An initial evaluation of the activities teachers use for teaching listening skill for 10th form students at Tran Hung Dao high school.

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

HOÀNG THỊ NGÁT

AN INITIAL EVALUATION OF THE ACTIVITIES TEACHERS
USE FOR TEACHING LISTENING SKILL FOR 10TH TEN FORM
STUDENTS AT TRAN HUNG DAO HIGH SCHOOL

Đánh giá bước đầu về hoạt động giáo viên sử dụng
trong giờ dạy kĩ năng nghe hiểu cho học sinh lớp 10
trường THPT Trần Hưng Đạo

MA. MINOR THESIS

FIELD: ENGLISH METHODOLOGY
CODE: 60.14.10

HANOI - 2012


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

HOÀNG THỊ NGÁT

AN INITIAL EVALUATION OF THE ACTIVITIES TEACHERS
USE FOR TEACHING LISTENING SKILL FOR 10TH TEN FORM
STUDENTS AT TRAN HUNG DAO HIGH SCHOOL

Đánh giá bước đầu về hoạt động giáo viên sử dụng
trong giờ dạy kĩ năng nghe hiểu cho học sinh lớp 10
trường THPT Trần Hưng Đạo
MA. MINOR THESIS

FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY
CODE: 60.14.10
SUPERVISOR: Vò mai trang, M.A

HANOI – 2012


TABLE OF CONTENT
TABLE OF CONTENT ................................................................................ iv
LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES ............................................................. vii
ABBREVIATIONS ...................................................................................... viii
PART A: INTRODUCTION ..................................................................... 1
1. Rationale .................................................................................................. 1
2. Aim of the study ....................................................................................... 2
3. Research questions ................................................................................... 2
4. Scope of the study .................................................................................... 3
5. Methods of the study ............................................................................... 3
6. Design of the study ................................................................................... 3
PART B: DEVELOPMENT ...................................................................... 5
Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW ....................................................... 5
1.1. Theory on listening comprehension ....................................................... 5
1.1.1. Definition of listening .............................................................. 5
1.1.2. Classification of listening ......................................................... 6
1.1.2.1. Real – life listening ..................................................... 6

1.1.2.2. Classroom listening .................................................... 7
1.2. Listening teaching skills ........................................................................ 8
1.2.1. Grammar – translation method ................................................. 8
1.2.2. Grammar method ..................................................................... 8
1.2.3. Audio – lingual method ............................................................ 9
1.2.4. Task – based method ................................................................ 9
1.3. Stages of a listening lesson .................................................................... 9
1.3.1. Pre - listening ........................................................................... 9
1.3.2. While - listening....................................................................... 10
1.3.3. Post - listening ......................................................................... 11
1.4. Theory on activities ............................................................................... 11
1.4.1. Definition of activities.............................................................. 11

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1.4.2. Classification of activities ........................................................ 12
1.4.3. Criteria for Activities Evaluation ............................................. 13
1.5. Adapting material .................................................................................. 14
Chapter 2: METHODOLOGY .................................................................. 15
2.1. Situation analysis ................................................................................... 15
2.1.1. The setting of the study ............................................................ 15
2.1.2. Subjects.................................................................................... 15
2.2. Instrument for collecting data ............................................................... 17
2.3. Description of procedure for collecting data ........................................ 18
2.3.1. Survey questionnaires .............................................................. 18
2.3.2. Interview .................................................................................. 19
2.3.3. Class observation ..................................................................... 20
2.4. Procedures ............................................................................................. 20
Chapter 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION................................. 21

3.1. Data analysis of teachers‟ survey questionnaire and interview ............... 21
3.2. Data analysis of students‟ survey questionnaire and interview ............... 23
3.3. Data analysis of class observation .......................................................... 31
Chapter 4: FINDINGS AND SUGGESTIONS ......................................... 35
4.1. Major findings ...................................................................................... 35
4.1.1. The current situation of teaching and learning listening skill .... 35
4.1.2. The current situation of listening activities used by teachers
at Tran Hung Dao high school ................................................. 35
4.1.3. The students‟ evaluation of the activities available in the
text book and their suggestions ................................................ 36
4.1.4. Evaluation of the listening activities used by teachers at THD
high school ............................................................................... 36
4.1.5. The students‟ preference for class listening activities and their
perception on authentic listening ............................................. 37
4.2. Suggestions ........................................................................................... 38

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4.2.1. Improving the listening activities available in the text book .... 38
4.2.2. Improving the ways that the teachers use listening activities .... 39
4.2.3. Using authentic materials and situations ................................... 39
4.2.4. Useful activities for three stages of a listening lesson ............... 40
PART C: CONCLUSION .......................................................................... 41
1. Recapitulation.......................................................................................... 41
2. Limitations and suggestions for further study .......................................... 42
REFERENCES ........................................................................................... 43
APPENDIXES ............................................................................................ I

LIST OF TABLES AND charts

Tables:

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Table 1: The current situation of using listening activities
Table 2: The ways teachers use listening activities
Table 3: Students‟ attitude towards listening
Table 4: Students‟ evaluation of the activities used by the teacher
Table 5: Students‟ evaluation of the activities available in the textbook
Table 6: Students’ perception on the authentic listening
Charts:

Chart 1: Pre-listening activities used by teachers and students‟ preference
Chart 2: While-listening activities used by teacher and students‟ preference
Chart 3: Post-listening activities used by teacher and students‟ preference

ABBREVIATION
THD

Tran Hung Dao

iv


CLT

Communicative Language Teaching

v

PART A: INTRODUCTION
1 Rationale
It can be denied that nowadays English is one of the most popular languages
in all over the world. In the era of globalization and international exchange, English
has become the main means of communication in many fields of our life such as
medicine, science, technology, sports, education, etc. Therefore, teaching and
learning English have been paid much attention in every country.
In Viet Nam in recent years the number of people who want to know English
has become increasing and teaching and learning English have paid much more
attention. In most schools, through out the country, English has become a
compulsory subject. However, how to teach and learn English effectively is not
simple. Compared to other language skills, listening is considered as one of the
most difficult one for both teachers and students. Many studies have been done to
seek the ways to make listening lessons less difficult, to give students more
confidence, and also some practical strategies to help them study listening skill
better. Like many teachers at other high schools, the teachers of English at THD
high school also wish and always try their best to make listening lessons more
interesting and attractive to their students. Despite their great effort, the teachers
still fail to get students involve in their lessons and a lot of the students fail to take
the listening input so they can hardly understand the spoken messages. That is the
reason why many of them get bored or become stressful and ignorant when listening
classes start even though all of them agree listening skill a very important language
skill. Facing to this situation, as one of the English teachers at this school, I would
like to do something to improve our teaching and learning English in general and
listening skill in particular.
It is obvious that the activities teachers choose and the ways they organize
the activities play an important role in the success of a listening lesson as suitable
and attractive activities can make the listening lesson more interesting and arouse

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the students‟ interest in listening. Needless to say, it is necessary for the teachers to
know what listening activities their students would like to take part in and what
activities are really effective to them. For those reasons, the researcher would like to
conduct a study on “An initial evaluation of activities teachers use for teaching
listening comprehension skill for 10th form students at Tran Hung Dao high school”
with the hope of helping the teachers of English at THD high school to apply the
suitable and effective listening activities to teach listening skill more efficiently.
2 Aims of the study
The study aims at:
 Investigating the current English listening teaching and learning situations at
THD high school.
 Identifying the activities teachers at THD high school often use for teaching
English listening comprehension and giving an initial evaluation of these
activities.
 Giving some suggestions to the teachers at THD high school in applying
suitable listening activities to make their listening lessons more effective
thereby enhancing students‟ interest in listening lessons.
3. Research questions
To achieve the above aims, the study focuses on finding out the answers of the
following questions:
1. What kinds of activities and the ways do teachers at THD high school use to
teach listening comprehension?
2. What are teachers‟ and students‟ attitude towards these activities in term of
authenticity, suitability and integration?
3. What activities can teachers use in order to teach listening skill more
effectively?

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4. Scope of the study
Though the study focuses on evaluation of activities teachers use for teaching
English listening comprehension skill, due to the limitation of time and page
numbers of the minor thesis, the researcher can only conduct a survey on the
students of 10th form and ten teachers of English at THD high school to identify
some activities to help them better in teaching and learning listening skill. their
evaluation of the listening activities used by teachers, after that suggest
5. Methods of the study
To achieve the aims mentioned above, the study was carried out with data
collected from different sources: two questionnaires were designed for collecting
data for analysis from students and teachers at THD high school. The researcher
also interviewed some teachers and students to double-check the information
obtained from the survey questionnaires. Beside survey questionnaires and
interview, the researcher also makes some class observations to collect information
needed for the study.
6. Design of the study
The study is divided into three parts:
- Part A: presents an overview of the study in which the rationale for the research,
the aims, the research questions, the scope of the study, the research method, as well
as the design of the study were briefly presented.
- Part B: includes 4 chapters as follow
Chapter 1 presents the concepts relevant to the research topic such as theory on
listening comprehension including definition, classification of listening as well as
some ways of teaching listening skill and stages of listening lesson. In this chapter
the researcher also mentioned theory related to activities as definition, classification
as well as criteria to evaluate activities and some ways adapting material.

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Chapter 2 deals with description of the subjects, instrument of the study and
description of the procedure.
Chapter 3 is a focus on data collection and discussion.
Chapter 4 points out major finfings of the study and some suggestions will be
given.
- Part C: summarizes the main issues of the whole study, presents limitations of the
research and makes recommendation for further research in the same field.

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PART B: DEVELOPMENT
Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
To provide a theoretical background to the study, this chapter is devoted to
the reexamination of concepts most relevant to the thesis‟s topic. It includes three
sections. The first section addressed major issues reflecting the theory on listening,
including definition, classification of listening, some methods to teach listening skill
and the discussion of three stages of the listening lesson. Come up next in this
chapter are major issues in theory on activities including definition, classification of
activities and criteria for activities evaluation. The last section included some
theoretical discussions about materials adaptation. Therefore, this chapter can be
seen as the theoretical foundation for the applications for the study in chapter 3.
1.1. Theory on listening comprehension
1.1.1. Definition of listening
Listening is believed to be one of the most important skills in learning a
language. It is considered as the key language skill; hence, there have been varieties

of definitions of listening which hold different views towards the concept.
According to Rost (1994), listening is referred to a complex process that
enables us to understand spoken language. Harmer (2001, p197) categorizes
listening into receptive skill, the way in which people extract meaning form the
discourse they hear or see.
Wolvin and Coakley (1985) hold the same idea. They see listening as "the
process of receiving, attending to and assigning meaning to aural stimuli". This
definition indicates that listening is a complex process which students have to deal
with. The task of listening is not only perception of sound, but it also requires
comprehension of meaning
Scott Shelton (2008) thinks that listening effectively is a demanding and
involved process. One must be able to deal with different accents or pronunciation,
unfamiliar lexical items and syntactic structures, competing background noise, and

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also make a conscious effort to not 'switch off' or become distracted while listening.
All of this must be achieved and dealt with more or less simultaneously in order to
identify and understand the meaning in any given message.
Anderson and Lynch (1988) pointed out that listening is really a receptive
skill along side with reading skills and the role of the listeners is no longer passive
but active. After a period of listening the learners are exposed to be able to talk or
write about what they have heard, that is the objectives of listening comprehension.
Basing on the different definitions of listening mentioned above, it can be
concluded that listening comprehension is an active process during which the
listener constructs meaning from oral input and this is done by applying knowledge
to the incoming sounds.
1.1.2. Classification of listening
There are many different types of listening. We can classify these according to

a number of variables, including listening purposes, the role of the listener and the
types of text being listened to.
1.1.2.1. Real-life listening
Many students feel a big gap between listening activities in the classroom and
actual situation. This is because most listening materials including dialogues in text
books are very grammar-oriented and controlled in many ways. The speakers often
speak with perfectly controlled speech, voice, tone, accent and correct grammar.
Whereas, in real-life conversations learners encounter various people with different
gender, age, accent, speed, voice, tone. There may be improper grammar usage,
incomplete sentences, redundancy, contractions, overlap and so forth.
There are two ways which people often listen in real-life, they are “casual”
and “focus” listening.
“Casual” listening

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A lot of students have a habit of listening to a radio while studying or the
television is on while we are doing something else. We listen with no particular
purpose. This kind of listening is called “casual” listening, the typical feature is that
we do not listen closely and intentionally, thus we may not remember much of what
we hear or nothing is left in our mind.
“Focus” listening
“Focus” listening happens when listening for a particular purpose to get the
information we need to know or to study the language. In this case we often listen
with much attention, but we do not listen to every thing with equal concentration.
There is an association between listener expectation and purpose and his
comprehension. If the listener expects and needs are intentional, his listening is
likely accurately perceived and understood than that which is expected, irrelevant or
helpful.

1.1.2.2. Classroom listening
Class-room listening may be divided into intensive listening and extensive
listening.
Intensive listening
Intensive listening is the careful, focused listening to a short passage for
detailed information or full comprehension, for example, listening to a dialogue on
the tape to study its structures, intonation patterns in an English class.
Listening intensively is quite important to understand the language form of the
text as we have to understand both the lexical and grammatical units that lead to
form meaning. So, intensive listening requires attention to specific items of
language, sound or factual detail such as words, phrase, grammatical units,
pragmatic units, sound changes (vowel reduction and consonant assimilation),
stress, intonation and pauses etc.

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Extensive listening
Extensive listening is freer and more general listening to natural language for
general ideas, not for a particular detail and not necessary under the teacher‟s direct
guidance. The listening passage for extensive listening can be long or short. The
language that is used in the type of listening is often within the students‟ current
ability so that they find it pleasing and interesting when they are listening. With this
type of listening, students are not reinforcing a structure or practicing a grammar
point linked to the rest of the course. This type of listening has also a greater ease
than other types as it is concerned to promote overall comprehension of a text and
never requires learners to follow every word and understand them. Learners need to
comprehend the text as a whole which is called global understanding. Activities in
this section must be chosen in terms with the proficiency level of the listeners.
It is advisable that students to should do lots of intensive listening practice

before move on to extensive English listening practice. This helps to build a base of
English that they have memorized. The new English that they hear during extensive
listening can then fit into that base and help them grow it.
1.2. Listening teaching skills
In the article about teaching listening, Underwood (1989, p90-109) pointed
out that there are at least four common methods of teaching second or foreign
language listening: grammar-translation, grammar-method, audio-lingual method
and task-based method.
Grammar- translation method: By this method, students listen to a description
of the rules of the second language in the first language. As a result, when the
second language is used, the focus of any listening is on translation of lexical items
or grammar structures.
Grammar method: to follow this method, the teacher requires students to look
at a written text while they listen to a recording. This forces them to do several
things: identify words by their position in the sentence, work out the relationship

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between words and phrases, use forward and backward inferencing cues, and make
intelligent guesses based on textual cues.
Audio-lingual method: Audio-lingual method of listening emphasizes first
listening to pronunciation and grammar forms and then imitating those forms by
way of drills and exercises. Dialogues and drill are the basis of classroom practice
with this method. Students are encouraged to listen carefully either to the taped
recording, or a teacher reading out, a dialogue, or a drill. They then record their own
version or respond to cues from the teachers to repeat parts of the dialogue or drill.
Basically, the more the students repeat a correct phrase or sentence, the stronger of
their memory of the structure will be.
Task-based method: this method places stress on activities or tasks that

learners do in class in order to develop their communicative competence. A taskbased syllabus should be constructed according to the difficulty of the tasks
required of the learners at different stages in a course.
In short, the four methods of the teaching listening are not mutually exclusive
and in reality, they may be mixed in any particular course or class. However,
nowadays, with the appearance of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT),
teaching listening seems to be more of meaningful to students due to the fact that they
have chance to develop their listening skills and other language skills as well.
1.3. Stages of a listening lesson
A listening lesson can be divided in to 3 main stages: Pre-listening, whilelistening, post-listening. Each stage has its own aims and activities.
1.3.1. Pre-listening
It is obvious that learners will find it extremely difficult to do a listening
lesson when they have no idea of what they are going to hear. Even if the sounds or
the words which they hear are familiar, they may still be unable to understand
because they lack certain kinds of knowledge of the topic, setting or the relationship
between the speakers. Teachers can help their students to arouse their expectations

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and see the purpose before a listening lesson. This kind of work is described as
“pre-listening activities”.
According to Underwood (1989), pre-listening activities can consist of a
whole range of activities, including: the teacher giving background information, the
students reading something relevant, the students looking at pictures, discussion of
the topic/situation, a question and answer session, written exercises, following the
instructions for the while listening activity and consideration of how the whilelistening will be done. As for her the time available, the material is available or not,
the interest of the class and the teacher, the place in which the work is being carried
out, the nature and the content of the listening text itself are some main factors that
the teacher should take into consideration when choosing an activity. If one of these
is forgotten, the whole process of activity can be failed. When the teacher pays

attention to this factor properly, the activity chosen for students will be more
specific and effective.
1.3.2. While-listening
The activities that students are asked to do during the time they are listening
to the text can be understood as while-listening stage. The purpose of this stage is to
help students develop their skills of eliciting messages from spoken language.
Rixon (1986) pointed out the purposes of while-listening stage is to challenge and
guide students to handle the information and the message from the listening text.
Activities of this stage must be interesting and carefully chosen which should be
suitable with students' ability. This means that while-listening activities can be done
by most students, from the slow students to the best ones. Because failure can
quickly discourage students to listen, in the early stage, activities which are tricky
should be used sparingly, but sometimes it is necessary to give students some
challenges.

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1.3.3. Post-listening
The activities done by students after the listening completed is known as
“post-listening”. Some post-listening activities are extensions of the work done at
the pre- listening and while-listening stage and some relate only loosely to the
listening text itself. According to Underwood (1989), the purposes of this stage are:
to check whether the learners have understood what they need to or not; to see why
some students have missed parts of the message or fail to understand the message;
to give the students the opportunity to consider the attitude and manner of the
speakers of the listening text; to expand on the topic or language of the message and
to transfer learned things to another context; to make introduction for the planned
work. She also states that, when selecting post-listening activities: the teachers
should keep in mind the following factors: the amount of language work the teacher

wish to do in relation to the particular listening text, the time which is allowed to do
post-listening work, the speaking, reading or writing skills should be included in the
post-listening work, the students should work in pair or in groups, and the chosen
activity should be made motivating.
1.4. Theory on activities
1.4.1 Definitions of activities
There are many definitions of activities. According to the webpage
myeurope.eun.org, activity is defined as “collection of people, work items,
communications, and processes that represent a collaborative effort to achieve a
goal”. From this definition we can infer that an activity is a way for us to organize
our work and collaborate with others in a share working condition and coordination
in a small teams. However, more narrow definition, such as that presented by
definition.net an activity can be understood as a state or quality of being active;
nimbleness; agility; vigorous action or operation energy; active force; as, an
increasing variety of human activities.

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1.4.2. Classification of activities
Activities can be classified into many types. Within the scope of a unit
Simone-a teacher mentioned in the book “Designing Language Course. A guide for
teachers” (Graves, 2000) classifies activities into four types: warm-up activities,
presentation activities, practice activities and consolidation activities. This
classification will be familiar to teachers who have learned about a three stage
lesson planning model such as presentation, practice and production. Whereas,
according to features of activities, activities can be classified into three types,
including tasks, exercises, and between task and exercise (Rod Ellis, 2003)
Tasks


Richard (1983) and Nunan (1989) define task is an activity that involve
language. Bygate (2011) have the same point of view about tasks. They
stated a task is an activity requires learners to use language. According to
Lee (2000) a task can be defined as a “classroom activity or exercise”.

Exercises
According to Macmillan dictionary, exercise is defined as an activity or set
of activities that someone do or a set of written questions that someone answer in
order to learn how to do something. An exercise usually has a restrictive focus on a
single language element, and has a linguistic outcome.
Between task and exercise
Some language-learning activities can not easily classify as a task or an exercise.
They have the features of both. There is no exact name to call this type of activity;
Rod Ellis (2003) calls this with the term “task-like” or “exercises alongside tasks”.
They are obviously seen as an exercise; however, they have some features of tasks
or vice versa.
It is widely known that in language teaching and learning tasks are good for
improving students‟ ability in using language to communicate because they are
related to daily life. They are ultimately free to use what grammar constructs and

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vocabulary they want. This allows them to use all the language they know, rather
than just the 'target language' of the lesson, which may further motivate them in
their language learning; whereas, exercises are beneficial especially when focusing
on accuracy. In order to become successful in language teaching, it is wise for
teachers to combine both tasks and exercises to fulfill the goal of each lesson.
1.4.3. Criteria for Activities Evaluation

According to Dudley- Evans and St. John (1998), in the evaluation process,
evaluators must take evaluation criteria into account before any evaluation takes
place. Graves, 2000 synthesized fifteen criteria that should be paid attention to
when designing listening activities. However, in this paper, the author only
mentions some most frequent consideration criteria. The following is the list of
these criteria:
- Authenticity: It means that the teaching activities should correspond to real-world
ones. To achieve this criteria, activities should:
+ help students develop specific skills they need for authentic
communication.
+ focus on students‟ outside class needs, if appropriate.
+ use authentic text or realia when possible.
+ build students‟ confidence so that they can feel confident in transferring
what they lean outside of the class.
- Suitability: Activities should be suitable with students‟ ability and needs, draw on
what students know (their experience, their current situation) and be relevant to
them so that they can engage students‟ interest.
- Integration: Activities should integrate the four skills of speaking, listening,
reading and writing because the four skills mutually reinforce each other.

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It is obvious that the work of developing and choosing evaluative criteria is
rather subjective and depends on what the evaluators consider to be important. In this
evaluation research, the three most frequent criteria including authenticity, suitability
and integration suggested by Graves, 2000 were adopted to see how much activities
used by teachers of English at THD high school to teach a listening lesson match with
the aims and the requirements of the listening comprehension lesson.
1.5. Materials adaptation

Materials adaptation is a process of matching the teaching material with the
needs, interests of learners, and teachers‟ own capabilities. Materials adaptation
plays an important part in the process of language teaching and learning. It makes
the teaching materials more relevant to the needs of students and to the objectives of
the course, and therefore, would stimulate the effectiveness of teaching and
learning. Its purpose is to maximize the appropriateness of teaching materials in
context, by changing some of the internal characteristics of a course book to better
suit the particular circumstances. McDonough and Shaw (1993: 86) state that
reasons for adaptation rely on four main aspects namely “language use; skills;
classroom organization; supplementary material.” and there are also six important
ways of modifying materials. They are adding; deleting or omitting; modifying;
simplifying; re-ordering; re-placing (See Appendix 6)

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Chapter 2: METHODOLOGY
This chapter consists of three parts. The first part focuses on the situation of
the study, in which the settings for the study, the subject of the study, as well as the
description of the text book are discussed. Instruments for the study are discussed in
the second part. The last part is the description of procedure for the study.
2.1. Situation analysis
2.1.1. The setting of the study
The study was conducted at THD high school, where the author is teaching.
The school was set up 35 years ago with only two classes. However, today it is
widened with 30 classes. The size of the class is rather large. Each class has from 43
to 50 students. There is no lab for learning English listening skill. Students have to
learn listening with cassette players in their classrooms. This is inconvenient
condition for teaching and learning listening as crowded class and learning listening
in classrooms can be very noisy so that students can not concentrate on the lesson.

Furthermore, it is difficult for teachers to control the class and hold activities with a
large size class.
2.1.2. Subject of the study
2.1.2.1. Teachers of English
The school now has eleven English teachers including the researcher. They
are aged between 30 and 53. Eight are female teachers and only two are male ones.
Two of them graduated from the English department, college of foreign languages,
Viet Nam National University. Eight others are from the English department, Hai
Phong University. One of them completed their post-graduate courses. All of the
teachers are willing and enthusiastic toward their teaching. However, they all meet
some difficulties when teaching at the school. First, the teachers do not have enough
materials, such as cassette, CDs and reference materials, which are very necessary
for both the teachers and students. The second difficulty is that the teachers do not

15


have chances to contact with native speakers or specialists who can give very
precious help and advice. Last but not least, the living condition of the people in An
Lao district where the school located in is still very low; therefore, not only students
and parents but also the teachers have many difficulties in their learning and
teaching.
2.1.2.2. Tenth-form students
The subjects of the study were 140 students from class 10C1, 10C3, 10C9 at
THD high school. They are ages from fifteen to sixteen. Most of them come
from comparatively poor families so their learning condition is not good enough.
Their parents can hardly afford to pay even small amount of money for their
children‟s schooling. A dictionary, a cassette player or even some English books
are beyond their reach. Their tools are the text book “Tieng Anh 10” only. Although
most of them already learnt English for at least four years at lower secondary

school, their knowledge of English is still poor and limited. Hardly can they say a
correct sentence in the target language and hardly hear anything when first learning
how to listen. In addition to this, they have no chance to communicate with native
speakers so that they are not familiar with their accent. That is reason why listening
is the most difficult skill for them and most of them are not interested in this skill.
Therefore, it is necessary for the teachers to design interesting activities that suitable
with students‟ interests, ability and meet their needs so that can arouse their interest
in learning listening skill.
2.1.2.3. The text book
The Tieng Anh 10 textbook consists of 16 units for two term organized broad
and interesting topics: a day in the life of…, school talks, people background,
special education, technology and you, an excursion, the mass media, the story in
my village, undersea world, conservation, national parks, music, films and cinema,
the world cup, cities and historical places. Each unit has one listening lesson. The
teacher has to cover it in one period. The topics of the listening texts are various.

16


Generally, many of them are of students‟ interest, familiar and suitable with
students‟ ability. For example, in unit 2 students are asked to listen to some small
talks at school or a text about a picnic at Botanical garden of students in unit 6, or
interesting topics about Van Cao, a well-known Vietnamese musician is provided in
unit 12.
However, there are also some listening texts too difficult for students as these
listening texts containing many new and difficult words, such as listening text about
whales in unit 9 or about Vang Trang Khuyet in unit 4. Many students find it
difficult to comprehend the listening text about the statue of Liberty in unit 15 or
about the accent town of Hoi An in unit 16 because of their lack of background
knowledge.

2.2. Instrument for collecting data
The researcher used survey questionnaire, interview and classroom
observation as the sources for data collection. According to Veronica.A Thurmond,
(2001), triangular method involves gathering data from multiple sources so that the
finding data could be more persuasive. The author of this research chose these three
methods for data collection because of the following reasons:
As for Survey questionnaire it is one of the most common methods of data
collection. It is easily designed and can help the researcher collect a large amount of
information only within a short time. According to Wallace (2001), the
questionnaire is a popular means of collecting data as it enables the researcher to
collect data in field settings. Furthermore, it is rather easy for the researcher to
summarize, analyze and report the data because all the answers are given to the
same questions. Finally, the questionnaires can consist of both close and open
questions so that the informants have chances to express their opinion individually.
For the above reasons, doing the questionnaires, the researcher can investigate the
teachers‟ and students‟ attitude to the activities used in listening lessons.

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Another tool of the study is classroom observation. Wallace (2001) asserts
that it is an important technique for the researcher to record what is happening at the
time that the teaching and learning of the foreign languages take place. In fact, with
classroom observation, the researcher can watch, follow and record all activities that
the teacher and the students are performing in a particular place. Therefore, it is a
very useful tool for the researcher to check the reliability of the data collected from
the survey questionnaires
By using interviews, the researcher could have more in-depth on certain
aspect that could not be unveiled from questionnaires (Fraenkel & Wallen, 1996).
Besides following closely a list of questions, it creates the chance for the researcher

to flexibly extend the content to the best exploit the information from the
interviewees. Furthermore, respondents‟ non-verbal expressions conveyed through
their verbal talks revealed major hints for gaining an insight into their perception
and attitude towards the matter investigated. As a result, data collection was not
only quantitative but also qualitative.
2.3. Description of procedure for collecting data
2.3.1. Questionnaires:
Two questionnaires were designed for both teachers and students to gather
the data for the study.
2.3.1.1. Questionnaire for teachers
The questionnaire including 6 questions designed for teachers with three
main purposes (See Appendix 1). Firstly, through the answers to the two first
questions, the researcher will analyze the current situation of using listening
activities of the teachers at THD high school. Secondly, questions 3, 4 are aimed at
finding out teachers‟ opinion about listening activities available in the text book and
what they have done or changed to improve them. Finally, the answers of questions
5,6 will help the researcher collect information to analyze the problem that the
teachers come across when designing the listening activities and their evaluation of

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