VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES
 VŨ THỊ THẢO A SURVEY ON THE PERCEPTIONS OF STUDENTS AT
THANH LIEM A HIGH SCHOOL OF THE BENEFITS OF
PRE-LISTENING ACTIVITIES IN LEARNING LISTENING SKILLS
(Nghiên cứu khảo sát về nhận thức của học sinh Trường THPT Thanh Liêm A đối với lợi ích của
các hoạt động tiền nghe hiểu đối với việc học kĩ năng nghe) M.A MINOR THESIS

FIELD : ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODOLOGY
CODE : 60.14.0111 HANOI – 2013

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES
 VŨ THỊ THẢO
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
To complete this thesis, I have benefited a great deal of useful and practical
support from a variety of people.
First of all, I would like to express my deep gratitude to Dr. Tran Thi Thu
Hien, my respected supervisor, for her close and experienced guidance,
encouragement and invaluable detailed critical feedback in the process of
completing my thesis.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the M.A lecturers who have
been teaching K20 M.A course in Vietnam National University - University of
Languages and International Studies and the post-graduate staff for their
contributions to the success of the course.
My sincere thanks are also for all teachers of English at Thanh Liem A high
school for their help in answering the interview questions, for their constructive
suggestions to this research, and for their willingness to share their relevant
problems with me.
I wish to convey my thanks to the students of classes 10A1, 11A6 and 12A7
I have visited in order to gather information for survey questionnaire and observed.
Without their help, this study would not have been successful.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page
Statement of authorship
Acknowledgement
Abstract
Table of contents
List of abbreviation
List of tables and charts
PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale
2. Aims of the study
3. Research questions
4. Scope of the study
5. Methodology
6. Significance of the study
7. Structure of the study
PART B: DEVELOPMENT
Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
1. 1. Theory of listening
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ii
iii
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2.3. The students
2.4. The listening materials
2.5. The teaching and learning English at TLAHS
2.6. Summary
Chapter 3: RESEARCH METHOD
3. 1. The participants
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5
5
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6
6
7
9
9
10
13
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vi 3. 2. Instruments of collecting data

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23

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25

27
30

31
vii 4.3. Discussion of the results collected by means of the interview
4.3.1. Teachers’ attitude towards listening skill
4.3.2. Teachers’ opinion on pre-listening activities in the textbooks
they are teaching
4.3.3. Teachers’ frequency of teaching pre-listening
4.3.4. Teachers’ opinion on benefits of pre-listening activities in
teaching and learning listening skill
4.4. Recommendations
4.4.1. Encouraging students to learn listening skill from the
beginning stage of listening

4.4.2. Improving teachers’ teaching method in pre-listening stage
4.4.3. Improving the pre-listening activities in the text books
4.5. Summary
PART C: CONCLUSION
1. Summary of the study


Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Appendix 3
Appendix 4 I
I
V
X
XI

List of abbreviation
IT: Information Technology
NCLRC: the National Capital Language Resource Center
SLA: Second Language Acquisition
TLAHS: Thanh Liem A High School
VNU: Vietnam National University
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LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS
Tables
Page
Table 1: Students’ opinion about the necessity of using pre- listening
activities
Table 2: Teacher’s frequency of using - listening activities
Table 3: Students’ preference for teacher’s brainstorming activities
Table 4: Students’ preference for pre-teaching new vocabulary
Table 5: Students’ preference for introducing the content of the
PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale
One of the most important elements necessary to acquire a language is
listening skill. Not only in terms of the first language, but also of the second
language, listening skill is of primary importance for listeners to receive the
messages. "We can expect to listen twice as much as we speak, four times more than
we read, and five times more than we write." (Morley, J. 1991: 82). Like learners
elsewhere in Viet Nam, learners at Thanh Liem A high school encounter great
difficulties in learning listening skills. They can hardly receive spoken messages if
they fail to take listening input. Therefore, pre-listening activities play a crucial part
in easing learners’ anxiety before learning listening lessons and help motivate
students’ interests in learning listening skills.
Many researchers have shed light on the effectiveness of pre-listening
activities. A research by Hong, L. T. T (2006), investigated on pre-listening
techniques to motivate students at Lomonosov upper-secondary school to improve
the listening skills. According to the study, sometimes the students were not highly
motivated by the pre-listening techniques that the teachers applied. The differences
between teachers’ and students’ preferences for pre-listening activities still existed.
Another research related to pre-listening stage was done by Huyen, N. D (2010).
She investigated the effects of pre-listening activities on the listening performance
of 10
th
grade students at Nguyen Gia Thieu High school, Hanoi. The findings of the
study showed some pre-listening activities used by the teachers had good effects on
the students’ listening comprehension. In addition, Ha, M. T. H. (2010), also
studied on effectiveness of appropriate pre-listening activities on 10
th
-form

listening activities in learning listening skills. To be more specific, the objectives of
this study are:
- carrying out an investigation on students’ perceptions of applying those
benefits to teaching and learning listening skills in grade 10, 11 and 12 at Thanh
Liem A High school, Ha Nam province
3 - studying and evaluating benefits of pre-listening activities in listening
lessons
- giving some suggestions to increase the effectiveness of applying pre-
listening activities in promoting students’ learning English
It is hoped that the findings from this study will have some benefits to
teachers and students at TLAHS.
3. Research questions
To reach the aims mentioned above, the general research questions below
will be addressed:
1. What are TLAHS students’ attitudes towards pre-listening activities in their
learning listening skills?
2. What do the students perceive of the benefits of pre-listening activities to their
learning listening skills?
3. What are the effective pre-listening activities to students?
4. Scope of the study
Despite the fact that four skills of language learning are very important
factors, the author confines the thesis to listening skill and focuses on the benefits of
pre-listening activities to students at TLAHS where she has been teaching for more
than ten years. Other activities such as while-listening activities and post-listening
activities are out of the scope of the study.
5. Methodology
With the aims of investigating students’ attitude towards the benefits of pre-

discussion and suggests implications of the study in teaching and learning listening
skill at school.
5 The last part summarizes the mains findings of the study, presents some
suggestions for further research and points out the limitations. 6 PART B: DEVELOPMENT
Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
1. 1. Theory of listening
In this chapter, the researcher mentions some theories related to the topic to
have a background academic knowledge for the research from professional authors
and previous researches.
1. 1. 1. Definition of listening and listening comprehension
1. 1. 1.1. Definition of listening
Listening is an activity of identifying and understanding what others are

skill and the role of the listeners is no longer passive but active. After a period of
listening, the learners are expected to be able to talk or write about what they have
heard, that is the aims of listening comprehension. Hence, “the role of the successful
listeners has to be thought as an active one”.
In short, from these opinions above, it is clear that no one can give all the
ideas and features of what listening is. Each definition reflects what listening means
as seen from the scholar’s own view. However, all definitions reveal their common
features, the nature of listening – “receiving and understanding”, in which they
emphasize on listening process, listening message and listeners.
1. 1. 2. The process of teaching and learning listening lesson
“In a typical lesson, there are “pre” activities, “while” activities and “post”
activities” (Brown, S. 2006:3). According to Underwood, M. (1989), listening
activities are described in term of three phrases: pre, while and post listening
activities. The teachers of English follow these three parts of teaching listening.
Each part is relative to two other parts in the process that is (i) pre-listening is a
8 preparatory stage, (ii) while-listening completes the main listening task and (iii)
post-listening serves as the further development part.
Techniques and activities in listening comprehension process are usually
executed in two dimensions, namely “top-down” and “bottom-up” processes.
Top-down process is listener based, which means “using our prior
knowledge and experiences; we know certain things about certain topic and
situations and use that information to understand” (Brown, S. 2006: 2). Flowerdew,
J. and Miller, L. (2005: 25) have the same view on this process. Top-down process
“emphasizes the use of previous knowledge in processing a text rather than relying
upon the individual sounds and words”. This approach is useful for “predicting
information, brainstorming ideas, drawing inferences or summarizing” (http://
www.nclrc.org/ essentials/ index.htm).

background knowledge.
 The support: comprises pictures, diagrams and visual aids.
Boyle, J. P. (1984: 35) points out three factors influencing listening, namely,
listener factors, speaker factors and factors in the material and medium.
Anderson, A. and Lynch, T. (1988: 202) indicate five causes of obstacles to
efficient listening comprehension: (i) the organization of information, (ii) the
familiarity of the topic, (iii) the explicitness and sufficiency of the information, (iv)
the type of referring expressions used, and (v) whether the text describes a “static”
or “dynamic” relationship.
Underwood, M (1989: 16-19) reveals seven factors making listening difficult
as follows:
 Listeners cannot control the speed of delivery.
 Listeners cannot always have words repeated so they have to guess the
meaning of words from the context.
 Listeners have a limited vocabulary. They sometimes encounter an unknown
word which may cause them to stop and think about the meaning of that word
and thus cause them to miss the next part of the speech.
 Listeners may fail to recognize the signals which indicate that the speaker is
moving from one point to another, giving an example, or repeating a
point.
2  Listeners may encounter problems of interpretation because of lack
contextual knowledge.
 It can be listeners’ inability to concentrate in a foreign language.
 Students may have established certain learning habits such as a wish to
understand every word.
From these opinions above, it is clear that two factors affecting students’
listening ability are the subjective factors and the objective factors. The subjective

teaching cultural key concepts. The teacher may choose key words, important
grammatical structures and proverbs to introduce through the discussion about the
topic or request their learners to guess the situation they are going to hear, based on
the knowledge they have already had. (Gilakjani, A.P. & Ahmadi, M. R. 2011: 982)
Underwood, M. (1989: 31) lists the activities to help focus the students’
minds on the topic as follows: (i) the teacher giving background information, (ii) the
students reading something relevant, (iii) the students looking at pictures, (iv)
discussion on the topic/ situation, (v) a question and answer session, (vi) written
exercises, (vii) following the instructions for the while-listening activity and (viii)
consideration of how the while-listening activity will be done.
Another list of pre-listening activities is proposed by NCLRC including:
 looking at pictures, maps, diagrams, or graphs
 reviewing vocabulary or grammatical structures
 reading something relevant
 constructing semantic webs (a graphic arrangement of concepts or words
showing how they are related)
 predicting the content of the listening text
 going over the directions or instructions for the activity
 doing guided practice
4 (http:// www.nclrc.org/ essentials/ index.htm)
Nguyen Hai Chau et al. (2007: 91), introduce some activities applied in pre-
listening stage including: the first activity is open prediction. The teacher introduces
the topic of the lesson, the students make some guesses about that topic; True/false
statements prediction is the second type of pre-listening activity. In this activity, the
teacher gives out some statements about the main content of the listening, the
students discuss in pairs or in groups to guess if those are true or false; Ordering is
the third activity to be applied in teaching and learning listening. The teacher lets

students questions relating to the listening topic. “We can use the student-
generated questions by giving them a topic, letting them ask questions about
what kind of information they would like to know, and then asking their
classmates to give answers to the questions”, (Lingzhu, J. 2003). Flowerdew,
J. and Miller, L. (2005: 189) point out the teacher helps get students ready by
using focused questions and open questions which focus on “eliciting
background knowledge that may help in contextualizing the listening,
checking whether pictures or diagrams are understood, checking whether
students understand how the while-listening activity should be done”. This
activity enhances students’ point of view on relating content.
- Brainstorming, making list of relating words, phrases / ideas / suggestions:
on making the list, students can use the words and phrases they have already
known, or they can ask their partners for help. Students can participate in this
activity in a relaxed atmosphere because there is no right or wrong answer on
the list. This activity is very good for pair work, group work or whole class.
- Using visual aids: teachers use pictures, maps, film clips, etc to help
students predict the incoming information in listening. Teacher may ask
students to look at the picture(s) or watch a film clip and name the items and
phenomena relating to the listening text. Pre-listening activity "looking and