Hiệu quả hoạt động chuyển đổi thông tin trong việc dạy nghe cho học sinh lớp 10 không chuyên tiếng anh

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY
Hanoi university of languages and international studies
Department of postgraduate studies

----------

NGO THI THANH THUY

EFFECTIVENESS OF INFORMATION-TRANSFER ACTIVITIES IN
TEACHING LISTENING FOR THE 10TH FORM NON- ENGLISH
MAJOR STUDENTS AT BACNINH SPECIALIZED HIGH SCHOOL
(HIệU QUả HOạT động chuyển đổi thông tin trong việc
dạy nghe cho học sinh lớp 10 không chuyên TIếNG anh
tại tr-ờng thpt chuyên bắc ninh)

MA MINOR THESIS

FIELD: ENGLISH METHODOLOGY
CODE: 60 14 10

HANOI, 2009


VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY
HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

Department of Postgraduate Studies

NGO THI THANH THUY

EFFECTIVENESS OF INFORMATION-TRANSFER ACTIVITIES IN

TEACHING LISTENING FOR THE 10TH FORM NON- ENGLISH
MAJOR STUDENTS AT BACNINH SPECIALIZED HIGH SCHOOL
(HIệU QUả của hoạt động chuyển đổi thông tin trong việc
dạy nghe cho học sinh lớp 10 không chuyên TIếNG ANH
tại tr-ờng THPT chuyên bắc ninh)

MA MINOR THESIS

FIELD:

ENGLISH METHODOLOGY

CODE:

60 14 10

SUPERVISOR: PHAN THI VAN QUYEN, MA

Hanoi, 2009


v
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Certificate of originality .............................................................................................................. i
Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... ii
Abstract ..................................................................................................................................... iii
Table of contents ....................................................................................................................... iv
Lists of abbreviations ...................................................................................................................v
List of tables and charts ............................................................................................................. vi

PART 1: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale ..........................................................................................................................1
2. Scope of the study.............................................................................................................2
3. Significance of the study ..................................................................................................2
4. Aims and research questions of the study ........................................................................2
5. Method of the study ..........................................................................................................2
6. Design of the study ...........................................................................................................3
PART 2: DEVELOPMENT
Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW ..........................................................................................4
1.1. Background concepts of listening ..................................................................................4
1.1.1. Definition of listening ..........................................................................................4
1.1.2. Listening skill .......................................................................................................6
1.1.3. Listening process ..................................................................................................7
1.1.3.1. Bottom-up process ..................................................................................7
1.1.3.2. Top-down process ...................................................................................7
1.1.4. Stages of a listening lesson ..................................................................................8
1.1.4.1. Pre-listening stage ...................................................................................8
1.1.4.2. While-listening stage ...............................................................................9
1.1.4.3. Post-listening stage..................................................................................9
1.1.5. Listening activities ...............................................................................................9
1.1.5.1. Pre-listening activities .......................................................................... 10
1.1.5.2. While-listening activities ..................................................................... 10
1.1.5.3. Post-listening activities ........................................................................ 11
1.2. Background concepts of Information-transfer activities ........................................... 12


vi
1.2.1. Definition of Information-transfer activities .................................................... 12
1.2.2. Why should we employ Information transfer-activities................................... 14
1.2.3. When should we employ Information transfer-activities ................................. 16

Chapter 2: THE STUDY .......................................................................................................... 19
2.1. Background of the study ............................................................................................. 19
2.1.1. The settings ........................................................................................................ 19
2.1.2. Population .......................................................................................................... 19
2.1.3. Sampling ............................................................................................................ 20
2.2. Listening material ........................................................................................................ 21
2.3. Data collection instruments ......................................................................................... 22
2.3.1. Survey questionnaires ....................................................................................... 22
2.3.2. Observation........................................................................................................ 22
2.4. Data collection procedures .......................................................................................... 23
2.5. Data analysis ................................................................................................................ 24
2.5.1. Analysis of the Survey questionnaire for teachers ......................................... 24
2.5.2. Analysis of the Survey questionnaire for students ......................................... 30
2.5.3. Analysis of the researcher’s class observation ............................................... 36
Chapter 3: MAJOR FINDINGS AND SUGGESTIONS ........................................................ 38
3.1. Major findings ............................................................................................................. 38
3.1.1. Teachers’ and students’ attitude toward IT activities ...................................... 38
3.1.2. How teachers of English at BnSHS employ IT activities ............................... 39
3.1.3. Difficulties teachers and students at BnSHS encounter in employing IT
activities .............................................................................................................................. 39
3.2. Suggestions for more effective employment of IT activities ..................................... 40
3.2.1. Using some soft-wares to edit listening materials ............................................ 40
3.2.2. Making the visual aids more attractive ............................................................. 41
PART 3: CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................ 44
References
Appendices


iv

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
BnSHS

: Bacninh Specialized High School

IT

: Information-Transfer

MOET

: Ministry of Education and Training

LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS
TABLES
Table 1 :

Johnson’s classification of a sample …………………………………………………...….

20

Table 2 :

Aspects of a listening text students pay attention to ……...……………………………

27

Table 3 :

Students’ preferences for activities in while-listening stage …………………………

28

Table 4 :

Problems students encounter in IT activities ……………………………………………

30

Table 5.1 : Teachers’ preferences for activities in while-listening stage ………………………..

31

Table 5.2 : Common tendency of Teachers’ preferences for activities in while-listening
stage……………………………………………………………………………………………...

31

Table 6 :

Aims of employing IT activities …………………………………………………………….

34

Table 7 :

Teachers’ comments after employing IT activities ……………………………………

34

Table 8 :

Teachers’ difficulties when employing IT activities ……………………………………

35

Table 9 :

Teachers’ suggestions …………………………………………………………………………

35

Chart 1 :

The place students come from ………………………………………………………………

24

Chart 2 :

The time students have been learning English …………………………………………… 25

Chart 3 :

Students’ evaluation on language skills …………………………………………………… 25

Chart 4 :

Students’ interest in listening skill …………………………………………………………

26

Chart 5 :

The necessity of improving listening skill at high schools ……………………………

27

Chart 6 :

Students’ evaluation on IT activities in their current textbook………………………

29

Chart 7 :

Students’ preferences for participation in IT activities …………………………………

29

Chart 8 :

Teaching-years of teachers at BnSHS ……………………………………………………

30

Chart 9 :

Listening aspects ………………………………………………………………………………

32

Chart 10 :

Teachers’ evaluation on IT activities in their current textbook ………………………

33

Chart 11 :

Frequency of IT activities in teaching listening …………………………………………

33

CHARTS


PART 1: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale
The real need for good communication skills in English has created a huge demand for
English teaching and learning around the world. Millions of people today want to be able
to master English to a high level of accuracy and fluency. Employers too insist that their
employees have good English language skills. The demand for an appropriate teaching
methodology is therefore as strong as ever.
Currently with the entry into the WTO and opening markets to the outside world, language
policies of Vietnam put more emphasis on communication skills in English than ever. The
Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) of Vietnam made reforms in national
education system. In 2006 the MOET introduced a new high school curriculum. This lead
to a significant change in English teaching and learning methods: from deep-rooted
grammar-translation method to communicative one. English 10 designed by a group of

authors: Hoang Van Van, Hoang Thi Xuan Hoa, Do Tuan Minh, Nguyen Thu Phuong,
Nguyen Quoc Tuan consists of 16 teaching units. Each unit contains five 45-minute periods
corresponding to five parts: Reading, Speaking, Listening, Writing and Language focus.
Among the four language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing), listening is
considered to be the most difficult and challenging for both teachers and students, which
leads to the fact that non- English major students, at Bacninh Specialized High schools are
afraid of learning listening. They seem to neglect listening skill during their language
learning process. As a result their listening skill is often weak.
Information- transfer (IT) activities have now become commonplace in language teaching.
However the application of these activities in teaching Listening for non-English majors at
high schools has not got much concern.
This fact has encouraged the author to investigate into the effectiveness of Informationtransfer activities employed by teachers of English at Bacninh Specialized High School.
Hopefully, the study will be helpful for the author and other teachers to find out
appropriate ways to handle Information-transfer activities effectively to develop students‟
listening skill.


-22. Scope of the study
Listening is a broad and complex field that many linguists take much time to study. There
have been many activities designed to improve learners‟ listening skill. Therefore my study
focuses mainly on Information-transfer activities employed by teachers of English in
teaching listening for the 10th non- English major students at BnSHS.
3. Significance of the study
The study highlights the important role of listening skill in general and Informationtransfer activities in particular.
The findings of this study reinforces the value of IT activities in teaching listening.
Moreover, the author hopes that the suggestions of this study can help high school teachers
employ IT activities effectively in teaching listening for non- English major students.
4. Aims and research questions of the study
The main purpose of the study is to investigate the effectiveness of Information-transfer
activities employed by teachers of English at Bacninh Specialized High School. The

specific aims of the research are:
 To investigate the teachers‟ and students‟ attitude towards Information-transfer
activities.
 To find out how teachers of English at Bacninh Specialized High School employ
those activities.
 To give some suggestions for employing IT activities more effectively to develop
listening skill of non- English major students at BnSHS.
The investigation has been carried out to answer the following research questions:
(1) What are teachers‟ and students‟ attitude toward IT activities?
(2) How do teachers of English at BnSHS employ those activities?
(3) What are difficulties facing teachers and students at BnSHS in employing IT
activities in teaching and learning listening?
5. Methods of the study
In order to accomplish the study, the author used Survey Research method which is a
study of a large group through direct study of a subset of that group. These research
methods are widely used to gather data at a particular point in time to:
•

Describe the nature of existing conditions


-3•

Identify standards against which existing conditions can be compared

•

Determine the relationships that exist between specific events

Survey methods have been used by second language, bilingual education and foreign

language researchers to study a wide variety of issues that impinge on language learning:
(1) The policies affecting learning and teaching
(2) Program administration
(3) Attitudes of teachers / learners toward a teaching method
(4) Classroom practices
(5) Target language norms
(6) Responses of people toward a language phenomenon
(7) Sociolinguistic studies of language use
(8) The institutional settings
The specific aims of the author are to investigate the teachers‟ and students‟ attitude
towards IT activities and how teachers of English at Bacninh Specialized High School
employ those activities. These aims match with ones of Survey Research method (3Attitudes of teachers / learners toward a teaching method and 4- Classroom practices).
Therefore the author used Survey Research method.
6. Design of the study
The study consists of 3 parts: the introduction, the development and the conclusion.
The first part, “Introduction”, describes the basic information such as rationale, scope,
significance, aims and research questions as well as methods of the study.
The second part, “Development”, comprises 3 chapters:
•

Chapter 1, Literature Review, provides theoretical background of listening and
information-transfer activities.

•

Chapter 2, The study, presents the settings to the study, target population, sample,
instrumentation and data analysis.

•

Chapter 3, Major findings and suggestions, offers some main findings and
recommendations on how to make IT activities more effectively.

The last part, “Conclusion”, is a review of the study, the limitations and directions for
future study.


-4-

PART 2: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter involves different issues in the theories of the listening in a foreign language
and Information-transfer activities. Two main features will be presented: background
concepts of listening and of IT activities.
1.1. Background concepts of listening:
1.1.1. Definition of listening
It seems to be difficult to define what listening is. People in different professions such as
applied linguists, anthropologists, psychologists define listening in many different ways.
That‟s because there is no universally accepted definition for the term “listening‟.
Howatt and Dakin (1974) define listening as the ability to identify and understand what
others are saying. This involves understanding a speaker‟s accent or pronunciation, his
grammar and vocabulary, and grasping his meaning. An able listener is capable of doing
these four things simultaneously.
Thomlison's (1984) definition of listening includes “active listening”, which goes beyond
comprehending as understanding the message content, to comprehension as an act of
empathetic understanding of the speaker. Furthermore Gordon (1985) argues that empathy
is essential to listening and contends that it is more than a polite attempt to identify a
speaker‟s perspectives. Rather more importantly, empathetic understanding expands to
“egocentric prosocial behavior”. Thus, the listener altruistically acknowledges concern for
the speaker‟s welfare and interests.

According to Ronald and Roskelly (1985) listening is an active process requiring the same
skills of prediction, hypothesizing, checking, revising, and generalizing that writing and
reading demand; and these authors present specific exercises to make students active
listeners who are aware of the "inner voice" one hears when writing.
Significance of listening
Listening is the Cinderella skill in second language learning and teaching (Nunan, 1997).
For most people, being able to claim knowledge of a second language means being able to
speak and write in that language. Listening and reading are therefore secondary skills.
However, listening comes into fashion. In the 1960s, the emphasis on oral language skills


-5gave it a boost. It became fashionable again in the 1980s, when Krashen's (1982) ideas
about comprehensible input gained prominence. A short time later, it was reinforced by
James Asher's (1988) Total Physical Response, a methodology drawing sustenance from
Krashen's work, and based on the belief that a second language is learned most effectively
in the early stages if the pressure for production is taken off the learners. During the 1980s,
proponents of listening in a second language were also encouraged by work in the first
language field. Here, people such as Gillian Brown (1990) were able to demonstrate the
importance of developing oracy (the ability to listen and speak) as well as literacy, in
school.
Listening is assuming greater and greater importance in both first and second language
learning and teaching. According to Rivers (1981) listening is used nearly twice as much
as speaking and four to five times as much as reading and writing. That finding confirmed
what Wilt had found in 1950 that people listen 45 percent, speak 30 percent, reading 16
percent and write 9 percent of the time they spend communicating.
By emphasizing the role of comprehensible input, second language acquisition research
has given a major boost to listening. Rost (1994: 141-142) summarized the role of listening
in second language learning as followed:
- Listening is vital in the language classroom because it provides input for the
learners. Without understandable input at the right level, any learning simply

cannot begin.
- Listening to spoken language gives us opportunities to acquire the language - to
pick up structures and vocabulary. If learners are living in a country where English
is the first language, they have plenty of exposure to the language - they hear it all
the time, and acquire it more easily than learners do not hear English spoken
around them. So we need to give these learners as much opportunity to listen to
spoken English as possible.
Doff, A (1988:198) agreed that to have a successful conversation, students must
understand what is said to them. Later the ability to understand spoken English may
become very important. We cannot develop learners‟ communication skill unless we also
develop listening skill. Therefore students need a lot of practice in listening to spoken
language.
Types of listening
There are many different types of listening that can be classified according to a number of
variables, including purpose for listening, the role of the listener, and the type of text being


-6listened to…. These variables are mixed in many different configurations, each of which
will require a particular strategy on the part of the listener. Doff, A (1998:199) pointed out
two ways in which we often listen:
*.“Casual”

listening: we listen with no particular purpose in mind and often without

much concentration, for example listening to the radio while doing some
housework, chatting to a friend. Usually we do not listen attentively if we do not
hear something that particularly interests us, and then we may forget much of what
we hear.
*.“Focused”

listening: we listen for a particular purpose, to find out information we

need to know. Examples of this kind of listening are: listening to a piece of
important news on the radio, listening to someone explaining how to operate a
machine. In these situations, we listen much closely; but we do not listen to
everything we hear with the same concentration – we listen for the most important
points or for particular information.
1.1.2. Listening skill
There have been many terms relating to listening, such as listening ability, listening skill,
listening comprehension, listening performance…but I would like to focus on listening
skill.
Listening skills are related to the main process the teacher used to train learners to be able
to understand listening tasks or to gain listening comprehension in order to reach listening
ability through sub-skills or micro-skills as follows (Field, 1998):
i.

Discrimination or a bottom-up level skill enables learners to distinguish
minimally different words through ear training and teacher‟s dictation.

ii.

Segmentation enables learners to identify words in continuous speech
through the teacher‟s dictation, such as focusing on weak forms.

iii.

Exploration asks learners to work out the spelling of unrecognized words
via the teacher‟s dictation and learner‟s guessing.

iv.

Anticipation or a top-down level skill requires learners to work out what
came next via the teacher‟s playing half a sentence and learners‟
completing.

v.

Reference enables learners to relate pronouns to the items they refer to.

vi.

Monitoring for information requires learners to monitor a long text for
key words.


-7vii.

Relevance asks learners to identify important points made by filling
specific and general points in tables.

Listening skills are believed to be essential for learning since they make students be able to
acquire insights and information, and to achieve success in communicating with others.
1.1.3. Listening process
In recent years there have been two major terms explaining the listening process - rather
unfortunately called “bottom-up” and “top-down.
1.1.3.1. Bottom-up processes
Hedge, T (2000: 230) states that the knowledge of “bottom-up” processing comes from the
work of three groups of researchers: psycholinguists interested in speech perception (for
example Bever 1970); the work of communication researchers (for example Cherry 1957)
and of those interested in memory (for example Neisser 1982).

Bottom-up processing refers to deriving the meaning of the message based on the
incoming language data, from sounds to words, to grammatical relationship, to meaning.
Nunan, D (1999: 200) considers this process as “a process of decoding the sounds that one
hears in a linear fashion, from the smallest meaningful units (or phonemes) to complete
texts”.
During bottom-up processing, stress, rhythm and intonation play a role as we segment
speech into identifiable sounds and impose a structure on these in terms of words, phrases,
clauses, sentences and intonation patterns. /p/ is recognized as being /p/ not /b/, /i:/ as being
/i:/ not /i/ or /e/. These sounds are then combined and the individual words are decoded –
the listener recognizes that (s)he has heard /pi:t/ and not /pit/ or some other word. The
words are then combined into sentences and the listener works out the meaning of /pi:t/ as
in We met Pete yesterday or I bought some peat for the garden.
1.1.3.2. Top-down processes
Top-down processing starts from the opposite side: It refers to utilizing schemata
(background knowledge and global understanding) to derive meaning from and interpret
the message. In other words, it involves the knowledge that a listener brings to a text,
sometimes called “inside the head” information.
According to Hedge, T (2000: 232) top-down listening, then, infers meaning from
contextual clues and from making links between the spoken message and various types of


-8prior knowledge which listeners hold inside their heads. Contextual clues to meaning come
from knowledge of the particular situation, i.e. the speaker or speakers, the setting, the
topic, and the purpose of the spoken text and from knowledge of what has been said
earlier. Let‟s see the following example. Someone told you:
“Pete brought me another present today. It was too late to save it so I buried
it in the garden. I think I’m going to have to put a bell round his neck.”

You will certainly understand all the words in this passage, but do you understand the
meaning? The first sentence probably went quite smoothly. But there was more than just

decoding of words going on. Without your being aware of it, subconscious expectations
were forming in your mind based on your knowledge of the world - Pete is a friend,
probably a man as only the surname is used and the present will be something nice.
Had you worked it out or may be you are still in the dark. You need some contextual
knowledge which can help you understand - not what‟s in the text: Pete is the name of my
cat. Combine that with your knowledge of the world (the habit of cats: bringing their
owners “present” of half dead mice or birds which they‟ve caught; and the fact that the
noise of a bell will prevent the cat from creeping up on them unheard) then you have the
meaning of the passage.
These days it is generally recognized that bottom-up and top-down strategies are
necessary. Learners need to be aware that both of these processes affect their listening, and
they need to be given opportunities to practice employing them.
1.1.4. Stages of a listening lesson
Normally language teachers often facilitate the development of listening skill by creating
listening lessons that guide learners through three stages: pre-listening, while-listening and
post-listening.
1.1.4.1. Pre-listening stage
It is widely accepted that this stage is conducted before learners listen to the text. The prelistening phase is a kind of preparatory work which: “(...) ought to make the context
explicit, clarify purposes and establish roles, procedures and goals for listening” (Rost
1991:232). Thus its main aim is to contextualize the listening text, providing any
information needed to help learners appreciate the setting and the role relationships
between participants.


-9Agreeing with that Hedge, T (2000:249) points out “at this stage the teacher will need to
decide what kind of listening purpose is appropriate to the text. The learners will need to
“tune in” to the context and the topic of the text, perhaps express attitudes towards that
topic, certainly bring to the front of their minds anything that they already know about the
topic and most probably hear and use some of the less familiar language in the text which
would otherwise distract or create anxiety during listening”.

1.1.4.2. While-listening stage
While-listening activities can be shortly defined as all tasks that students are asked to do
during the time of listening to the text. The nature of these activities is to help learners to
listen for meaning that is to elicit a message from spoken language. Rixon (1986:70-1)
points out that, at the while-listening stage students should not worry about interpreting
long questions or giving full answers, but they should concentrate on comprehension,
whether they have understood important information from the passage.
The work at the while-listening stage needs to link in relevant ways to the pre-listening
work. While they listen, learners will need to be involved in an authentic purpose for
listening and encouraged to attend to the next more intensively or more extensively, for
gist or for specific information (Hedge, T. 2000:252)
1.1.4.3. Post-listening stage
This is the last stage of a lesson so it is for student‟s production. Post-listening activities
allow the learners to „reflect‟ on the language from the passage; on sound, grammar and
vocabulary as they last longer than while-listening activities so the students have time to
think, discuss or write (Rixon 1986:64-97 and Underwood 1989: 78).
Activities for this stage are aimed at helping learners to use what they have learnt from the
listening text. Therefore teachers should create and vary the activities for learners to do
depending on their level of English. Hedge, T (2000:252) emphasizes that the work at this
stage can also usefully involve integration with other skills through development of the
topic into reading, speaking and writing activities.
1.1.5. Listening activities
Many activities have been designed to develop listening skills. However when teachers
employ listening activities, they should take into consideration many factors: teaching


- 10 stages (pre, while or post teaching), learners‟ language knowledge, personal general
knowledge or life experience, background knowledge ….
1.1.5.1. Pre-listening activities
At pre-listening stage, Yagang (1993 in Kral ed. 1994:194-95) suggests a variety of

activities, such as:


Brainstorming: where the teacher asks the students to predict the words and
expressions which are likely to appear in the listening passage.



Starting a discussion (Speculating) about the topic (possibly based on visuals and
titles); where the students infer from the title what the topic of a conversation may
be and the teacher encourages them to exchange ideas and opinions about the topic.



Games; e.g. miming the words or expressions



Guiding questions, asked or written by the teacher (ibid.).
Mary Underwood in her book on teaching listening presents some other activities
which can be conducted in pre-listening (1989:35-44):



Looking at a set of pictures and naming or labeling the items which are likely to
occur in the listening text.



Ordering statements or events: teachers give some jumbled sentences referring to

the listening text for students to reorder personally.

1.1.5.2. While-listening activities
During the while-listening phase students usually respond somehow to a listening text:
 Multiple choice: teachers prepare questions about the ideas in the listening text. For
each question, there are three or four options for students to choose from.
 True/false statements: teachers give some true and some deliberately false
statements about the listening text then students find out which are true.
 Comprehension questions: these are questions related to the main ideas of a text to
check students‟ understanding.
 Gap-filling: teachers write a short paragraph with several blanks in it. The blanks
can be lexical or grammatical items or both. Students listen and fill in blanks with
information they hear.
 Information transfer: teachers change the listening text into grids, forms, lists,
maps, plans, etc. for students to fill in.


- 11  Differences or mistakes detection: students respond only when they encounter
something different or contrary to what they already knew about the topic or the
speakers.
 Pictures or statements sequencing: students are asked to give the right order of a
series of pictures or statements.
 Matching the items which have the same or opposite meaning as those the students
hear, or matching the pictures with the descriptions heard.
 Ticking off items (bingo); where students listen a list of words and categorize (tick
off) them as they hear.
Information-transfer activities the author is studying are in while-listening stage. These
activities help students concentrate on comprehension, whether they get main ideas or
important information form the passage.
1.1.5.3. Post-listening activities

Post-listening activities should be motivating and interesting. They are usually more
complex and require more time to write, read or speak, since there is not much time for
“reflection” during the while-listening stage. Here are some kinds of post-listening
activities:
 Summarizing: students are given several possible summary sentences and are asked
to say which of them fit a recording. Summarizing can also be done by elaborating
the notes made by students themselves during the while-listening activities or by
depending on their memory
 Role play: students continue the story or situation by assuming the roles of people
in the listening texts.
 Short written texts: students write letters, postcards, messages, diaries, etc. based on
the listening text or to extend it.
 Retelling the story: students retell the listening text using their own words or some
provided words.
 Discussion: students discuss similar or related issues based on prompt questions or
pictures.
 Jigsaw listening: this term was first coined by Marion Geddes and Gill Sturtridge in
the late 1970s to describe a listening activities during which different groups of
students listen to different but connected passages and then the groups exchange
information in order to complete a story to perform a certain task (Underwood
1989:87).


- 12  Problem solving activities during which students hear all the information relevant
to a particular problem and then try to solve it by themselves.
1.2. Background concepts of Information-transfer activities:
1.2.1. Definition of Information-transfer activities
Information- transfer (IT) activities have now become commonplace in language teaching.
In an article entitled “Information Transfer for Listening and Reading”, David Palmer
(1982) gives a full description such as features and advantages of these activities.

According to him, this kind of activities involves changing information from a linguistic
form into a diagrammatic or semi-diagrammatic form, or vice versa.
Semi-diagrammatic form

A listening/reading text

(tables, charts, grids, …)
Information transfer activities require the learners to seek information from one source and
transfer it to another. This is often a transfer between written or graphic information and
speech (either provided by the teacher or presented by students). In the process, the
reading/listening text becomes reduced and its content is presented in a partly graphic or
visual form. For example, the learners are told that a bank robber is being sought by the
police. Witnesses have described the man as in his mid-twenties, tall and heavily-built,
with fair hair and brown eyes. A police file contains the following information.
NAME

AGE

HEIGHT

BUILD

EYES

HAIR

Mad Dog Mike

30

tall

thin

brown

fair

Harry

25

tall

stocky

brown

dark

Fingers Fred

27

tall

fat

brown

fair

Slick Sam

25

short

stocky

blue

fair

Nick the Knife

28

tall

stocky

brown

fair

Michael Boris

24

tall

plump

blue

fair

the

Hammer

The learners are asked to identify the bank robber from the information given in the police
file. Of course, it is not enough for the teacher simply to ask who the bank robber is.
Learners are first asked to give a full description of the robber. Then individual students
explain why other suspects are not guilty of the robbery. This can take place at many


- 13 levels. For example, from simple statements such as Mad Dog Mike is thin to full
explanations such as Witnesses said the robber was heavily built, but Michael Boris is
plump.
There are many kinds of reading/listening texts: monologue or dialogue, narrative or
recount … Here are examples of information transfer activities used for different kinds of
texts:
Information transfer for a monologue
A very frequently used monologue is narrative. A useful framework for helping students
understand and remember better is logical order. This means students have to put events or
milestones in the order they happened in the reading/listening passage. Here is an example
(Tieng Anh 10, pp.1148):
Task: You will hear some information about Pele, a famous Brazilian football player.

Listen and complete the table below.
“Pele is considered one of the greatest football players of all time. He was born in
1940 in Brazil. As a football player, Pele was famous for his powerful kicking and
controlling the ball. He joined a Brazilian football club in 1956, and in 1962 he led the
team to its first world cup championship. Pele became the only player to participate
in three World Cups in 1958, 1962 and 1970. By 1974, Pele had scored 1,200 goals and
became a Brazilian national hero. He played for an American football club for two
years before he retired in 1977. Later Pele became an international ambassador for
the sport, working to promote peace and understanding through friendly sport
activities.”

Year

Events

(1)…….……. Born in Brazil
1956

(2)
…….…………………………………………………………….

(3)…….……. First world cub championship
(4)………….. 1,200th goal
1977

(5)…………………………………………………….…………….

Information transfer for a dialogue
Listen to the dialogue between two friends: Lan and Huong (Tieng Anh 10, pp 137).

- 14 Lan:

Hi, Huong. Titanic is on at Thang Tam Cinema next week. Can
you go with me on Wednesday?

Huong:

Wednesday? Sorry Lan. I have lots of work to do during the day
and I’m going to the singing club at night. Can we go on
Thursday, instead?

Lan:

I don’t think so. I’m going to visit my grandparents on Thursday.

Huong:

Well, what about Monday? I suppose you are free on Monday.

Lan:

No, sorry. I’m going to see a play with Tuyet on Monday. What
about Friday?

Huong:

Sorry Lan. Friday is not a good time for me. I’m taking Chinese
classes on Fridays. How does your weekend look like, Lan?

Lan:

Um…, I’m busy on Saturday. But I’m free the whole day Sunday.

Huong:

I’m going on a picnic to Hoa Lu with some of my friends on
Sunday. I’ll be back late at night.

Lan:

Well, I guess that we just leave … Uh, wait a second, what day
are we both free, Huong?

Task: Write their plans for the next week on the calendar

1.2.2. Why should we employ IT activities
Linguists give many reasons why we should employ IT tasks in our language teaching and
learning. Patrisius Djiwandono (1995:43) asserts that the IT task is authentic and
communicative since it approximates a real job demand. When our students enter the world
of work, a part of their daily routine will be to attend to information transmitted orally or
written in memos or letters; later they must transfer this information to another intelligible
format.
In his article Palmer (1982:30) believes the IT task carries potential for subsequent tasks.
The IT task forms a kind of pivot around which any of the language skills may revolve.


- 15 While we are employing IT tasks such as doing oral reconstruction or checking
comprehension, language skills are practiced (writing, listening and speaking).
In addition, the IT task fosters the development of new learning skills. Part of the content

that the students have to learn is vocabulary, and to some extent this requires a degree of
repetition combined with attention. In other words these vocabulary items and grammar
structures will be practiced for accuracy and fluency.
Agreeing with those linguists, in his recently published book, Nation (2008) summarizes 4
good reasons for using IT activities to encourage meaning-focused listening and to support
listening:
1) The most obvious learning from IT relates to the information in the activity. After
doing the activity about the landlady, the boarder and the plan of the house, the
learners would be likely to remember the particular plan of that house. So in
contrast to the use of comprehension questions, the visual structure of a welldesigned diagram for IT provides a conceptual scaffold to assist comprehension.
Put simply, the visual support makes learning easier.
2) When used with listening, IT focuses learners‟ attention on listening without the
extra burden of having to read a list of questions or write long answers. The
principle here is that when the focus is on listening skills, the activity should not
require learners to simultaneously read and/or write extensively. IT activities that
involve learners tracking a journey on a map, filling in a chart or grid all control the
learning burden in this way by requiring minimal responses.
3) These activities can easily be used to draw attention to important and generalize
text structures and information. For example, good note-taking from a lecture
presents the ideas in a diagrammatic way that highlights how the ideas relate to one
another. Tree diagrams, maps and pictures can reveal the conceptual structure of
text types as well as the relationships between parts and between ideas in a text.
The more generalisable the text structure that an IT activity draws attention to, the
more generalisable the learning. This approach trains learners to listen strategically
for important information. In other words, the conceptual work that learners must
do in a well-designed IT activity encourages deep understanding and is particularly
good for intellectual development in young learners.
4) IT encourages deep processing of input. A key question that teachers should ask
about an activity is, “What quality of thinking does this activity promote?” IT

- 16 requires learners to transform the input in some way, and this typically requires
more mental effort than copying or responding to comprehension questions. In a
sense then, IT activities are information transforming activities. It is likely that
this deep processing provides good opportunities to learner new vocabulary and
grammatical items contained in the spoken or written text, particularly those items
that are focused on in the IT activity.
The above four reasons all focus on the role of IT in guiding understanding of input. In
addition, IT also has a useful role in pushing learners‟ production. It does this by providing
a simplified or diagrammatic representation of the original input which learners can use to
“reconstitute” the text in their own words. This can be represented in the following way:
Listen

Information transfer

Read

Speak
Write

Learners begin by listening or reading, then completing some kind of IT diagram. They
then take part in a speaking or writing activity in which they retell the main ideas in the
text using the diagram as a guide. In this way, IT provides an intermediary bridge or link
between input and output which discourages learners from relying too heavily on direct
copying from the original text, but which still provides them with a conceptual scaffold for
rebuilding the original text in their own words or for another purpose.
1.2.3. When should we employ IT activities
One of the simplest ways of helping students to recognize, know and use generic
patterning in reading/listening texts is through information transfer activities. In
information transfer, the graphic form can be seen to compartmentalize language - this

essentially places language items in categories with boundaries so that students can notice
them easily. Nations (1988) urges teachers to make the categories or parts generalizable so
that the information gleaned from one particular text can be used for subsequent
reading/listening of other texts with a similar structure. If the categories are used
successively with other texts we see that learners are provided with alternative forms of
vocabulary and sentence structure. This provides powerful learning opportunities.
Most IT activities focus the learners‟ attention on the details of information used in the
passage. There are numerous possibilities. For example, the learners listen to a
conversation between a landlady and a new boarder and label a plan of the rooms of the


- 17 house using the information exchanged in the conversation. Similarly, the teacher talks
about her family or an imaginary family and the learners complete a family tree.
Information - transfer activities used in teaching listening must be closely related to the
learning and teaching goals. That is, teachers should be clear about whether they are going
to teach the difficult sounds, stress, intonation, structures or whether they are going to help
the learners understand the content of the listening texts. This means whether our focus is
on “language goal” or on “skill goal” (Nation, 1991). When we want to focus on
comprehension or skill goal, we can find the scopes of Information transfer techniques as
follows:
Comprehension checking of the text
In while-listening stage, the first thing teachers often do is have students listen to the tape
once or twice depending on the length or complexity of the listening text. Afterwards, there
may be one or two listening activities aimed at helping students understand main ideas of
each paragraph and/or the whole text. And it‟s time they employ information transfer
activities. Teachers design an information transfer form (outline, chart, table…) with
numbered blanks on a poster. It will be more attractive if teachers prepare an IT form with
technical assistance (computer/laptop, Powerpoint program, projector). Then teachers stick
the poster on the board and ask students to work individually or in pairs/groups. Let
students listen to the tape again and complete the IT chart/ table/ grid. Call students to go

to the board and fill in the blanks. Finally, teachers check their answers and give
comments.
Oral reconstruction of the text
Normally we apply these activities at the end of while-listening stage, after checking
comprehension. However we can change the order of these activities. It means we can
employ oral reconstruction before comprehension checking depending on students‟ level or
learning condition. Teachers use the IT form completed in comprehension-checking or
design another one. It‟s necessary for the teachers to model oral construction first and let
students prepare for a while. Finally, invite students to come to the board and do oral
reconstruction.
So far as the scopes are stated above, information transfer activities will be seen as an
important method in helping learning listening. However, information transfer activity is
not all-powerful but it should be used in combination with other activities. So long as the


- 18 teacher employs information transfer activities effectively, both the teacher and the
learners will be benefited.
All in all, this chapter has presented the relevant literature, which has helped to form the
theoretical and conceptual framework for the study. Different aspects related to listening
skills and IT activities have been discussed.
The next chapter will display the instrumentation and data analysis of the research in the
light of the theories mentioned above.


- 19 CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY
In this chapter, the author outlines the current situation of teaching and learning listening at
Bacninh Specialized High School as well as the setting for the study. The rationale for the
method chosen for the study presented in this thesis is mentioned. The last issue will be the
data analysis.
2.1. Background to the study

2.1.1. The settings
The study was conducted at Bacninh Specialized High School, the only specialized high
school in Bacninh province. The school was established 17 years ago. At first, it had only
two classes, one majoring in Math and another in Literature. Since then, the school often
selects best teachers in the province. Among 78 teachers at Bacninh Specialized High
School, 30 teachers (38%) have completed their M.A course. All students of the school
have passed the entrance test in three subjects: Math, Literature and English. Today, the
school has 27 classes majoring in nine subjects: Math, Physics, Chemistry, Informatics,
Biology, History, Geography, Literature and English.
In the school-year 2008 - 2009, the school was equipped with a multimedia room, a
language laboratory and other modern learning and teaching facilities. The school provided
the teachers of English groups with five cassette players and many disks for each grade.
The school’s effort is to achieve the main task defined by the MOET and the province “to
look for and to foster talents for the province and the country; and to build the school into
a center of high quality education of the province”.
2.1.2. Population
Population, an important term in a survey research, is the entire group of entities or persons
to which the results of a study are intended to apply (Johnson 1992:110). In this study, the
population was 185 tenth-form students and 8 teachers of English at BnSHS.
 The teachers of English
BnSHS has 8 teachers of English aged from 27 to 47. All of them graduated from the
English Department at HULIS, VNU and have at least four years of teaching experience.
Two of them have Master’s Degree, two are going to complete their M.A course in a few
months. Four teachers have trained the National Team of English for many years and they
often get excellent results. Few teachers have chance to work or contact with native


- 20 speakers. All of them have never been to an English speaking country. However they are all
willing to help their students overcome difficulties in learning English.
 The tenth-form students

The students are non-English major ones. They come from 7 classes majoring in: Math,
Physics, Chemistry, Informatics, Biology, History, Geography. They are both male and
female from 15 to 16 years of age. Their knowledge of English is not of the same level as
they are from different districts and towns in Bacninh province. At the time of investigation
they were going to finish their school-year.
2.1.3. Sampling
In survey research, sampling is a crucial methodological issue because it is usually not
feasible to survey the entire group of interest (the population). Researchers usually select a
subgroup (a sample) to investigate. Johnson (1992:111) classified a sample in Table1.
Table 1: Johnson’s classification of a sample

Simple random sampling
Systematic
Simple random sampling

Probability Sample

Stratified sampling
Cluster
Stage

Sample
Sample of convenience/volunteer
Sample by quota
Non-probability Sample

Purposive
Dimensional
Snowball

The sample of the study was drawn from two sources: from 185 non- English major
students and 8 teachers of English. Therefore the investigator used Simple random
sampling, one technique designed to ensure that the essential characteristics of the sample
being studied are like those of the population from which the sample is drawn. That means
the samples for this study are chosen randomly from the entire group.