Luận văn thạc sĩ diversification of pre listening activities to improve students’ listening skill action research at industrial economics technology college

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

NGUYỄN THỊ ÁNH NGUYỆT

DIVERSIFICATION OF PRE-LISTENING ACTIVITIES TO
IMPROVE STUDENTS’ LISTENING SKILL: ACTION RESEARCH
AT INDUSTRIAL ECONOMICS TECHNOLOGY COLLEGE
(Đa dạng hóa các hoạt động trước nghe để nâng cao kỹ năng nghe
của sinh viên: nghiên cứu hành động tại trường Cao đẳng Công nghệ
và Kinh tế Công nghiệp.)

M.A. MINOR PROGRAM THESIS

Field

: English Teaching Methodology

Code

: 8140231.01

HANOI – 2019


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

NGUYỄN THỊ ÁNH NGUYỆT

DIVERSIFICATION OF PRE-LISTENING ACTIVITIES TO
IMPROVE STUDENTS’ LISTENING SKILL: ACTION RESEARCH
AT INDUSTRIAL ECONOMICS TECHNOLOGY COLLEGE
(Đa dạng hóa các hoạt động trước nghe để nâng cao kỹ năng nghe
của sinh viên: nghiên cứu hành động tại trường Cao đẳng Công nghệ
và Kinh tế Công nghiệp.)

M.A. MINOR PROGRAM THESIS

Field

: English Teaching Methodology

Code

: 8140231.01

Supervisor : Assoc. Prof. Dr. LÂM QUANG ĐÔNG

HANOI – 2019


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to my supervisor, Assoc.Prof.Dr. Lam
Quang Dong for his patient guidance, stimulating suggestions and encouragement
throughout my research.

I wish to thank all the staff members of the Faculty of Post-Graduate Studies,
University of Languages and International Studies for providing me the best
environment to fulfill my graduate program.
My sincere gratitude also goes to my colleague Mrs. Nguyen Mai Linh. The support
that she gave me truly helped with my progress and completion of the research
project. Especially, I would like to express my special thanks to my family who
offered me their love, care, support and encouragement so that I could accomplish
my study.
Last but not least, I would like to express appreciation to my students in Industrial
Economics Technology College who were very enthusiastic to support me by
participating in the research and providing me with the needed data without which
the study could not have been completed.

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ABSTRACT

Although listening skill, one of the four core language competences fostered in
Industrial Economics Technology College (IETC)‟s English curriculum, has always
been promoted, students‟ performance in this aspect of proficiency still remains
low. Through practice, the researcher realized that the main reason for this problem
is the lack of good preparation for students from the pre-listening stage. Therefore,
it is extremely necessary to conduct an action research with the aim of improving
students‟ listening comprehension by diversifying pre-listening activities. In the
study, a pre-test and post-test were employed to check the students‟ listening
comprehension and the questionnaires to gauge students‟ attitudes when the teacher
used varied pre-listening activities. The findings of this study suggest that students‟
listening skill was much boosted after they were exposed to various pre-listening
activities. The results also showed that the students had improved attitudes towards

learning listening skill after the introduction of varied pre-listening activities.
Hopefully, the thesis can be considered a practical contribution to more effective
teaching practices at IETC and the ongoing process of renovation for teaching and
learning listening.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...................................................................................... i
ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................. ii
LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................................... i
LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................. ii
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ............................................................................1
1.1. Rationale of the study........................................................................................... 1
1.2. Aims and scope of the study ................................................................................ 3
1.2.1. Research Aims ..................................................................................................3
1.2.2. Scope of the study .............................................................................................3
1.3. Research questions ............................................................................................... 4
1.4. Summary of Chapter 1 ......................................................................................... 4
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................5
2.1. Theoretical background of listening skill............................................................. 5
2.1.1. A brief overview of listening ............................................................................5
2.1.2. Listening comprehension in language learning and teaching process ..............6
2.2. Factors affecting students‟ listening comprehension ........................................... 7
2.2.1 Unfamiliar topics ................................................................................................7
2.2.2. Cultural Differences ..........................................................................................8
2.2.3. Pronunciation, stress, rhythm and intonation ....................................................8
2.2.4 Listeners‟ limited vocabularies ..........................................................................9

2.2.5 Length and Speed of Listening ..........................................................................9
2.2.6 Inability to concentrate .......................................................................................9
2.3. Listening Comprehension in EFL Classrooms .................................................... 9
2.3.1 Pre-listening stage ..............................................................................................9
2.3.2. While-listening stage and post-listening stage ................................................10
2.3.3 The roles of pre-listening activities ..................................................................11
2.3.4 Pre-listening activities ......................................................................................12

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2.4. Previous research ............................................................................................... 14
2.8. Summary of chapter 2 ........................................................................................ 17
CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY .........................................................................19
3.1. Research methodology ....................................................................................... 19
3.1.1. Definition of action research ...........................................................................19
3.1.2. Characteristic of action research .....................................................................20
3.1.3. Process of action research ...............................................................................20
3.1.4. Benefits of Action Research............................................................................23
3.2. The research questions restated .......................................................................... 23
3.3. The participants .................................................................................................. 23
3.3.1. Students ...........................................................................................................24
3.3.2. Observers .........................................................................................................24
3.4. Data collection instruments ................................................................................ 24
3.4.1 Detailed description of tests .............................................................................24
3.4.2. Questionnaires .................................................................................................25
3.5. Action research procedures ................................................................................ 25
3.5.1. Identifying a problem ......................................................................................25
3.5.2. Collecting the data...........................................................................................26
3.5.3. Analyzing data and generating hypothesis......................................................26

3.5.4. Planning action ................................................................................................26
3.5.5. Implementing the action plan ..........................................................................27
3.5.6. Collecting data to monitor change ..................................................................28
3.5.7. Analyzing data and evaluating the change ......................................................28
3.6. Summary of chapter 3 ........................................................................................ 28
CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION ...................................................29
4.1. Results from the pre-test .................................................................................... 29
4.2. Results from the post-tesst ................................................................................. 29
4.3. Comparison of the pre-test and the post-test ...................................................... 30
4.4. Data collected by questionnaire part 1 ............................................................... 32

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4.5. Data collected by questionnaire part 2 ............................................................... 33
4.6. Data collected by observation ............................................................................ 34
4.7. Discussion .......................................................................................................... 36
CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION ...............................................................................38
5.1. Summary of the Result of the Study .................................................................. 38
5.2. Limitations of the Study ..................................................................................... 39
5.3. Implications for Further Research ...................................................................... 40
5.4. Implications for Teaching and Learning Practice .............................................. 41
5.4.1. Implications for Teachers ................................................................................41
5.4.2. Implications for Students ................................................................................42
5.5. Final remarks ...................................................................................................... 42
REFERENCES ........................................................................................................44
APPENDICES ........................................................................................................... I
Appendix 1: The pre-test ............................................................................................. I
Appendix 2: The post-test .........................................................................................VI
Appendix 4: Observation sheet .............................................................................. XIII

Appendix 5: Result from the pre-test and post-test................................................XVI
Appendix 6: Result from observation sheet ........................................................... XIX
Appendix 7: Results from learner questionnaire..................................................... XX
Appendix 8: Action plan implementation of varying pre-listening activities during
the experiment ........................................................................................................XXI
Appendix 9: a lesson plan of implementation of varying pre-listening activities
during the experiment .......................................................................................... XXII

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 4.1. The pre-test result..................................................................................... 29
Table 4.2. The post-test results ................................................................................. 29
Table 4.3. Comparison of the pre-test and post-test ................................................. 30
Table 4.4. Students‟ comments about pre-listening activities .................................. 32
Table 4.5. Students‟ comments on the diversification of pre-listening activities that
the teacher applied ..................................................................................................... 33

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 3.1. Simple Action Research Model adapted from MacIsaac (1995)............ 21
Figure 3.2. Detailed Action Research Model adapted from Susman (1983) ............22
Figure 4.1. .................................................................................................................29
Figure 4.2. The post-test results ................................................................................30
Figure 4.3. Comparison of the pre-test and post-test ................................................31

Figure 4. 4. Students‟ comments on the varying pre-listening that the teacher
applied .......................................................................................................................32
Figure 4. 5. Students‟ comment on the varying pre-listening that the teacher applied ....33
Figure 4. 6. Students‟ on-task behavior ....................................................................34

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1. Rationale of the study
Listening is an important skill in acquiring a language and it can be defined as the
process of understanding speech in a second or foreign language. Listening is the
most frequently used in communication. It is stated that during conversations,
people spend 50 percent of time on listening, 25 percent on speaking, 15 percent on
reading, and 10 percent on writing (Richards, 2008). Moreover, according to
Morley (1984), listening is the key to all effective communication. Indeed, without
the interlocutors‟ ability to listen effectively, messages are easily misunderstood.
However, generally, students are fearful of listening, and can be disheartened when
they listen to something they understand very little. It is also harder for them to
concentrate on listening if little or no interest in a topic or situation is developed
before. The initial pre-listening phase should prepare students by helping them
activate their background knowledge and clarify their expectations and assumptions
about the listening text by, for example, initiating some discussion about a picture
involved in the listening text or discussion of some questions related to the listening
passages. An ideal pre-listening task is the one in which the teacher, through
carefully constructed questions, helps students activate their background knowledge
and language components needed to comprehend the text. In general, pre-listening
activities play a critical role and the main aim of this stage is to make learners focus
their attention on the following while-listening stage, to build confidence and to
facilitate comprehension.

As cited in Medley (1977), pre-listening activities can be divided into readiness
activities and guidance activities. Readiness activities focus on motivating students‟
preliminary knowledge through asking students to read the title, make predictions or
guesses what they are going to hear, explore new and/or key words that may appear
in the listening text, look at accompanied pictures, interpret the listening tasks, and
providing them with scaffolding support before listening. Guidance activities

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concentrate on letting students know what they are going to do with the tasks or
what they want to do with the tasks.
Ur (1984) proposes that listening is an active and complex process and he believes
that pre-listening activities activate student‟s background knowledge and provide
them with the bases for forming hypotheses, predictions and inference. With diverse
pre-listening activities, student feel less anxious, so they will become more
confident in the listening lesson. From this perspective, students will be more
motivated to listen, and as a consequence, and ultimately gain a higher level of
comprehension, success and become effective learners.
In my college, many students are from northern midland and mountainous areas of
Vietnam whose background knowledge is poor, so it is difficult to help students
there improve their listening competence. Moreover, most teachers of English in
Industrial Economics Technology College, to my knowledge and in my experience,
tend to prepare little for the pre-listening stage due to several reasons: insufficient
teaching time, or even their misconception that it is unnecessary to conduct this
stage. That may be the reason why students are not motivated to participate in the
lessons. Some even feel exhausted and inactive in class, and often complain that
listening is the most challenging skill.
As previously discussed, the pre-listening stage is very essential in the process of
teaching listening. Do teachers and students at my own college understand much

about pre-listening tasks? If sufficient understanding has been secured, how do they
deal with pre-listening tasks? What kind of activities do they apply and how
effective are these activities? Are these activities sufficiently diverse to attract
students and maintain their concentration? If not, how to diversify them? These
questions require a careful study to seek their answers.
For those reasons, the researcher conducted this research under the title
“Diversification of pre-listening activities to improve students' listening skill: an
action research at Industrial Economics Technology College”.

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1.2. Aims and scope of the study
1.2.1. Research Aims
The long-term goal of the research is to develop a series of appropriate pre-listening
activities that help my college‟s students in listening comprehension. However,
within the scope of this action research, the author first tried out a variety of prelistening activities for diversification and see how they work, which works well and
which not. Based on that, a useful framework or guiding principles can then be built
for developing appropriate pre-listening activities for the particular kind of students.
Therefore, the objective of this action research is merely to examine whether
diversification of pre-listening activities in the pre-listening stage improves my
college‟s students‟ listening comprehension; In passing, the study also made some
investigation on students‟ reflection towards diversification of pre-listening tasks,
because feedbacks from students are highly useful to teachers who always have to
design teaching-learning materials, or at least design good lesson plans to deliver
the intended objectives of each lesson, especially listening lessons.
1.2.2. Scope of the study
The study concentrated on the effects of alternating pre-listening activities on
improvement of students‟ listening skill in Industrial Economics Technology
College.

Participating in the study were 40 second-year students in class K9 at IETC who
have studied English for 3 semesters with six 45-minutes lessons per week. After
studying 2 semesters of English they are now at pre-intermediate level. The
textbook was adapted from Market Leader, which is an extensive business English
course designed to bring the real world of international business into the classroom.
It has been developed in association with the Financial Times, one of the leading
sources of professional information, to ensure the maximum range and authenticity
of international business content. The purpose of adaptation is to make it suitable to
local students and the instructional curriculum. In the adapted version, English
teachers in the Industrial Economics Technology College (IETC) added a wide

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range of Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC) activities such
as reading comprehension, photo choosing listening, listening comprehension, and
so on.
1.3. Research questions
To examine the effectiveness of pre-listening activities in order to deliver the aforementioned objective, the following question was formulated:
1. To what extent does diversification of pre-listening tasks help students at my
college improve their listening comprehension?
2. What are these students‟ attitudes towards diversification of pre-listening
tasks?
1.4. Summary of Chapter 1
In summary, listening is an important skill for any English learner but not many can
master this skill, which provides a gap for this study to explore. This study mainly
focused on the second year students at IETC whose English is at pre-intermediate
level. The aim of this study was to access how much diversification of pre-listening
activities can help to improve students‟ listening skill.

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CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter will review the literature on listening comprehension. The first section
provides basic theories about listening comprehension while the second part
discusses the factors that affect students‟ listening comprehension. Next, the stages
of the listening lesson are reviewed, especially the pre-listening stage. Naturally,
what has been studied concerning pre-listening activities in previous research is
briefly described and commented.
2.1. Theoretical background of listening skill
2.1.1. A brief overview of listening
Goh (2002) referred to listening as the most frequently used language skill, which
accounts for as much as fifty per cent of human‟s everyday communication time.
Sharing this opinion, Rubin (1994) stated that listening is used far more than any
other single language skill in our daily lives, twice as much as we speak, four times
more than we read and five times more than we write. Good listening, therefore,
significantly contributes to the success of communicating process. Understanding
spoken English is much more challenging to language learners than figuring out
meanings of a written text. Thus, the teaching of listening comprehension is of great
importance.
Rost (1994) stated that listening is a crucial element of communication and it is also
an important factor for interaction. A learner can express himself orally but is never
able to communicate with speakers of English if he is unable to understand what is
said to him. In general, listening is used far more than any other single language
skill in our daily lives. We can expect to listen twice as much as we speak, four
times than we read, and five times more than we write.
Underwood (1989) states that the listening skill includes everything from learning
particular sounds to comprehending complicated messages. Without this skill,

communication can break down. Therefore, successful communication really
depends on listeners or receivers of messages. Listening is defined as the activity of

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paying attention to and trying to get meaning from something we hear. It is different
from hearing which is simply the process of recognizing the sound system of
spoken words. Similarly, Emmert, Brandt, Watson, and Barker (1994) stated that
listening is an active process. Listening skill is composed of everything from
learning particular sounds to comprehending complicated messages. More
specifically, listening involves understanding a speaker‟s accent, pronunciation,
grammar and vocabulary to grasp his or her meaning (Underwood, 1989). He also
believes that listening to spoken language also requires the ability to understand the
implicature in a conversation.
2.1.2. Listening comprehension in language learning and teaching process
It is believed that listening is a significant and essential area of development in a
native or second language; therefore there have been numerous definitions of
listening comprehension which present different views towards this concept.
For instance, Buck (2001) defines listening comprehension as an active process of
construction of meanings, done by applying knowledge to the incoming sound,
involving both linguistic and non-linguistic knowledge. In order to construct
meanings from what one hears, other researchers agree that context plays an
important role and should be taken into appropriate consideration. Garrod (1986)
and McDonough and Shaw (1993) share the same idea that listening comprehension
requires the activation of contextual information and background knowledge.
Meanwhile, Lynch (1995) gives a more detailed description of listening
comprehension, which is a process in which listeners interact with the text. Their
level of interest, emotional reaction to the content and motivation can either
facilitate or interfere with comprehension. Successful listening seems to involve a

comparison and integration of new information with established knowledge
structures. Similarly, Mendelsohn and Rubin (1995) believe that listeners not only
passively understand the text, but also actively construct their own knowledge and
then monitor the incoming information in order to keep developing it.

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The concept of listening and listening comprehension is also defined as everything
that impinges on the human processing which mediates between sounds and the
construction of meaning (Underwood, 1989). This definition once again emphasizes
the activeness of listeners in processing the information heard. Generally, listening
is agreed to comprise both top-down and bottom-up processes, with top-down
meaning the listener activates his/her previous knowledge to decipher what he/she
gets from the listening passages in the „bottom-up‟ process.
2.2. Factors affecting students’ listening comprehension
A great number of factors affecting listening have been reported so far. According
to Brown and Yule (1983), there are four groups of factors including the speakers
(e.g. the number of speakers, speakers‟ speed, accents); the listeners (e.g. the role of
listeners, the listeners‟ interest in the subject); the content (e.g. vocabulary,
grammar, background knowledge) and the support (e.g. pictures, diagrams, visual
aids, etc).
Anderson and Lynch (1988) divide the influential factors into three different
categories including the type of language, the purpose in listening and the context in
which the listening takes place. Their experiments showed a number of factors that
may impede students‟ listening performance: the organization of information, the
familiarity of the topic, the explicitness and sufficiency of the information, and the
type of referring expressions used and the relationships described in the text
(dynamic or static relationships).
Regarding influential factors affecting listening comprehension results, Helgesen,

Brown, and Brown (1994) Dunkel (1991), and Ur (1984) introduced a list of
characteristics of spoken language, which are also troubling to listeners. Those
factors include clustering, redundancy, reduced form, performance variable,
colloquial language, rate of delivery, stress, rhythm and intonation, and interaction.
In conclusion, factors affecting listening comprehension could be listed as follows:
2.2.1 Unfamiliar topics
Unfamiliar topics have remained one of the most challenging problems to listeners.
According to Ur (1984) and Rixon (1986), as we rarely know exactly what we are

7


going to hear although we may have already had some general expectations, it is
much easier to process a familiar topic than a strange one. Nunan (1988) also
confirms that listening to unfamiliar topics which are not addressed to listeners is
much more difficult to comprehend than listening on familiar topics which are
addressed to them.
Similarly, Rost and Candlin (2014) state that listening to unfamiliar topics which are
not addressed to listeners is more problematic than listening to popular ones. As
listeners comprehend better with a common topic, it is suggested that teachers‟
selection of input in the early stage should surround themes that frequently occur in
real life conversations. This not only facilitates students at the beginning of the course
but also helps ease the learning and teaching process (Anderson and Lynch, 1988).
2.2.2. Cultural Differences
Learners should be familiar with the cultural knowledge of language that has a
significant effect on the learners‟ understanding. If the listening task involves
completely different cultural materials then the learners may have critical problems in
their comprehension. It is the responsibility of teachers to give background knowledge
about the listening activities in advance (Azmi, Celik, Yidliz, & Tugrul, 2014).
2.2.3. Pronunciation, stress, rhythm and intonation

Rost (1994) states that pronunciation is one of the major sources of difficulties
students encounter in the listening process. Sharing the same idea, Rixon (1986)
claims that word stress, strong form and weak form in natural spoken utterances
make listening comprehension far more challenging than reading a written text.
Assimilation and elision are other sources of complication, as Helgesen et al. (1994)
added. These features of spoken English can be a terror to a number of learners.
Rhythm and intonation also contribute to making listening more troublesome. The
unfamiliarity with rhythm and intonation patterns makes listening become more
difficult. Brown (1977) sees rhythm as part of general look of how the speakers of
their language speak it. With its own characteristics, the rhythm of English is worth
much attention since it is also the guide to the structure of information in the spoken
message.

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2.2.4 Listeners’ limited vocabularies
According to Azmi Bingol, Celik, Yidliz, and Tugrul Mart (2014), when listening
texts contain known words it would be very easy for students to them. If students
know the meaning of words this can arouse their interest and motivation and can
have a positive impact on the students‟ listening comprehension ability. A lot of
words have more than one meaning and if they are not used appropriately in their
appropriate contexts students will get confused. Students may sometimes try to
guess the meaning of the word from the context but this strategy isn‟t very helpful
when the speed of speaking is fast.
2.2.5 Length and Speed of Listening
Azmi Bingol, Celik, Yidliz, and Tugrul Mart (2014) stated that the level of students
can have a significant role when they listen to long parts and keep all information in
their mind. It is very difficult for lower-level students to listen more than three
minutes long and complete the listening tasks. Short listening passages make easy

listening comprehension for learners and reduce their tiredness. According to
Underwood (1989), speed can make listening passage difficult. If the speakers
speak too fast students may have serious problems to understand L2 words. In this
situation, listeners are not able to control the speed of speakers and this can create
critical problems with listening comprehension.
2.2.6 Inability to concentrate
According to Hamouda (2013), during listening lessons students are required to be
attentive since in a very restricted time they are required to process and understand
a strand of newly introduced information. Failure to concentrate will result in the
students missing some of the content, which will eventually affect their
understanding of the whole listening task.
2.3. Listening Comprehension in EFL Classrooms
2.3.1 Pre-listening stage
Normally the listening lesson is divided into three stages which are pre-listening,
while-listening and post-listening. Each stage has its own characteristics and time
allocation.

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Pre-listening stage involves the activities that are often carried out in a short period
of time (seven to fifteen minutes) aiming at preparing necessary background for
learners to understand the spoken text. They may also elicit students‟ previous
knowledge about the topic of listening, making them aware of the vocabulary items,
related experience and consequently capture their interest. As summarized by Baker
and Westrup (2000) as well as Lewis and Hill (1992), the pre-listening stage
contains purposeful activities which can help arouse interest in the topic, provide
certain linguistic preparation for the text, then promote and activate a flexible
learning environment. Through giving learners a reason for listening, this stage
undoubtedly initiates willingness for listening. Before listening, students need

assistance to activate what they already know about the ideas they are going to hear.
Simply being told the topic is not enough. Teachers must help them to build up
prior knowledge, pre-teach some key words or structures and establish purposes for
listening.
Lewis and Hill (1992) emphasizes that pre-listening stage plays an important role in
teaching listening to students. Pre-listening is a preparation of the listening class. In
this stage, teachers tend to arouse learners‟ expectation and interest of the language
text they are going to listen. They can also motivate learners by providing
background knowledge of the text; organizing learners to discuss a picture or a
related topic which involves in the text; asking some related questions to the text. In
general, pre-listening plays a role of warming-up and the main aim of this stage is to
make learners focus their attention on the following while-listening stage and
decrease the difficulties of the text. These activities can also promote an active and
flexible learning environment, help increase learners‟ motivation for learning,
motivate learners by giving a reason for listening and provide them with some
language for the listening.
2.3.2. While-listening stage and post-listening stage
These are the main stages of the listening process. According to Rost and Candlin
(2014), the purpose of while-listening activities is what students are asked to do

10


during the time they are listening to the text. As far as listening comprehension (for
example listening for meaning) is concerned, the purpose of while-listening
activities is to help learners develop the skill of eliciting messages from spoken
language. The nature of while-listening activities should be interesting, so that the
students feel they want to listen and carry out the activities. Part of the interest can
stem from the topic and the content of what is said, and the listening text should be
chosen with the interest of the students in mind.

After pure listening process, post activities are usually carried out to provide
students with opportunities to practice using the language items acquired. Postlistening activities often fall on information transfer tasks, or summary writing and
similar activities.
In this research, the writer will investigate the activities which are often made use of
in the first stage of listening, the Pre-listening activities.
2.3.3 The roles of pre-listening activities
It is obvious that students may find the listening lessons difficult when they do not
know what they are going to listen. Although the words are familiar, they may not
understand the speaker because they may be lack of basic knowledge, the context of
the speaker.
Thus, the listeners‟ expectation and purposes should be taken into account. These
make listeners feel as in real-life listening situation in their native language.
Teachers can help their students to arouse their expectations and see the purpose
before a listening lesson. This kind of work is described as “pre-listening activities”.
The two main aims of pre-listening is to help to activate students‟ background
knowledge, guess the topic of what they are going to hear and provide certain
context for the listening task. The teacher should vary the activities such as two
people having a conversation about their daily life and ask students to complete the
true or false questions or vocabulary building for student before the listening task
(Nunan, 2002).

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According to Sheerin (1987), pre-listening activities significantly help arouse
students‟ interest in listening. A good pre-listening stage should provide students
with linguistic items necessary to understand the listening text and make them feel
more interested in the recordings. With the acknowledged significance of the stage,
a variety of pre-listening activities have been introduced and recommended for use
by various researchers namely Baker and Westrup (2000), Doff (1988), (Lingzhu,

2003), Rost (1994), Underwood (1989) and Ur (1984). In the following part of the
study, the researcher will provide a list of different activities for pre-listening stage.
2.3.4 Pre-listening activities
According to Berne (1995), pre-listening activities also help students prepare for
what they are going to hear, and help mitigate the anxiety which comes from
listening in a foreign language, by providing a clear context. Moreover, prelistening activities can offer opportunities for class discussion and more interaction
among students. There are certain pre-listening activities which can be adapted
easily for different classes and levels, as well as for general English and listening
lessons.

Brainstorming
The prediction of information surrounding a topic before listening about it
encourages learners to focus on a topic and conceivably develop a relatively high
sense of self-esteem while conducting the task. To make use of this activity, the
teacher may begin by posing a question word and idea, then ask students to
brainstorm the plot and share ideas with their friends. The activity can intensify
student‟s attention on the content of the upcoming recording and expand their
knowledge during the process of exchanging ideas with other students.

Class discussion
This is a very common form of pre-listening activity, principally when students are
going to hear a recorded text. This activity can be started by the teacher‟s
instruction to students about the topic of listening text. The teachers generally give
their students some background information, begin to talk about the topic and

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indicate what the students should expect to hear. Pair and group discussions before
listening are essential for students. They engage students in the sharing of ideas and

render them concentrate more on their job Lingzhu (2003). Generally, teachers raise
guiding questions and discussing topics. When organizing groups, teachers should
gather students of different levels so that they can help themselves in expressing
ideas as well as prepare students with some background of the topic and get them
more willing to listen.

Pictures
According to Greher (2002), in some pre-listening activities, pictures can be
exploited as a useful teaching aid. Listeners are often asked to match pictures with
given words, or guess words from pictures or activities of the sort which aim at
eliciting the topic-related vocabulary as well as maintaining learners‟ focus on the
theme of the listening.
It is suggested that when carrying out such activities, teachers should avoid using a
plethora of unknown words and long explanations as they may distract listeners and
sometimes even demotivate them from continuing the task.

Prediction of content
The activity helps activate students‟ background knowledge. Once listeners have
had some ideas about the context of the listening, they usually become more
inquisitive about the listening and the comprehension of the spoken text will likely
be more accurate. One way to encourage the prediction of content is asking students
to anticipate the context and content of the listening through the title or illustrating
pictures.
The prediction of the listening can also be done by asking students read through the
questions of the listening tasks, which prepare them for the content of the listening
and facilitate their process of comprehension.
Another predicting activity is through True or False statements. Teachers provide a
variety of statements which are based on the general or detailed information of the
listening. The principle is that teachers let students discuss among themselves, make

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prediction but do not reveal their decision of true or false statements until they
finish the listening task.

Pre-teaching of new words and difficult key words
The presence of new words and difficult key words in the listening text is a big
problem to many listeners. To make the listening more accessible to students,
teachers may present new vocabulary by making use of visual aids, games,
definition, explanation and translation.

Pre-questions
Pre-questions are sometimes employed as a useful pre-listening activity. Teachers
often raise some questions with each of them asking about the main point of the
listening text. This activity aims at drawing students‟ attention to the recordings
Teachers will let students give the answers after their first time of listening,
Vandergrift (2004).
In summary, pre-listening activities are occasionally employed to supply students
with prior information about the listening task, prepare them for the task and make
them more focused on listening and therefore comprehend better. However, in
application of a diversity of pre-listing activities, there are some concerns that
teachers should take into account.

Pre-teaching new words or difficult key words
For students, a large number of unknown words may hinder listening, and certainly
lower confidence. Therefore, it is crucial to present the new words, especially items
of great difficulty to the students‟ comprehension, prior to ask them to listen. There
are many ways to present the new words such as: using visual aids, using games,
definitions or explanation and translation. Among them, visual aids might be the

most useful technique they help to make the language in class more real and alive.
Moreover, using visual aids is a quick way to reduce anxiety, stimulate selfconfidence and improve language competence, Buck (2001).
2.4. Previous research
Ash Pekin, Janset Muge Altay, Didem Baytan (2001) carried out an interesting
study about listening activities. He found out contrast between effective and
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ineffective listening habits to become effective listeners. He said that instructors
should provide various chances for students to practice listening skill and to become
actively engaged in the listening process. He emphasized that there are three stages
in listening process: pre-listening, during listening and after listening. He defined
pre-listening help students with cultural background, build prior knowledge, and
stimulate students‟ interest in the listening lesson. However, in his study, he
suggested that instructors should let students watch movies than listen to the tapes
because it can help students pay more attention to the listening. Students can both
practice listening and see manner and culture visually. It may be good to apply in
teaching but depending on the modern technology condition.
Being one of the most challenging language skills, listening comprehension has
caught attention of a number of pedagogy specialists. Berne (1995) has shown the
impact of listening habits on listening comprehension. The researchers suggested
teachers to provide students with numerous listening opportunities, thus help them
become actively engaged in listening. As defined by those researchers, listening
process has three inevitable phases including pre-listening, during listening and
after listening, among which the purpose of the first phase is to prepare students for
cultural and lexical background knowledge, review necessary listening skills and
stimulate students‟ interest in the listening task. As concluded by the group of
researchers, good habits of listening make effective listeners, and according to
them, listening to movies is much better than to tapes due to the fact that movies are
more attractive to listeners. They explained that when watching movies, students

have opportunities to both listen and observe the speakers‟ manner. Although the
suggestions of this researcher group appear compelling and can be beneficial to
their teaching environment, the application of them in Vietnamese teaching context
may be a big challenge due to a shortage of necessary facilities.
Hui Sui Yuehua Wang (2002) also concluded that a number of pre-listening
activities not only motivate students, help change them from passive to active
listeners, but also effectively increase the language input. According to these

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researchers, it is necessary for teachers to make good effort to design and apply prelistening activities in their teaching process for the sake of their students.
Another proponent of varying pre-listening activities, Nguyen Van Trao (2002)
indicated that pre-listening activities are useful as they make students feel wellprepared, thus minimize the fear of listening. The study was successful in showing
the influence of pre-listening activities on listeners‟ effectiveness of listening
comprehension. However, it is suggested that the results of pre-test and post-test
should be analyzed for more details such as the changes in each section of the
listening test. Moreover, the research result would be more reliable if the
experiment were carried out in a longer timeframe rather than only one month.
In an M.A thesis, Duong Thi Bich Thuy (2005) made an experimental research to
investigate whether pre-listening activities motivate students before the listening
and therefore improve their listening comprehension. The experiment group was
provided with numerous pre-listening activities while only new vocabulary and
structures were given to the control group students in the first phase of listening. While
and post-listening activities were the same for both groups. The effectiveness of prelistening activities was evaluated by comparing the difference between the results of a
pre-test and post-test. The result showed that the application of various pre-listening
activities has positive influence on the test results of the experiment group.
Besides, there are some articles, which research the effect of the use of video on
listening comprehension tests. Londe (2009) examined two video formats (closeup view of the head of the lecturer, and full body view of lecturer) and compared
theses to 28 the audio only format in a listening comprehension test setting. A

stimulated classroom lecture is videotaped and used, and one hundred took the test.
The aim of the research is to explore whether there are any performance differences
when students take these tests in the different formats. The results of the present
study show that the addition of the visual channel does not contribute to or take
away from the performance in English as a second language listening
comprehension test.

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