SKKN Applying some warm - Up listening activities to attract students’ interest for 10th form students at Le Loi high school

PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. The rationale of the study
The main objective of learning a language is to communicate in that language fluently. Hence, in order to obtain that aim, the learners do not only need language knowledge sources such as grammatical system, lexical system, phonological system, but they also have to practice four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. Among the language skills, listening is the most important in communication in the real life. In learning a language, listening is a useful means of providing learners with comprehensible input, which is an essential component of the whole language learning process. And teaching listening skill in classroom helps learners make transition from classroom English to real- life English more easily and effectively. 
Additionally, learning listening skill is the most difficult in learning a foreign language. Listening, like reading, is a receptive skill but it is often the most daunting for learners. When reading, a reader usually has more opportunities to refer back to the text to clarify understanding, which a listener cannot do in most listening contexts such as TV programs, meetings, discussions, lectures or conversations. What is more, in teaching and learning English listening skill in Vietnam, teachers and learners cope with a lot of problems and difficulties because of both objective and subjective reasons. Therefore, I myself choose the topic “Applying some warm-up listening activities to attract students’ interest for 10th form students at Le Loi high school.” to point out the main difficulties which the beginners have met and work out some suggestions so as to help teachers motivate their learners to study listening skill more excited and better.
2. Aims and Objectives of the study
The study is aimed at finding some difficulties in listening learning and teaching, also to suggest some strategies for developing listening skills. On this basis, the students’ abilities to deal with listening will be considerably improved. 
3. Objects of the study.
	Focusing on finding out some difficulties that students at 10th form class are facing, from that point, the study pays attention to the application of warm-up listening activities to improve students’ abilities in learning listening skill.
4. Methods of the study
With reference to its characteristics, this study can be categorized as an action research. The following instruments are applied to collect data for this study:
Two questionaires were used to measure whether students could improve their listening skill.
Tests were also used to measure the development of the students during the time the study was being carried out. 
5. Remarkable points of the study
The study tends to help students deal with how to enhance students’ interest in speaking learninng. By using the warm-up listening activities, students can have the motivation to learning listening skill effectively, thus will enhance their listening ability, consequently, help improve their understanding of English. 
PART B: DEVELOPMENT
I. Theoretical background of listening skill in language learning.
I. What is listening?
Listening is the ability to identify and understand what others are saying. This involves understanding a speaker’s accent or pronunciation, his grammar and his vocabulary, and grasping his meaning (Goh, 2002). An able listener is capable of doing these four things simultaneously. Willis (1981, p.134) lists a series of micro-skills of listening, which she calls enabling skills. They are:
• guessing at unknown words or phrases without panicking 
• predicting what people are going to talk about 
• using one’s own knowledge of the topic to help one understand 
• identifying relevant points; rejecting irrelevant information 
• retaining relevant points (note-taking, summarizing) 
• recognizing discourse markers, e.g., Well; Oh, another thing is; Now, finally; etc. 
• recognizing cohesive devices, e.g., such as and which, including link words, pronouns, references, etc. 
• understanding inferred information, e.g., speakers’ attitude or intentions 
• understanding different intonation patterns and uses of stress, etc., which give clues to meaning and social setting 
2. The importance of listening skill
Listening is an important skill and probably the most difficult one. Getting students to listen to spoken English is to let them hear different accents and varieties apart from their teacher and that way better prepare them for real world listening. The main method of exposing them to spoken English other than their teacher’s is using taped material that exemplify a wide range of topic such broadcast news, announcement, advertisement, etc.
From a theoretical perspective, teaching listening will help them acquire the language subconsciously even when the teacher does not draw their attention to special features. It is agreed that exposure to the target language is a fundamental requirement for those who want to learn it. The use of tape material will provide students with such exposure and they will get information not only vocabulary and structure but also pronunciation, rhythm, intonation, pitch and stress.
3. Two ways of listening
In real life, there are two ways in which we often listen:
* ‘Casual’ listening: Sometimes we listen with no particular purpose in mind, and often without much concentration. Examples of this kind of listening are : listening to the radio while doing some homework; chatting to a friend. Usually we do not listen very closely, unless we hear something that particularly interests us, and afterwards we may not remember much of what we hear.
*‘Focussed’ listening: At other times 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 information news on the radio; listening to someone explaining how to operate a machine. In these situations, we listen much more closely; but we do not listen to everything we hear with equal concentration – we listen for the most important points or for particular information. Usually, we know beforehand what we are listening for (the things we want to know), and this helps us to listen.
II. The reality of learning and teaching listening skill.
In class, we are usually concerned with the second kind of listening: we expect the students to listen closely and remember afterwards what they heard. But if we just ask the class to ‘listen’ and we ask questions afterwards, we are giving them a very difficult task. We can make it easier by telling them beforehand what to expect and what to listen for - this will help them to focus their listening.
The traditional way of teaching, such as, introducing some new difficult words, listening to the tape again and again and then giving correct answers, still prevails. It is not difficult for us to see how detrimental such a listening class is to learners. Such an approach to "teaching" listening is more like "testing" listening, because listeners are simply exposed to a succession of listening texts on a tape, and then are tested how much they have understood in terms of a lot of comprehension exercises rather than being taught how to listen and how to cope with their listening problems in the class. 
Many students complained that they became tired of listening to the tape from beginning to the end with some mechanical exercises. Without interest, motivation and variation in teaching and learning, students felt bored in listening classes. As a result, the passive attitude kept students from making much progress in listening comprehension. In this paper, what we want to discuss is how to make listening classes more interesting and how to develop students' listening ability. 
III. Applying the warm-up activities in teaching listening skill for 10th form students at Le Loi high school.
Just as Broughton says, "motivation is a basic principle of all kinds of teaching - the language student is best motivated by practice in which he senses the language is truly communicative, that it is appropriate to its context, that his teacher's skills are moving him forward to a fuller competence in the foreign language." Therefore, how to keep students' interest in learning must be focused. 
III.1. Warm-up exercises. 
In class, we must try to avoid boring or over-theoretical or mechanical subjects, using as far as possible warm-up exercises we think our students may be interested in, that seem of practical relevance, that may arouse or stimulate them. Sometimes, a picture or a humorous story can do a great deal towards arousing interest among students. However, during the whole listening course, most teachers actually only have a 'while-listening' stage, neglecting the 'pre-listening or warm-up exercise step, which acts as an important role in arousing students' interest and as the preparation stage for the 'while-listening' stage. 
As a matter of fact, we can say that how well students had done in class depends mostly on how well they had been warmed up. From this point of view, English teachers should start taking concrete measures to reconsider the methodology they can apply in their listening courses and try to improve their teaching of listening from a new approach. We should use some techniques that are effective and interesting in teaching listening courses, thinking as much as possible about the needs of students concerned. 
III.1.1. Using Pictures
I often use pictures in listening class. Pictures have the advantages of being easy to prepare, easy to organize, being interesting, meaningful and authentic. Pictures can bring images of reality into the unnatural world of the language classroom. Pictures are useful in developing students' listening comprehension, particularly “directed listening”. They not only help to guide the student' listening, they can provide a general background and context. They especially contribute to interest and motivation. For example, try this "spot the similarity" activity. 
Ask the students to get into pairs, give each student or pair of students a picture that the other(s) must not see. 
Tell them that they have pictures that are very different from each other, and ask them to describe these pictures to each other with the aim of finding as many similarities as they can. 
After several minutes, ask them to look at the two pictures and see what other similarities they can find.
Sometimes, I read descriptions of faces, maps, diagrams for students to draw. No matter how well or badly they had done, students were so happy to have the chance to listen, speak, and do something interesting in the listening class which they once considered a 'sleeping course'.
Unit 11: National Parks ( Grade 10 )
- Stick 2 pictures and ask my students to look at these pictures and discuss the questions :
1. Where is Nairobi National park ?
2. Is Everglades National Park a sub-tropical wilderness in southeastern United States ?
3. Are there any common features of these two national parks?
- Then, introduce the new lesson.
III.1.2. Questions and Answers
Some people might think that asking questions is a purely technical (i. e. grammatical) matter. But in my class, it is not. As a matter of fact, no matter how effective a technique is, listening comprehension should demand students' participation, and the immediate feedback helps keep interest and motivation. "Question Time" is the name I have given to those first five to ten minutes of a lesson. Before listening to a passage, I always asked some questions so that students would have some ideas about the topic before they listened. In this process of doing the warm-up activity, students could build on their prior knowledge and at the same time, use vocabulary and structures that are connected with a particular function. 
Unit 12: Music (grade 10)
For example , when teaching the students the lesson relating to music, I encourage my students to discuss the questions below:
Do you know Van Cao?
What’s his job?
When/ where was he born?
Is he still alive?
When did he die?
Which of the songs were written by him?
After that I introduce the topic : Today you are going to listen to an interview in which Lan Huong, the interviewer, asks Quang Hung, a famous actor, about Van Cao. 
In this way, students can be aware of the purpose of the exercise in general and the nature of the specific task in particular before they listen to the passage. The "Question Time" activity can do much in listening classes, such as creating a friendly atmosphere between the teacher and the students, building the students' confidence and having the thrill of something spontaneous. Above all, it makes students feel interested and gets them involved in the listening activities. 
III.1.3.Brainstorm 
- Give a topic and ask learners to think of anything related to it. 
- Write the responses for all to see, or ask a volunteer to do the writing. I can use this to elicit vocabulary related to your lesson. 
Unit 16: Historical Places ( Grade 10 )
III.1.4. Describe the Picture 
I show a picture and have learners take turns saying one descriptive thing about it. Beginners can make simple observations like "three cats" while advanced students can make up a story to go with the picture. They aren't allowed to repeat what someone else said, so they need to pay attention when each person speaks. 
Unit 8 : The story of my village ( Grade 10 )
- Hang out the picture on the board.
- Ask students to work in groups of 4 or 5.
- Each student has to give one word to describe about the picture of the village in Vietnam. (no repetition)
- Listen and take note the words.	
IV. Designing the warm-up listening activities in textbook 10th form.
	 In reality, some of the warm-up listening activities in the textbook are not really suitable for the students’ levels of our school in particular. Therefore, I myself desire to design some listening activities to attract students’ interest in learning listening skill.
UNIT 1: A DAY IN THE LIFE OF..
- Have students play an interesting quick game, that is Jumbled word.
-Write down some jumbled words on the board. Have students to work in groups of 4, in 15 seconds try to find out the words of meaningful correct order. 
- The groups with the most correct words within the shortest time will be the winner. 
UNIT 3: PEOPLE’S BACKGROUND
- Hang out some pictures on the board and ask students to guess the names of sport.
- Make questions and have students to answer individually.
+ Do you like sports?
+ What types of sports do you like?
+ Can you name some sport events that you know?
Volleyball	Basketball
Swimming	Table tennis
UNIT 4: SPECIAL EDUCATION
- Tell the story about the life and career of the speaker Nick Vujicic: Nick Vujicic is a wonder man of disability in the present world. He is a Serbian-Australian motivational speaker and Christian evangelist who was born without arms and leg. Actually, there is no medical reason why he was born without legs and arms. Vujicic struggled mentally and physically since childhood. He delivers motivational speeches around the world focusing on human disability and finding hope and meaning of life.
- Ask some questions.
+ What do you think of this man?
+ Do you think that disabled people have their career as other ordinary people?
UNIT 5: TECHNOLOGY AND YOU
- Draw the mindmap, relating to modern devices. Ask students to give the names of any modern devices they know.
- Ask students in pairs to ask and answer the questions, then take notes on the table. 
UNIT 6: AN EXCURSION
- Hang out some pictures and ask students to guess what the topic is about.
PICNIC
- Make the questions and have students answer the questions.
+ When is the best time for a picnic?
+ What do people often do at picnic?
UNIT 7: THE MASS MEDIA
- Divide class into 4 groups.
- Have students play the game: Guessing game
- Give the clues, groups with the correct answer in the shortest time will be the winner.
+ It is one of the radio programmes
+ It broadcasts daily and live from the radio station
+ It updates you with the latest information, current affairs/ events domestically and internationally.
+ What is the programme?
UNIT 10: CONSERVATION
- Hang out some pictures, and ask students to guess express their ideas about the pictures.
- Raise some questions:
+ What do you think of our nature?
+ What should we do to save the nature?
+ Is saving the nature your responsibilities or others’ ones?
UNIT 11: NATIONAL PARKS
- Have students play the guessing game by opening every picture on the board.
- The group with the correct guess within the shortest time will be the winner.
UNIT 12: MUSIC
- Divide class into 4 groups.
- Have students play the game: Music crossword puzzle
- Have students choose the number of questions, then answer the questions basing on the clues.
- Group can guess the key word will be the winner.
1. A Person watching television
2. A collection of recordings issued as a single item 
3. M – TP Son Tung is 
4. The type of film: Tom & Jerry 
5. A person who plays a musical instrument or writes music 
6. What type of music are
7. Buc Tuong band famous for? 
Key word: Van Cao
UNIT 14: THE WORLD CUP
- Play a piece of music relating to the world cup.
- Ask students to guess what the piece of music is about
- Raise some questions:
+ Do you like football?
+ Can you name some of the most famous football players in the world?
+ Who is your favourite football player? Why do you like him?
PELE- A famous Brazilian football player
UNIT 16: HISTORICAL PLACES
- Hand out some pictures and the information on the back of the pictures.
- Have students to work in pairs, one read out the clues, the other tries to guess where the place in the picture is.
- After guessing correctly, some hang out the pictures on the board
- Have one student to guess what the lesson is about.
- Listed as a World Cultural Heritage by UNESCO in 1993.
- Located in the Central City of Vietnam
- Famous for the Royal construction.
- Famous for historical and cultural site 
- Located in the capital city of Vietnam
- Educating thousands of talented men for the country
- The first university in Vietnam
- The capital of Vietnam from 1398 to 1407
- Famous for its construction of large limestone blocks
- Consist of the Inner Citadel, La Thanh Outer Wall and the Nam Giao altar
- Located in Vinh Loc district, Thanh Hoa province
- Famous for historical attraction of Hanoi
- Built over 2 years from 1973 to 1975.
- Known for honoring the national hero: Uncle Ho
- The resting place of Uncle Ho
V. Procedure of listening lesson.
V.1. Pre-listening stage
This stage prepares students by getting them to think about the topic or situation before they listen to the texts. In other words, it gives students a purpose to listen. It also gets students to relate to what they already know about the topic and not least important arouse their interest in listening. 
There are certain goals that should be achieved before students attempt to listen to any text. These are motivation, contextualization, and preparation. 
Motivation
 It is enormously important that before listening students are motivated to listen, so you should try to select a text that they will find interesting and then design tasks that will arouse your students' interest and curiosity.
Contextualization
 When we listen in our everyday lives we hear language within its natural environment, and that environment gives us a huge amount of information about the linguistic content we are likely to hear. Listening to a tape recording in a classroom is a very unnatural process. The text has been taken from its original environment and we need to design tasks that will help students to contextualize the listening and access their existing knowledge and expectations to