Some practical solutions for conducting an effective listening lesson in teaching English for grade 10

EXPERIENCE INITIATIVE
“Some practical solutions for conducting an effective listening lesson in teaching English for grade 10”
PART A. INTRODUCTION.
I. Rationales.
Teaching English’s objectives in high schools is to take shape and develop basic skills of English and intellectual quality needed for students to continue with their tertiary education or labor life. There fore, “listening”, “speaking”, “reading”, “writing” are all dignified with thematic approaches in series of text books for English secondary level.
In fact, “listening” is a very important direct communication skill which requires learners with their frequent practice in many daily situations or circumstances. However, this seems to be the most difficult part in reaching English improments, and it brings challenges to not only students but also teachers of English.
Working as a teacher for nearly 16 years I myself understand the nature of the problem and usually find it necessary to look for the ways to improve the situation. I have tried my best to do this research with a view to getting my students and my colleagues to benefit from it by giving them more opportunities to practise and to better their English. For all the reasons, I would like to conduct my research on the topic: “Some practical solutions for conducting an effective listening lesson in teaching English for grade 10”
II. Aims of the study.
Each work has its own aims, so does this study. The aims of my study are:
. To help teachers hold a useful and attractive listening lesson 
. To illustrate typical procedures of an effective listening period
. To help students master more and more English knowledge and develope communication skills
III. The object of the study.
+ Teachers and students’s mission in listening periods in Tong Duy Tan high school.
+ First grade level: class 10A consists of 43 students-the most brilliant students of our school’s Natural Science Department anhd class 10G with 38 poor quality students when entering the school.
+ The students’ abilities in getting knowledge and developing listening skills.
IV. Method of the study
Using analytic methods
Observing and asking colleagues for ideas and experiences
Practising the application of the study
Investigating methods: giving questions after lessons to test and assess the students’ attainment
PART B. CONTENT
Theoretical basis
Teaching aims
 The aims of teaching a language not only provide students with its knowledge but the last aim is to help students raise communicational abilities through 4 skills: listening, speaking, reading and writting in which, “listening” has to be obtained by continually practising. Outsides school environment, English should be learned through many other ways such as communicating in English frequently, listening to English songs, watching foreign chanels, making pen friends oversea ... in order to understand and to apply daily English speaking situations thoroughly.
Basic elements determining the effect of a listening period.
For teachers:
Using new and active teaching methods, teachers play roles as steerers to help students create and self develope listening skills.
In order to have and effective listening periods, the teachers ought to conduct following basic elements:
 . Choosing and aplying teaching techniques in active and suitable ways.
 . Arranging time and steering the class reasonably.
 . Making use of teaching equipment
 . Being creative, attracive and emotive.
Listening techniques
 Good teaching methods of listening periods are ruled by their conment. That means the content can govern the choice, the implement of teaching techniquies. There are many ways to attain the objectives of the lessons depending on reasonable techniques that teachers use.
Teaching equipment and devices
All the content of listening passages or dialouges is recorded in tape recorders whereas textbooks only contain the tasks. Therefore teachers should use teaching equipment and devices in effective ways with a view to obtaining the most useful practices. In addition to this, teaching aids also motivate and attract students to further studying activities.
Equipment and devices needed:
+ Tape recorder ( or tantamount devices)
+ Speakers
+ Real objects
+ Powerpoint lesson plan
+ Projector...
For students
Prepare lessons before going to school
Brain storm and search information relating to the topic of the lesson at home
Listen carefully to teacher’s introduction
Follow techer’s guideness
Be active and creative
Make use of listening skills
The Reality
Strong points
Although there still are some of objective and subjective conditions that affect the teaching procedures, we have got over the difficulties and gradually raise the quality of listening lessons in particular and English subject in general by having conducted the following activities:
For teachers:
Updating information on Internet or through workshops of English
Making use of typical techniques
Getting used to holding pairs work, groups work in active ways
Creating suitable teaching aids
Applying information technology in teaching
Having modern teaching equipment
Having the support and co-operation from the school, collaegues and students
For students
Being raised awareness of the importance of English language in further study and their future
Being approached to English daily on mass media
More and more students are encouraged to study English from their parents.
More and more students have good language skills.
Weak points
For some teachers:
Having difficulties in choosing listening techniques.
Being limited and confused in manipulating and process leading the lessons’ situations.
For some students:
Having less oppotunities of using modern devices and practising English at home
Lack of learning motivation
Being shy when having mistakes in pronouncing
Being a little shocked with high speaking speed of native speakers
Teaching aids:
Low quality of recorded tapes
 Having few pictures and real objects that should be used in listening lessons
Initial investigation result:
 In the school year of 2018 - 2019, I have taken on 2 classes of grade
10. One with ralatively high input points and another one with very low points of English when taking the entrance examination for upper secondary education taken place in June of last year.
After 2 units of 10th English text book, I had a small listening test for both of the classes:
Exercise 1: Listen to the student talking about her life and study in an international university then mark True(T) or False(F) statements.
She has classes in Spanish at La Guardia Community College. 	T/F
The teacher of her class is very nice and good.	T/F
The speaker lives in an apartment with her sisters.	T/F
It is easy to understand Annie and Marine Kass because they speak slowly.	T/F
Although it's very cold now, Central Park is lovely in the snow.	T/F
Tapescript 
Dear Miguel. How are you? I'm fine. Here's a letter in English. It's good practice for you and me!.
I have classes in English at La Guardia Community College. I'm in class with eight students. They are all from different countries: Japan, Brazil, Switzerland, Poland and Italy. Our teacher's name is Isabel. She is very nice and a very good teacher.
I live in an apartment with two American girls, Annie and Marine Kass. They are sisters. Annie's twenty years old and a dancer. Marine is eighteen and a student. They're very friendly, but it isn't easy to understand them. They speak very fast!
New York is very big, very exciting but very expensive! The subway isn't difficult to use and it's cheap. it's very cold now but Central Park is lovely in the snow. I'm very happy here.
Write to me soon.
Love,
Dorita
Exercise 2: You will hear a report of Lessons From Shanghai's Top Scores on International Test. Listen carefully and then complete the missing words. 
ANDREAS SCHLEICHER: "Asian countries value education more than other countries. They have given (1)education. a priority. Every child, every teacher, every parent knows that education is the gateway to (2)success."
Mr. Schleicher says other education (3)systems can learn from Shanghai. For example, he says education spending in the province has (4)increased., including teacher pay and training. And administrators are putting teachers into challenging classroom (5)situations.to make them better at their jobs.
Tapescript
The Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, is a two-hour test that compares the performance of fifteen-year-olds. In the latest test, the countries with the best readers were South Korea and Finland. But students in Shanghai, China, scored the highest of all in reading, mathematics and science.
The next strongest results were in Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada, New Zealand and Japan.
In all, around half a million students in more than seventy economies took the test last year. The test has been given every three years since 2000. Last year was the first time Shanghai took part.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development just released the results. Andreas Schleicher is director of the Education Indicators and Analysis Division at the OECD.
ANDREAS SCHLEICHER: "Asian countries value education more than other countries. They have given education a priority. Every child, every teacher, every parent knows that education is the gateway to success."
Mr. Schleicher says other education systems can learn from Shanghai. For example, he says education spending in the province has increased, including teacher pay and training. And administrators are putting teachers into challenging classroom situations to make them better at their jobs.
The specific result:
Class
Total
Points: 9 & 10
Points: 7 & 8
Points: 5 & 6
Points: 3 & 4
Points: 0, 1 & 2
N0
%
N0
%
N0
%
N0
%
N0
%
10A
43
2
4.7
12
27.9
18
41.8
9
20.9
2
4.7
10G
38
0
0
3
7.9
9
23.7
15
39.5
11
28.9
 The statistical results showed that the percentage of weak students are still quite high. This indicates that their listening skills are limited, so the essential problem is how to raise listening skills for students to be effective, I have proposed solutions and used following methods to perform.
Solutions
Making a careful plan 
This duty is concducted constantly and methodical so the teachers have to:
Look into the major content of the period from students’ book, teacher’s book and follow standard knowledge of skills. This duty is very essential because it helps teachers organise and control the lesson more easily, intentionally.
Study carefully the objectives of the lesson. In a listening period or in the any others, students are helped to practise and trained all of the 4 skills: Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing ( in which Listening is the centred skill). Generally, after the lesson, students can make out the main ideas of listening passages or dialouges then fulfil all the tasks from teachers.
Use listening devices in active ways. This can vary and depend on the topics of the lessons, the abilities of students and conditional features of the classrooms. To be more specific, for class 10A, with alot of fair students and having a projector, I often use powerpoint in teaching and search online update information related to the topics. On the other hand, for class 10G, with most of weak students and having no devices supported, I have to use a cassette player with low speed speaking disks for each lesson, besides, I also bring real objects or pictures related to the topics. 
Choose and co-ordinate listening techniques based on approach to the lesson’s aim such as: 
+ brainstorming about the topic
+ surfing listening skill
+ pausing at key words or phrases
+ guessing the meaning of the text....
Prepare a scientific lesson plan with students’ activities, teacher’s questions, students’ answers...
Give actual contacts: There are 16 topics in the text book of grade 10 and all of them are closed to daily life so it is essential for teachers to take examples in reality to illustrate the situations or draw useful lessons for students to follow.
Discuss with colleges about the possibility of the lesson.
Give students open questions about the topics and ask them to prepare at home before the class time.
Distribute the time for each activity reasonally. It is not permanent for all the lessons but we can take following hint: 
+ Warm up: about 4 minutes
+ Pre-listening: about 7 minutes
+ While-listening: about 20 minutes
+ Post-listening: about 10 minutes
+ Consolidation and giving homework: about 4 minutes
Implementing the process of teaching a listening period
A typical procedure consists of 3 stages: Pre - listening, While - listening and Post - listening. This process not only helps students comprehend enough materials to finish the tasks but also assist them in lively comunications. That means the teacher must be profesional enough in the role of a “ferry man”.
Pre - listening
In this period, teachers should
Prepare psychosphere for students before listening by leading directly; asking open questions about the topics; showing pictures, words, phrases or sentences related so as to be predicted about the topics of the lesson.
Elicit the excitement from students through small games involving with the topics. 
Help students be out of difficulties in pronoucing or new source of knowledge by pre teaching some new key words, new structures or introduce back ground knowledge.
This period often helps students thinking or having orientation about themes or situations of listening passages. There are lots of ways for teachers to teach in this part but the best choices for me are: True/ False Prediction; Open Prediction; Ordering and Pre-Questions
While - listening
It can’t be denied that this part is the main one of the lesson. It is the chance for students to practise and develop listening skills. 
Teachers have to introduce the tasks with a view to being sure that all students know about their duties clearly.
Basing on the level of students and on how difficult to understand the tapes, teachers can give the tasks easier or not in comparision with the tasks printed in the text book and decide how many times the students shoud be heard. 
For example, the learners in class 10 A need hearing 3 times, whereas the ones in class 10G need to be heard 4 0r 5 times:
+ The 1st time is for surfing - getting used to the voice of speaker, recognizing the position of words and phrases and getting the main ideas of the text
+ The 2nd time is for students to catch the information to fulfil the tasks.
+ The 3rd time is to check the answers and to correct the wrong ones.
There are also numerous ways of conducting this part as long as after listening students meet the requirements of understanding the content and getting over all the tasks given. In this part, I and my colleges often use exercises such as: Selecting; Delibrate Mistakes; Grids; Listen and Draw; True/ False Statements; Multiple Choice or Comprehension Questions.
Post - Listening
This part is a good chance for students to have further practices or we can call it “free pracice”. This is really important because students can combine information in the “while-listening” part with their background knowledge and language skills in real communicational situations among classmates in pairs or groups under the guideness of the teacher.
This part should be applied in varied activities: Role play; Recall the story; Write-it-up; Further practice...
Task redesigning
 As mentioned above, my school is situated in a rural and poor area, It is very hard for students to get a good result in learning English, especially in listening skill development beacause of many reasons.
 Having concerned about this fact, I intended to make it easier the tasks in while-listening. I myself preciate this work because it has been the key of success in my listening periods.
 Most of the tasks in the text book are suitable for my students, however, there are some of them seemed to be beyond their levels. If I kept the original tasks, there would be nothing to be caught after blistening.
 From that point of view I have decided to change some of the tasks as followed:
Mutiple choice exercises
It is difficult for the students to listen and fulfil the missing words of more than three words or the questions with long answer. Therefore I have moved these tasks from “fill in the blank” or “answer the questions” to “ multiple choices. Let’s take these changes as good examples:
	* Unit 6: 	An Excursion	
	Task 2
The weekend picnic I enjoyed most ___________ weeks ago.
just few	C. was just a few
was just	D. were few
My class decided ___________ to the Botanical Garden.
pay a visit	C. paid a visit
to pay a visit	D. to visited
We met __________ on time.
at the school gate	C. a school gate
at a gate	D. the school mates
We made ____________ roud the garden.
short tours	C. a big cake
mistakes	D. a short tour
In the afternoon, we went on _____________ games.
to playing more	C. playing some more
delaying more	D. to play some	
*Unit 11:	National Parks	
Tasks 2	
Howmany provinces does Cuc Phuong National Park belong to?
1	B. 2	C. 3	D. 4
How far is it from Hanoi to Cuc Phuong?
A.1960 km	B. 160 km	C. 200 km	D. 450 km
 3. What do many people come to Cuc Phuong for?
	A. to see the work being done to protect endanged species
B. to see friends and ralatives
C. to take photographs of buterflies and 1000-year-old-tree
D. to have a nice time
 4. When did Nguyen Hue defeat the Qing invaders?
	A. 1960	B. 2000	C. 1785	D. 1789
 5. What do the Muong ethnic minoriry in Cuc Phuong live mainly on?
	A. keeping cars and washing	C. bee keeping and farming
	B. cutting trees and raising 	D. guiding tours and farming
- True/False Statements
Another kind of exercises that I suppose better for my students is T/F statements. It is simplified by changing from “answer the questions” tasks
*Unit 14	The World Cup
Task 2
As a football player, Pele was famous for kicking and holding the ball.	T/F → controlling
He participated in 3 world cup in 1958, 1962 and 1970
T/F
Before retiring, Pele played for American national football team.
T/F → American football club
After his retirement, he became international ambassador for peace.
T/F → sport
On be half of being an ambassador, he worked to promote peace and understanding through friendly sport activities.
T/F
*Unit 16: 	Historical places
Task 2:
The ancient town of Hoi An is situated 13 km south of Da Nang. 
T/F → 30 
Hoi An was known as an important trading centre in Southeast Asia between the 16th and the 17th centuries
T/F
It is now famous for its old temples, pagodas, small thatch-roofed houses and narrow streets.
T/F → small tile-roofed houses
The old houses in Hoi An were made of brick and their pillars were carved with ornamental designs.
T/F → wood
The Assembly Hall of Cantonese Chinese Congragation is 164 years old.
T/F (it was built in 1855)
Tan Ky House was built 200 years ago.
T/F ( 2 centuries ago)
The house was for Vietnamese merchants and now is not well-preserved.
T/F → looks almost exactly as it did in the early 19th century
Hoi An was recognised by UNESCO as a World Cultural Heritage Site in 1999.
T/F
 ... 
4. Study environment
 Propagating enough source of knowledge and meeting requirement of fulfiling the tasks are the main objectives of the lesson, but one more essential element in a language period is encouraging study environment. 
Teachers must always create and lead foreign language environment in class, that means English is the main and sometimes the only means of communication. It bases on the level of student, teachers can choose to use short, simple sentences to be easy to understand and remember.
Teachers should always encourage and make effort to help students make full u