Designing supplementary activities to enhance listening skill for 11th graders at lê lai high school

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
THANH HOA PROVINCE
LÊ LAI HIGH SCHOOL
EXPERIENCE INITIATIVE:
DESIGNING SUPPLEMENTARY ACTIVITIES TO ENHANCE LISTENING SKILL FOR 11TH GRADERS 
AT LÊ LAI HIGH SCHOOL
Implementer: Lê Văn Bằng
Job title: Group leader
Experience initiative: English
THANH HOÁ YEAR 2016
TABLE OF CONTENS
 	 Page
1. Introduction 
- Rational............................................................................................................1
- Purposes and significance of the study............................................................1
- Methods and instruments.................................................................................2
2. The study
2.1. English teaching and learning at Le Lai High School...................................3
2. 2. Listening tasks at the 11th grade and MBA/MBT.........................................3
2. 3. Data analysis and findings.............................................................................3
	2.3.1. Initial data..........................................................................................3
	2.3. 1.1. Results from pre-listening test............................................3
	2.3.1.2. Results from pre-action stage observation ..........................4
	2.3.1.3. Results from students’ questionnaire 1................................5
	2.3.1.3.1. Students’ evaluation about listening skill and their own listening competition.....................................................................................5
	2.3.1.3.2. Students’ opinions about listening tasks in English 11...........................................................................................................................5
	2.3.1.3.3. Students’ feelings when doing listening tasks in English 11..............................................................................................................6
	2.3.1.3.4. Students’ evaluation about the effectiveness of listening tasks to their listening competence ........................................................6
	2.3.1.3.5. Students’ preferences for listening tasks................6
	2.3.1.3.6. Students’ opinions about the way their teachers treat listening tasks................................................................................................7
	2.3.2. Results from documents analysis......................................................7
	2.3.2.1. English 11............................................................................7
	2.3.2.2. Listening tasks in listening sections of English 11..............8
	2.3.2.3. Conclusion...........................................................................9
2.4. The hypothesis.............................................................................................10
2.5. Data collected in the action stage.................................................................10
	2.5.1. Results from action stage observations...........................................10
	2.5.2. Results from questionnaire 2...........................................................11
	2.5.3. Results from teaching diaries..........................................................12
	2.5.4. Results from post – test...................................................................12
	2.5.5. Summary of major findings and discussions..................................13
	2.5.5.1. The unsuitability of listening tasks in the textbook and its effects on students’ listening comprehension......................................................13
	2.5.5.2. Students’ preferences for listening tasks............................13
	2.5.5.3. Supplementary activities and modified listening tasks could help improve students’ listening comprehension................................................13
2.6. Supplementary activities and modified listening tasks. ..............................14
	 Page
3. Conclusion
- Conclusions...............................................................................................18
- Recommendations.....................................................................................18
- Limitations of the study.............................................................................19
- Suggestions for further study.....................................................................19
REFERENCES
APPENDIES
APPENDIX 1: PRE-TEST 
APPENDIX 2: PHIẾU ĐIỀU TRA 1 
APPENDIX 3: PHIẾU ĐIỀU TRA 2
APPENDIX 4: OBSERVATION SHEET
APPENDIX 5: TEACHING DIARY
APPENDIX 6: POST-TEST
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
- EFL: English as a foreign language
- AR: Action research
- TESOL: Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages
LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS
 Page
List of tables
Table 1: Results from pre-listening test................................................................3
Table 2: Students’ involvement in the task...........................................................5
Table 3: Frequency of listening tasks in listening lessons....................................5
Table 4: Students’ feelings when doing listening tasks in English 11..................6
Table 5: Students’ evaluation about the effectiveness of listening tasks..............6
Table 6: Students’ preferences for listening tasks.................................................6
Table 7: Students’ opinions about the ways their teachers treat listening tasks....7
Table 8: Topic in English 11.................................................................................8
Table 9: Types of listening tasks in English 11.....................................................8
Table 10: Students’ involvement in the tasks......................................................10
Table 11: Students’ evaluation about supplementary activities and modified listening tasks......................................................................................................11
Table 12: Results of post-test..............................................................................12
1. Introduction
- Rationale for the study
	For some recent years, English has played more and more important part in Vietnam; therefore, it has been taught in Vietnamese secondary schools as a compulsory subject. So far, there have been remarkable changes in the way of teaching and learning English. However, English teaching in general and teaching listening in particular still is far from satisfactory. How to motivate students to listen is really necessary, and is a big question to most teachers in Vietnam now. On the other hand, each student has different language learning capacity. Especially, in my high school in a mountainous area, students have quite low levels of English. So it is important for me to find effective ways to increase my students’ interest in listening and hence improve their listening skill. 
	In reading relevant literature, I can see that students find listening extremely difficult and boring due to different reasons. For instance, the listening tasks may be monotonous, repetitive and beyond their language level, or there could be too many new words in the listening records; the pronunciation of several words in the record may be unfamiliar to students who are used to pronouncing them wrongly; or the speakers may speak too fast for them to hear, as they are used to hear each word separately in the Vietnamese language rather than focusing merely on stressed syllables and essential key words in English, etc. Supplementary activities before listening, while listening and after listening, especially language games, are highly needed in order to ease the listening tasks for them while they may add fun to the listening lesson and hence help them improve their listening skill.
	There may have been a good number of interesting materials for use by English teachers in their listening lessons, but which of them can be suitable to the particular students at my school remains a question to answer, since each group of students may have their own problems and capacity, as discussed earlier.
	For the above reasons, I decide to embark on the task of designing supplementary activities to enhance listening skill for the 11th graders at Le Lai High School.
- Purposes and significance of the study
The study aims at the following:
Understanding Le Lai High School’s 11th graders’ English proficiency and difficulties in listening, and causes of the difficulties they face with;
Analyzing listening tasks, texts and audio resources in the textbook “English 11” for 11th graders to identify difficulties;
Identifying possible supplementary activities needed for those listening tasks and see which of them can help enhance these students’ listening skill.
	The study’s output is the set of possible activities to supplement the listening tasks in English 11 for 11th Graders at Le Lai High School, which will benefit other teachers and students at my school apart from myself and those I teach. This provides my study with its practical significance.
- Research questions, methods and instruments
	In the attempt to achieve the afore-mentioned aims, the following research questions are formulated so as to gather necessary information and data:
What is the level of the 11th graders’ English listening skill, and what difficulties they may face with in listening? Why?
What makes listening lessons in English 11 difficult and why?
What additional activities can be designed to help the students address those difficulties?
To seek answers to the three research questions above, I will apply the following methods and instruments:
Question 1: 
Interviewing a number of 11th graders to find out what difficulties they expect to encounter in listening lessons in the 11th grade and causes of those difficulties;
Discussing with English teachers at my school to gather more information on difficulties 11th graders have faced with, or may have to face with, and their causes. Part of the information from teacher discussions will also help answer question 2 below.
Question 2:
Analyzing listening tasks, texts and audio resources in English 11 to identify problems and their possible causes, including new words, pronunciation, speed, intonation, etc.
Question 3:
	Designing supplementary activities and modifying listening tasks to help address the difficulties identified so that listening tasks are easier, more suitable and interesting to the students. 
2. The study
2.1. English teaching and learning at Le Lai High School
As you know, Le Lai High School is a mountainous high school. Thus its English teaching and learning has several difficulties. Firstly, the class size far exceeds the standard number for a language class, with approximately or more 40 students each. Secondly, the number of technology-aided classrooms is very limited; therefore, teachers can not apply electronic lessons to the extent that they desire for. Moreover students’ motivation in learning foreign language is quite weak, especially listening skill. Finally, there is lack of visual aids such as pictures and portable boards from the school. Thus, the teachers and students are not offered the most convenient and modern environment to the teaching and learning of English.
2.2. Listening tasks at the 11th grade and MBA/MBT
CLT underpins the design of English Textbook 11, so the structure of each unit includes four skills: reading, speaking, listeningand writing. Linguistic knowledge such as phonetics, vocabulary and grammar areconsidered the means and condition to form and improve communicative ability. In fact, the learner-centered approach is also adapted in order to promote students' activeness and creativeness, in which teachers act as theorganizer and facilitator in the class.
The content of the book is theme-based, with 16 units covering different topicswhich were contextualized to be suited to Vietnamese students. Further, learning is task-based, with the activities are designed in the way in which students are offered opportunities to interact and co-operate.
In English Textbook 11, Listening is the most challenging and important skill in each unit. It is put after two other skills due to its productive nature and dependence on input from other skills. In the 11th grade, students are expected to work on a variety of listening tasks, each of which goes with a particular topic. 
2.3. Data analysis and findings
	This section, first of all, analyzes the initial data collected from pre – listening test, questionnaires and teaching diaries. Then, the hypothesis and planning and action phases are presented. Finally, the researcher discusses the techniques used for supplementary listening activities and modifying listening tasks as well his attempts to evaluate the action research.
2.3.1. Initial data
2.3. 1.1. Results from pre-listening test
	As stated above, on the first day of week 2 students would do a test to measure their level. Below are the results of the test:
Table 1: Results of the pre-test
Marks
Marks 1-2
Marks 3-4
Marks 5-6
Marks 7-8
Marks 9-10
Numbers of students
9
22
6
3
0
Percentage
22.5%
55%
15%
7.5%
0%
	From the table, it can be seen that 78% of the students scored below average, whereas students achieving average scores made up 15% and only 7.5% could get from mark 7 to mark 10. The result of the test showed that most of the students were quite weak at listening skill. Students need to be helped to improve this skill.
2.3.1.2. Results from pre-action stage observations.
At pre-action stage, the researcher taught Unit 9 (The post office) and Unit 10 (Nature in danger) with non supplementary activities and non-modified tasks. The lessons were observed by another teacher. During the observations, this teacher took notes and gave the total marks of students’ involvement in the tasks in the two periods. The following is the description of one lesson: 
Class: 11A1
Number of students in class: 40
Time: 45 minutes
Unit 9: The post office
 Period 5: C - LISTENING
	As usual, the lesson started with warm-up. The teacher gives some photos and asked his students some questions: (Which is the quickest, a phone call, a fax, an e-mail or a letter?, Do you think more and more people are using cell phone in Vietnam nowadays? Why?) then students worked in pairs to match the name of each picture in 4 minutes. After calling each pair to go to board and match some picture with the name of telephone, the teacher introduced the lesson (Today we will listen to a tape script of the development of Vietnam’s telephone system over the past few years). Before students listened to the passages to complete the tasks, teacher introduced some words and phrases. Then students continued the lesson with task 1 choosing the best answer A, B, C or D. They were asked to work individually, run through the 05 sentences in task 1 and underline the key words. Then teacher played the tape twice. After that, the teacher asked students to give answers. However, few of them had all the answers. Some even paid no attention to the task. The teacher stopped by each sentence for checking. Students, then, came to task 2 answering five questions about the development of Vietnam’s telephone system over the past few years. The teacher again played the tape twice. However, this task seemed to be difficult for students as almost no student noted down anything. The teacher had to provide help. The lesson flew slowly. Finally, the teacher gave some cues and asked students to work in pairs to talk about the development of Vietnam’s telephone system. Here are the results from the observations. First, it should be mentioned that the observation sheet had six items, but during unit 9 and 10 the observer only used four items to observe students’ involvement in the tasks. The highest mark for each item was 5 and the highest mark for the whole class in each lesson was 20. The highest total mark for the observations during two lessons was 40.
Below are the concrete results: 
Table 2: Students’ involvement in the tasks
Units
Unit 9
(The post office)
Unit 10
(Nature in danger)
Marks of students’ involvement in the tasks
8
9
Percentage
40%
45%
	It can be seen from the table that level of students’ involvement in the tasks was quite low. In Unit 9 (The post office), the percent of students who involved in the tasks accounted for 40%, while in Unit 10 (Nature in danger) was a bit higher with 45%. This figures showed that more than half of the students paid no attention to studying listening. They barely participated in the lessons. This may be resulted from two main reasons: the first one, maybe, is that the tasks themselves are uninteresting; the second one is probably due to students’ low level of listening competence.
2.3.1.3. Results from students’ questionnaire 1
2.3.1.3.1. Students’ evaluation about listening skill and their own listening competence.
(Questions 1 and 2)
	When answering the first question about their evaluation about learning listening skill, most of the students (96%) admit that learning listening skill is difficult, even extremely difficult. 
Regarding to students’ self-evaluation about their own listening comprehension ability, only 1 out of 40 students confidently said that her listening ability was very good; whereas 78% thought that they were very bad at listening. In listening lessons, they almost hear nothing.
2.3.1.3.2. Students’ opinions about listening tasks in English 11. (Questions 3, 4 and 5)
	When answering the question how often they completed listening tasks in listening lessons, 2% of the students said that they always completed listening tasks, 14% often finished, but 84% sometimes could finish the tasks. The result also showed that 66% of the students confirmed that kinds of listening task in the textbook were not very diversified.
Question No 4 tried to seek the frequency of listening tasks in listening lessons. The results are clearly presented in the table below: 
Table 3: Frequency of listening tasks in listening lessons
Answering open-ended questions (%)
Filling missing words (%)
Deciding T/F state-ments
(%)
Numbering the pictures (%)
Multiple choice questions
(%)
Completing missing information in the table/ charts (%)
Ticking the things you hear (%)
84%
24%
24%
10%
12%
4%
10%
	As can be seen that the most frequently used tasks in listening lessons are answering open-ended questions. Filling missing words and deciding T/F statements rank second with 24% for each kind. Such kinds of task as numbering the pictures, multiple choice questions and ticking the things you hear are sometimes presented. Only the tasks of completing the missing information in the table/charts are rarely used. The information in this table once again confirmed that listening tasks in English 11 are not very plentiful.
2.3.1.3.3. Students’ feelings when doing listening tasks in English 11 
Question No 6 examines students’ feelings when doing listening tasks in English 11. The results can be seen in the following table:
Table 4: Students’ feelings when doing listening tasks in English 11
Very interested (%)
Interested (%)
Normal (%)
Bored (%)
Very bored (%)
2%
6%
38%
0%
54%
	When asked to express their feeling when doing listening tasks in English 11, the majority of the students (accounting for 54%) said they felt very bored with the listening tasks in the textbook. 38% of them felt normal and only a small number of students were interested in the tasks.
It is obvious that listening tasks in the textbook dissatisfy most of the students, which can not motivate students to participate in the lessons as well as not to encourage them to develop their listening skill.
2.3.1.3.4. Students’ evaluation about the effectiveness of listening tasks to their listening competence.
Table 5: Students’ evaluation about the effectiveness of listening tasks
Very effecti