y. Chang (2007) believed that changing learning environment was a good
way to develop students’ listening skill. For this purpose, multimedia and interactive
model were used as the best solution. According to him, audiovisual materials have
brought a new environment for teaching and learning language. One of the most useful
audiovisual materials was multimedia with personal computer.
In his research, the author realized that interactive model with multimedia was
useful with the learning process. Multimedia was the combination of some media such
as video, audio, sound, text, picture, and computer. It helped to enrich processing as
well as recall the target language.
Similar to Chang, Jone and Plass (2002) paid attention to multimedia annotation
to support listening comprehension and vocabulary acquisition. The main purpose of
their research was to explore how effectively multimedia can assist second language
students’ listening skill. More specifically, their research focused on the choice of
pictorial or written annotation in listening activities. After studying 171 students at their
university, the researchers found that students’ listening skill through the result of tests
was highest when they received both written and pictorial annotation. However, groups
of students who received pictorial annotation were better at listening than those who
received written.
Audiovisual materials are helpful for teaching and learning listening
comprehension. However, a new question is that how they affects listening
comprehension testing? Chan (2008), a lecturer of Zhejiang Gongshang University in
China conducted a research project to examine the effects of different types of visual
materials on CET-3 listening tests. According to him, traditionally, listening tests in his
school had no visual clues so that the validity of tests was low. Because of this reason,
6


the author tried to apply the different types of visual materials and investigated their

effects on CET-3 listening tests. After doing the research on 174 students of four
classes at his university, the author provided evidence that the effect of visuals in the
tests were not clear. With short conversations as well as with short passages, the effects
of visual clues were nearly nonexistent. From this result, the researcher claimed that at
least for the moment, visuals should not be added to the CET-3 listening test.
Like the lecturer of Zhejiang Gongshang University, Londe (2009) in her
research emphasized the effects of video media in English as a second language (L2)
listening comprehension tests. Her research aimed to explore the differences in test
performance when learners were given listening tests in different formats of audio and
video.
In her opinion, to assess students’ listening skill, it was simple to find out the
evidences that students could respond to question in real life and could answer several
questions in listening test. With the new trend of communicative testing, video media
helped to change the traditional way of test tasks. However, the result of this pilot study
showed that although video media was more authentic than audio alone, it did not help
to change the performance of listening testing.
However, through her study, Londe found that her students felt more interested
and comfortable with video format. Progosh (1996) in his research had ever mentioned
that students liked video listening test than audio only. It might be that video media
helped to enhance students’ motivation and attention. In conclusion, video media help to
decode meaning in listening comprehension but it had no influence on students in
listening testing (Kellerman, 1992).
In conclusion, the author of this study tries to review and have an overview of
research that is related to the topic. However, for most research, the effects of
audiovisual materials in listening comprehension are in general. There is nearly no
research in which listening skill’ improvement is mentioned and explored. From this
problem, the author of this research project should emphasize and deeply study about
the effects of audiovisual materials on improvement of students’ listening skill in EFL
classroom.
4. Innovation.

4.1.What is innovation?
In recent years, the word ‘innovation’ was much mentioned in many language
researches. While Miles (1964, p.13) saw innovation as organizational behaviors,
Rogers and Schoemaker (1971, p.19) emphasized innovation with the aspect of the
personal perception and interpretation. Summarizing from these opinions, Nicholls
(1983, p.4) described innovation as a new idea, object or practice of which intention for
improvement in the relation with objectives. More specifically, in the research in 1988,
White saw innovation in the differences with change. According to him, change was the
act of making different between time 1 and time 2. Change occurred without being
7


planned or intended whereas innovation was produced with awareness, plan and
intention. The procedure of carrying out this study was an innovation based on the idea
of White (1988) because the researcher had awareness of her teaching context, had
intention to change, and then made careful plan to do innovation.
4.2.The model of innovation:
The researcher followed to both the social interaction and problem-solving
models because of following reasons:
4.2.1. The social interaction model:
According to White (1988, pp. 125-126), the social interaction model emphasized
the influent and important factors of social relation in the transmission and adoption of
innovation. In the social relations, communicator and communication were key factors
whereas the change agent played a significant role. In this innovation, the researcher
and six other English teachers in teaching staff played important roles in the transition
and adoption of the innovation. The researcher found the solution for the problems in
teaching listening at her school and experiment with new method to know whether it
was successful or not. By inviting other colleagues to take part in the study, the
researcher introduced and transmitted the innovation and these colleagues adopted as
well as continued to transmit this innovation. It was the social relation in this study.

4.2.2. Problem-solving model:
In his opinion, White (1988, pp. 123-125) saw problem-solving model as the basis of
action research where the researcher identified the problems by herself. This model
emphasized on a bottom-up rather than top down approach.
Markee (1997, pp. 66-67) also emphasized that problem-solving model was the
most popular approach to promote change in education in which the eventual user of an
innovation identified the need for change and this change was a bottom up not a top
down process. In this study, the researcher identified the problems from her teaching
context by herself and she was aware of the need for change. Thus, this study not only
followed to social interaction model but also problem-solving model.
4.2.3.The role of stakeholders:
According to Markee (1997, pp. 43-44), teachers played a key role while other
individuals had a stake in the process of an innovation. These individuals called
stakeholders. Stakeholders were those who involved in an innovation. They had their
own opinions about innovation and showed their views in different ways. Stakeholders
had relationship to each other as adopters (or resisters), implementers, clients, suppliers
and change agents (Markee, N., 1997). Following items were more detail about
stakeholders and their roles in the innovation process.
4.2.4. Adopter:
An adopter is a person who decides to accept the change. According to Markee,
N. (1997, p. 58), there are five different types of adopters that can be listed as
innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. In this innovation,
8


the researcher, the English teachers invited to take part in the innovation, and students
in class N5 were adopters.
4.2.5. Resister:
A resister is a person who rejects an innovation; refuses to adopt the ideas of
change agents and does not want to change. Some students in class N5, who did not

want to change, were resisters.
4.2.6. Implementer:
Implementer is a person who has to make innovation work in the classroom. In
this innovation, the researcher and the English teachers invited to take part in this
innovation were the implementers.
4.2.7. Clients
The students in class N5 were clients in this innovation.
4.2. 8. Supplier:
Supplier is a person who designs an innovation. The researcher and the English
teacher invited to take part in the innovation played the role as the suppliers.
4.2.9. Change agent:
Change agent is a person who manages the change in the classroom. In this
innovation, the change agents were the researcher and the English teacher invited to
take part in the innovation
4.3 Culture context.
In his research, Holliday (1994) described the different between BANA- a dominant
culture within the profession and TESEP- a very different culture within state
institutions. Nong Cong II High School in Thanh Hoa province had some characteristics
of “TESEP” environment because of the following information.
Nong Cong II High School in Thanh Hoa province was not very good with large
classes equipped with fans and white boards. Besides, the size of the English classes
were from fourty-five to fifty- five students, therefore, these classes were too crowded
and affected by the noise of surrounding classes.
English teachers mostly applied the grammar translation approach for all English
classes especially in teaching listening comprehension, in which teacher was the center
of classroom. Most of them were old teachers who had taught English more than fiftyfive years. Thus, teachers were not familiar with authentic materials in English
teaching, especially in teaching listening.
The students at Nong Cong II High School in Thanh Hoa province had different
ages, levels, backgrounds and purposes to study English. Some of them were at
intermediate level and some were at low-level English competence.

At Nong Cong II High School, although the modern approaches of language
teaching were applied, listening skill was ignored surprisingly. Teachers mainly showed
their students how to read and write, not how to listen or speak. Thus, students’ listening
ability was limited. Students hardly could understand what other people speak in
9


English. Many students complained that listening skill was the most difficult skill to
improve. It seemed to be the most challenging of the four English skills that students
have to face.
Due to those reasons, it was necessary for teachers to find the useful way for
improving students’ listening skill. Beside the need of applying new teaching methods
as well as investing good furniture for learning condition, the suitable inputs should be
taken care of. Nowadays, together with the development of high technology, the
sources of materials for learning and teaching listening comprehension were wide and
various. In this study, the researcher tried to explore the effects of audiovisual materials
on the improvement of students’ listening skill.
II. INNOVATION
In this section, I would like to introduce my innovation in my listening periods
carried out from October 10 to November 30 at Nong Cong 2 High School. There are
forty five students who are in grade ten in my class with mixed abilities. Each week we
had one listening period which lasted during 45 minutes. The main material was English
10 book which designed with different topics as well as different tasks for students to
practice listening. However, most of students in my class are low competence and they
seem to have no strategies to listen, therefore the tasks are too difficult for them. This is
the reason why I decided to innovate and this innovation divided into 2 steps: adapting
the listening materials and the tasks, providing students with appropriate listening
strategies.
1. Procedure
At first, the researcher expressed the purpose of the study to all students and the

director of at Nong Cong 2 High School. It was necessary to explain clearly about
students' problems about learning and improving listening skill as well as audiovisual
materials and possible results of this study to get their agreement to cooperate.
After that, one English teacher was invited to teach listening lessons in class
10A4. The researcher and four other teachers observed her class during the first week to
understand more about the normal listening lessons with no audiovisual materials. (See
appendix 1). The observers had to take note what happened in the lessons and filled in
to the observation scheme (See appendix 7). Then, a questionnaire was given to fortyseven students in class 10A4 to get their ideas and attitude to their listening lesson. (See
appendix 2).
Thirdly, the teacher applied audiovisual materials in class 10A4 to help them
learn listening comprehension lesson. In listening lessons, she used authentic materials
such as pictures, CD player and video clips. (See appendix 3). During this step, the
10


researcher observed her students’ behaviors and attitude towards the listening skill
lesson with audiovisual materials.
Fourthly, another observation (See appendix 4) was conducted after two months
of the research. This observation focused on the classroom atmosphere, the students’
participation to the lesson and the changes compared with the first observation.
Next, the researcher (See appendix 5) interviewed the students in class 10A4
about their thought and difficulties of learning with audiovisual materials.
Finally, an English teacher interview was conducted with six teachers who
participated in the research to get their views and attitudes to audiovisual materials and
its’ effects on teaching and learning listening comprehension. (See appendix 6)
III. RESEARCH DATA AND DATA ANALYSIS
This section described the results from observations, the survey and English teacher
interview during the two-month research.
The first part of this section was the data analysis of the first observation and
survey those were conducted before introducing audiovisual materials. The second part

was the results from the other observation and survey as well as the teacher
interviewing those were taken place after applying audiovisual materials in the listening
lessons.
Part 1: Before change


Observation result.

The first observation was done during the first week of the study. The researcher
invited six other English teachers in her teaching staff to observe. Then, the researcher
collected the take notes to analyze data. Followings were some main points of
observation results:


Teacher taught listening skill with grammar translation method. She only
explained the aim of tasks and then asked students to do the task by
listening to the tape two or three times.



The materials that the teacher used were only textbook and the radio.
Sometime, she read the task by herself to help her students listen easier.



Classroom atmosphere was boring with no extra activities. Most students
did the task in silence. When a students gave the answer, most of other
students only looked and self corrected if necessary. There was little
11

feedback or opinion from students. Some students did not participate to the
lesson. They sat and looked only.


Survey result.
The first survey was carried out as soon as the first observation finished.

The questionnaire was translated into Vietnamese and delivered to forty-seven students
in class 10a4. From the survey, the researcher put the data in to the table to find the
most common ideas of students about their listening skill .
Table 1: Students’ attitude to listening skill .
1. Which skill do you like most?

Respondent

(%)

A. Listening

5

9%

B. Speaking

10

18%

C. Reading

30

55%

D. Writing

10

18%

This table expressed students’ attitude to listening skill. For the question 1 about
students’ like, the result showed really clearly. In students’ opinion, reading skill was
the skill that they liked most. 18% student said that they liked speaking skill and the
same number was for writing skill. Only few students showed their love with listening
skill (9%). It could be seen more clearly from the figure 1 below.

Figure 1: Students’ like with listening skill among four skills.

The reason why most students disliked learning listening skill was shown in the
next question.
2. Which skill is the most
difficult?

Respondent

(%)

A. Listening

30

55%

B. Speaking

9

16%
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C. Reading

5

9%

D. Writing

11

20%

For the question 2 of students’ attitude to difficult level of listening among four
skills, most students (55%) agreed that listening was the most difficult. Reading seemed
to be not difficult for them. 16% students stated that speaking is the most difficult skill
while 16% students complained that the most difficult skill was writing. Figure 2 below
drew more clearly about this data.

Figure 2: Students’ attitude to difficult level of listening among four skills.

For mot students, listening was the most difficult skill so that they disliked
learning this skill as they said in question 1.
Question 3 and 4 were for students’ ideas about their listening lessons.
Results of question 3 and question 4 summarized students’ ideas about their
listening lessons. Answering for question 3 about the materials that their teacher gave in
their listening lesson, students said that they only used textbook and sometimes they
had CD player. They only had listening lessons with authentic materials one or twice a
semester when the lessons were observed.
For question 4 of students’ assessment about their listening lesson, most students
complained that their listening lessons were boring. Only few students commented that
their listening lessons were interesting and excited.
Table2: Students’ hope and suggestion for their listening lessons.
5. What do you hope to change in your
listening lessons?

Respondent

(Write your answer in lines below)
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Your answer:
Your answer:
Your answer:
Your answer:
6. What do you suggest to improve your
listening lesson?

Respondent

(Write your answer in lines below)
Your answer:
Your answer:
Your answer:
Your answer:
7. In your opinion, what will happen if
your teacher use authentic materials such
as video, picture… in your listening
lesson?

Respondent

A. The lessons will be more interesting

27

B. The lessons will be more boring

2

C. I do not know. I am not sure about it.

26

D. Other opinion:

Table 2 explored students’ hope and suggestion for their listening lessons. About

their hope, most students said that they wanted their listening lessons to be more
interesting and attractive. They hoped to be the center of class with the good help of
their teacher. They also hoped to have more time for their listening practice.
To help the listening lessons more interesting and attractive, most students
suggested their teacher to use more interesting activities and authentic materials. They
said that they were bored with learning listening skill in the same way of all class
periods such as listening to the teacher’ reading or tape player and doing the tasks as the
teacher asked.
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With audiovisual materials, a half of students believed that suitable materials
would help their listening lessons to be more interesting and easier for students to learn.
However, nearly a half of students in class 10A4 wondered about the effectiveness of
authentic materials. They said that they were not sure about it. It might be helpful or
harmful with their learning. Only % students had negative guessing about the
effectiveness of authentic materials. They thought that video, pictures, newspaper, etc,
might make their lessons more boring.
Part 2: After change


Observation result.

The second observation was done during the last week of the study. Six other
English teachers were also invited to observe. Then, the researcher collected the take
notes to analyze data. The followings were some main points of observation results:





The listening lesson was added with some interesting activities in prelistening stage. Students were motivated to start their lessons.



Beside textbook and CD player, teacher used some authentic picture and
video clips that related to the content of lesson.



Classroom atmosphere was more interesting. Students were eager to listen
and ready to do the tasks. Most students participated in the lesson.
However, few students seemly ignored the duty.



Students volunteered to give the answers and they discussed when there
was any mistake.

Survey result.

The second survey was done at the end of the last observation. The questionnaire,
which was translated into Vietnamese, was delivered to forty-seven students in class
10A4. This survey consisted of five open questions to find the most common ideas of
students about learning listening skill with audiovisual materials.
For question 1 of students’ feelings about their listening lessons after change with
audiovisual materials, most students assessed that their lessons were more interesting,
attractive and vivid. They felt relaxable, eager and comfortable when listening with
authentic materials. However, some students complained that sometimes they found it
difficult to catch up with the lessons because the people in video clips spoke too fast.

For question 2 “Do you like audiovisual materials that your teacher used in your
listening lessons?”, most students chose “yes” because of some reasons. First, students
15


said that pictures and video clips were interesting and vivid so that they were attracted
to the lessons. Second, these audiovisual materials were relevant with the topic of their
lessons so that they found easier to understand. Third, these audiovisual materials made
different from traditional lessons with only teacher reading, textbooks and tasks. This
difference made the lesson reduced the humdrum in the classroom. However, few
students said that they did not like audiovisual materials because these materials were a
waste of time.
For question 3, which asked students to show the advantages of audiovisual
materials in listening lessons, it could be summarized in to following main points.
Audiovisual materials helped to make lessons more interesting and enjoyable so that it
helped students to reduce the stress and humdrum in listening. Students were also
attracted with authentic materials so that they listened with high nature and interest.
Thus, students could remember information for a longer time as well as improve their
listening skill. Furthermore, students had a chance to approach the real discourses so
that students could improve their English communicative skills in their real life.
For question 4, about the disadvantages of audiovisual materials in listening
lessons, students had most common ideas that sometimes, in video clips there were
many different accents so that it was difficult for them to understand. Besides, there
were some mixed structures so that students who were at low level of English found
difficult to decode the texts.
For question 5, which asked students about their satisfaction after the change
with audiovisual materials in their listening lessons, most students expressed their great
satisfaction because of the advantages that audiovisual materials brought for them.


Teachers interview result.

After two months of the innovation, four English teachers, who were invited to
observe class 10A4, were interviewed about their opinions and attitudes to the usage of
authentic materials in listening lessons. The followings were main results from this
interview:


Most teachers complained that listening was one of the most difficult skills
to teach. They found it difficult to teach listening skill because of many
reasons such as the low level of students, the short of authentic materials,
etc.



Teacher also showed their disappointments with their listening lessons.
They admitted that their lessons were so boring that their students did not
participate in the lessons and the classroom atmosphere was boring, too.
16




Most teachers showed their agreement about idea of the effects of
audiovisual materials on students’ listening comprehension (90%). They
said that authentic materials helped the lesson more interesting and
students were more motivated. These materials also helped teachers to
express ideas and give clear instruction for students to learn.



However, teachers said that it was not easy to choose and use audiovisual
materials effectively.

IV.DISCUSSION
In this section, I would like to discuss what I learned during caring out the study,
the main issues relating to the success and failure of my own research and the meanings
of the issues.
During the process of conducting this study, the author herself found that whether
the teacher understood what difficulties students faced with when learning listening and
wanted to help them overcome by finding many ways to teach, students' listening ability
could be certainly improved. Although students showed many difficulties when they
listened, the teacher could not solve all of them at the same time. The teacher needed
more time to help students tackle with listening problems. In this study, the teacher
could only help students by choosing suitable materials for them to practice and
providing them some appropriate strategies to do each task. The results of this study
indicated that the teacher really knew the difficulties of students and tried to make them
listen better and students who were provided listening strategies listened more
effectively. From carrying out this study, the researcher herself had more experiences of
teaching listening and knew how to implement a research.
Looking back the results before innovation, students did not use to take part in
the listening lesson voluntarily because of many difficulties they had to cope with when
listening such as the complicated materials, the shortage of strategies, the speed rate of
the tape, ect. These are the reasons why students stared at the answer keys on the
teacher's book while they were listening and for that the class atmosphere was boring
and students could hardly develop their listening ability.
From the results after innovation, the author could believe that the innovation
was really useful and effective to improve students' listening skill. Students found that
listening was not difficult as they had thought; even it was interesting because the
teacher made the tasks suitable for their competence and guided them to listen better by

providing some appropriate listening strategies. It could not be denied that if the teacher
only adapted the listening tasks without providing them useful strategies to listen, the
change would not be successful. Therefore O'Malley and Chamot (1990) defined that
strategies are the tools for active, self direct involvement needed for developing L2
communicative ability. Although the materials were adapted and the strategies provided,
17


some students admitted that they still found it difficult to overcome their listening
problems and they needed more time, therefore they wanted the teacher slow down the
process of teaching. However, most students completely agreed with the innovation of
the teacher, thus the change really opened an opportunity for students to develop their
listening skill.
Besides, the findings of the current study also indicated that there was a
significant improvement on learning listening of students. Students actively participated
in the listening lesson, they answers and gave comments enthusiastically. According to
Littlewood (1981), listening demands active involvement from the hearer and the hearer
should be encouraged to engage in an active process of listening for meanings. The
results from observation proved that only few students ignored their duty in the
listening class, most students joined in the listening process actively with the hope to
improve their listening skill. Especially, they were released from the teacher's book and
felt self-confident themselves. It could be said that this change brought positive
effectiveness.
According to the results, after the author changed the way to teach listening
lesson, students were contented with what she did. They really liked the way she taught,
the way she made it easier and more interesting. All of students thought that listening
lessons had to be changed if the teacher really wanted to help students. In the previous
listening lessons, the teacher only completed a little part of teaching responsibility
without paying much attention to whether students gained much in the lessons. But in
the results of this study, the teacher asked herself whether she was a good teacher,

whether she knew the real difficulties of students, the teacher also wondered how to do
to help students improve listening skill and when decided to change the way to teach
listening, she asked herself again the effect of the new way she would made. This
presented that there was a change in the teacher's mind and the findings in observation
and interview which were noted down in the teacher's dairy illustrated that the author
had a right decision. Most students paid more attention to the listening the lesson, they
listened to the tape attentively and did the tasks enthusiastically. However there were
some students who paid less attention to the lesson but the author believed the new way
could help students to listen better.
In addition, this study also obtained the satisfaction from the five teachers who
were invited to take part in observing the change made by the author and the attitude of
students with the author's change. Five teachers showed their agreement about the effect
of innovation on students' listening. The most important they saw in this study was that
there were obvious differences between the previous listening lessons and the
innovative listening lessons. Students became active, enthusiastic, and confident in the
lessons instead of being nervous, looking at the teacher's book and doing the tasks in
silence. Although they also admitted that it was difficult to choose the materials that
referred to the topic in the textbook and to cut the tape into key sentences, for the sake
18


of students' development if the teacher determined this little problem could be solved.
According to the opinion of one teacher, innovation was useful and effective to students
but it was unnecessary to make change because it took much teacher's time and students
only learnt English to pass the General Certificate of Secondary Education meanwhile
the GCSE only contained reading, grammar and writing. However, the author stated
that innovation was necessary due to the fact that listening would be useful for students
in their jobs after university graduate.
Finally, the current research confirmed that the innovation had positive effects on
students' listening. Although there were some disappointments, the findings from

observation, interviews and the information transcript in teacher's dairy rewarded for
the author's efforts.
V. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
After I conducted the teaching experiments about this topic in class 10A4, I find
out their positive feedback which improves their listening more.
Result before and after applying the suggested adaptation of listening activities in
textbook ‘Tieng Anh 10’

Class/
Numbe
r
of
Grade
student
s

10A4/
47

Excelle
nt

Listening skill
After applying
(2018-2019)

Before applying (20172018)
6.81%

23.68%

Good

40.90%

62.27%

Average

50%

4.05%

Weak

2.27%

0%

Bad

0%
PART C

0%
CONCLUSION

This study was conducted with the cooperation of the researcher and four English
teachers in English Department as well as grade 10 students at Nong Cong II High
School. The aim of the innovation was to investigate what difficulties grade 10 students

faced with, the effect of innovation on student's listening skill and the students' attitude
19


toward listening after change. From the results of the classroom observation, students'
and teacher's interview and teacher's dairy, the researcher could see the significant
change in listening lessons with the teacher's intervention. Both teachers and students
realized the necessity of the innovation in learning and teaching listening and felt
satisfied with this innovation. Students participated in the lesson eagerly and actively.
This led to the class atmosphere became more interesting. From this result, it could be
sure that the intervention had good impacts on students' participation, the active
learning environment and students could listened better than they used to.
Although there were obvious significant changes in students' listening
improvement, with limited time the limitation of this study was unavoidable. The author
realized that there are still few areas that should be improved in the future.
First, the findings cannot be generalized to all students in Nong Cong II High School.
Therefore further studies should explore the effectiveness of the innovation with higher
number of students and allocate a longer period of time than only six weeks.
Second, the author needs to improve the collection methods. In this study, the
teacher observed her students in listening class and noted down the information on the
teaching dairy by remembering what happened in the class when the lesson finished.
This could not be enough information so that the author should record what was
happening in the class and watched again to have exact information. The researcher also
did not record the interviews with students and teachers, but based on the teacher's
memory and the notes on the dairy. This might miss some useful information. And the
interview questions in the research were still few. Thus, in order to have more and deep
information, the author should ask more questions and record the interviews in the
further studies.
On the whole, although there were some limitations for the first time in doing an
innovation, the researcher felt that it was worth efforts and this research was a good

experience for the author and her staffs. This study also played an important role when
it blew a new wind in teaching listening in Nong Cong II High. Some teachers in the
author's school began to implement other studies with the hope to improve learning
English situation in this school. In the future, the author will continue to try her best to
understand her students and to make her teaching more interesting and effective to her
students.
Confirmation of the Head Master of
Nong Cong II High School

Thanh Hoa April 20th, 2019
I declare that the work contained
in this initiative is result of my own
research.
20


Hoang Thi Thu Trang

REFERENCE
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Teaching Forum, 25(10), 8- 15.
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teaching, 5 (11), 26-29.
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Chang, D. Y. (2007). Changing learning environments for developing listening skills
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/>Chang, M & Lehman, J. D (2002). Learning foreign language through an interactive
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Gruba, P. (1989). A comparison study of audio and video presentation models in tests of
ESL listening comprehension. University of California, Los Angeles.
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Kellerman, S. (1992). I see what you mean: The role of kinetics behaviour in listening
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Londe, Z. C. (2009). The effects of Video Media in English as a second language
listening comprehension tests. Issues in Applied Linguistics, 17 (1), 41-50.
Morley, J. (2001). Aural comprehension instruction: Principle and practices. In M.
Celce-Murcia (Ed.), Teaching English as a second or foreign language. (3rd Ed).
USA: Heinle & Heinle.
Mueller, G. A. (1980). Visual contextual cues and listening comprehension. The modern
language journal. 64 (3), 335-340.
Nichols, R. G. (1980). The struggle to be human. Retrieved from the world wide web
November, 1st 2010: />Petrie, G. M. (2003). ESL teachers’ views on visual language. The reading matrix, 3
(3), 137-167.
Progosh, D. (1996). Using video for listening assessment: Opinion of test-takers. TESL
Canada Journal, 14(1), 33-44.
Richards, J. C. (1983). Listening Comprehension: Approach, Design, and Procedure.
TESOL Quarterly, 17(2), 219 - 240.
Rost, M. (1990). Listening in language learning. New York: Longman.
Sato, M. (2006). Exploring effective English teaching method using film scripts among
poor learners of English. Retrieved from the world wide web November, 1st 2010:
/>Appendix 1: Observation diary before change
The first time.
Time: 7:00 to 7:45 am.
Date: Monday, March 7th, 201.
Events:

1. The teacher warm-up and checked up old lesson.
2. The teacher started to introduce new lesson
3. Listening. Students had to listen and fill the missing words to the blank.
22


4. The teacher asked the students to open their textbooks and asked them read the task
carefully. Then, the teacher played the tape for students to listen at the first time.
5. Teacher asked Ss to give their answer if they can. Most students did not have the
answer and some gave the answers for the blank they know.
6. Teacher played the tape for the second time and asked Ss to give the final answer in
their notebook. Then, two students were called on to write the answers on the board.
7. Teacher played the tape for the last time to check the answers. She paused the tape
whenever the blank appear.
The second time.
Time: 9:40 to 10:25 am.
Date: Friday, March 11th, 2019.
Taking note some main events that related to teaching and learning listening skill:
1. Teacher introduced new lesson
2. For task 1, teacher read the text and asked students to listen carefully
3. Asked Ss to find out new words. Many students used Vietnamese to ask the teacher
about some words they did not understand in the dialogue. Teacher gave Vietnamese
meaning for these new words to Ss.
4. Asked Ss to do the task below the dialogue. Teacher sat on the teacher’s desk.
Sometimes went around the class. Some Ss did exercise, some Ss sat in silence, and
some others chatted to each other.
5. Teacher called some volunteers to answer the questions. Then called 2 Ss in front of
the teacher’s table and 2 Ss at the back of class.

Appendix 2: Questionnaire for students before change

Please tick () or write your answers for the following questions:
1. Which skill do you like most?
A. Writing
B. Reading
C. Listening
D. Speaking
2. Which skill is the most difficult?
A. Writing
B. Reading
C. Listening
D. Speaking
3. Which material your teacher gives use in your listening lesson?
4. What do you think about your listening lesson?
23


5. What do you hope about your listening lesson?
6. How can you suggest for your teacher to improve your listening lesson?
7. In your opinion, what will happen if your teacher uses authentic materials such as
video, picture… in your listening lesson?

Appendix 4: Classroom observation diary after change
The third time.
Time: 9:40 to 10:25 am.
Date: Wednesday, March 30th, 2011.
1. Teacher warm-up students with a game named “cross word” and lead into new
lessons
2. Teacher used some audiovisual materials to motivate students before listening.
3. Students were attracted with these materials and eager to listen.
3. Teacher played the CD three times for students to listen and do the tasks.

4. Students discussed their answers. Sometime they asked the teacher for her help
about vocabulary.

Appendix 5: Questionnaire for students after change
Please tick () or write your answers for the following questions:
1. How do you feel about your listening lessons with using audiovisual materials?
2. Do you like audiovisual materials that your teacher used in your listening lessons?
Yes/ Why?
No/ Why?

24


3. What do you think about the advantages of authentic materials with your listening
lesson?
4. What do you think about the disadvantages of authentic materials with your listening
lesson?
5. Are you satisfied with the change in your listening lesson?
Yes/ Why?
No/Why?
Appendix 6: Interview questions for English teachers
What is your name?
How long have you been teaching English?
How much time do you spend teaching English at school?
At which level is your English?
Which skill do you think is the most difficult to teach?
What are the difficulties for you when teach four skills of English?
What do you think about your listening comprehension lessons?
What do you think about the advantages of audiovisual materials in teaching
listening skill?

9. What do you think about the disadvantages of audiovisual materials in your
teaching listening skill?
10. Are you happy with this change?
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.

Appendix 7:
CLASSROOM OBSERVATION SCHEME
Date:
 Classroom information:
Name of Teacher: Hoang Thi Thu Trang
Number of students: 47
Level of students
Time:


25