VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES
*****************
NGUYỄN THỊ PHƯƠNG QUỲNH CURRENT SITUATION IN TEACHING AND LEARNING
ENGLISH LISTENING AT TAY HO HIGH SCHOOL IN
HANOI AND SOLUTIONS

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M.A. Minor Programme Thesis
Major: English Teaching Methodology
Major: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 60 14 10
Supervisor: NGUYỄN THỊ VƯỢNG, M.A. Hanoi - 2010
TABLE OF CONTENT PAGE
TABLE OF CONTENT
iv
LISTS OF TABLES
v
CHARPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1
1.1. Rationale of the Study
1
1.2. Aims of the Study

9
2.1.3.2.3. Learners learning habit
9
2.1.3.2.4. Lack of concentration
9
2.1.3.2.5. The size of the class
9
2.2. Teacher’s roles
10
2.2.1. A tailor
10
2.2.2. A stand-up comedian or a storyteller
10
2.2.3. A sleuth
10
2.2.4. An engineer
11
2.2.5. A spy
11
2.2.6. A doctor
11
2.2.7. A firefighter
11
2.2.8. A tour guide
11
CHAPTER 3: AN OVERVIEW OF THE NEW ENGLISH
TEXTBOOK “TIENG ANH 10” AND THE CURRENT
SITUATION OF TECHING THE TEXTBOOK AT TAY HO
HIGH SCHOOL
13

4.2. Research questions
18
4.3. The subjects
18
4.4. The data collection instruments
19
4.5. Data collection procedure
19
CHAPTER 5: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSIONS
21
5.1. Discuss of the results
21
5.1.1. Discussion of the results collected by means of
questionnaire
21
5.1.1.1. Students’ opinion on the listening skill in general and
listening lesson on the new textbook ‚Tieng Anh 10‛ in particular
(Table 1)
21
5.1.1.2. Students opinion about the quality of the cassette
player (Table 2)
22
5.1.1.3. Students opinion about the content of the listening
(Table 3)
22
5.1.1.4. Difficulties faced by students (Table 4)
24
5.1.1.5. Students’ expectation from their teachers in teaching
listening (Table 5)
26

33
6.2.2. Training students to become active and effective learners
34
6.2.3. Improving teachers’ classroom techniques
35
6.2.4. Making advantage of teaching facilities
37
6.2.5. Changing the assessment ways
37
CONCLUSION
39
1. Summary of the study
39
2. Limitations of the study
40
3. Suggestions for further study
40
REFERENCES
41
APPENDIXES
I
Appendix 1: Survey Questionnaire for Students (Original)
I
Appendix 2: Survey Questionnaire for Students (English
Translation)
IV
Appendix 3: Questions for informal interview with teachers
VII
Appendix 4: Classroom observation 1
VIII


CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1. Rationale of the Study
With Vietnam’s entry into the WTO and opening its markets to the outside
world, the demand for English speaking proficiency among people is rising. In
recent years, the communicative approach has become more and more widely used
in teaching and learning English at tertiary education and therefore, students’
communicative competence has been stressed. The needs of communication make
listening teaching a priority all over the country. The need for competence in

arrived at high school since 2006 in which the grammar and vocabulary focus were
changed into a skill focus: listening, writing, speaking and reading among these
listening play a very important role on language teaching and learning. However,
not many researchers study on the listening difficulties perceived by high school
teachers and students in using the new ‚Tieng Anh 10‛ textbook. Hence, it is in
urgent need of taking a serious look at this issue.

1.2. Aims of the study
The specific aims of this study are:
- To investigate the areas of difficulty that the teachers at Tay Ho High School are
coping with in their daily teaching listening comprehension to the 10
th
form students
with the textbook ‚Tieng Anh 10‛
- To suggest some solutions to overcome these difficulties
This study is carried out in the hope that the findings from the study will be of some
benefits to the teachers at Tay Ho High School in their teaching listening.

1.3. Research questions
In order to find out the challenges that the teachers and students of grade 10 in
teaching and learning listening, it is necessary to answer the following questions:
1. What is the reality of teaching and learning teaching in grade 10 at Tay Ho
high school?
2. What are the challenges that teachers and students in grade 10 have to face? 3. What are the solutions to improve listening skill for students of grade 10?

1.4. Scope of the study
This study is limited to:

problems that are often met by teachers teaching English for grades 10 at TH High school. In addition, this research also points out some feasible solutions which are,
hopefully, beneficial for both teachers and students.

1.7. Design of the study
The study is divided into three parts
The first part ‚Introduction‛ (chapter 1) presents the rationale, the aim and
objectives, the scope, the methods, significance and the design of the study.
The second part, ‚Development‛, consists of four chapters:
Chapter 2 provides a thorough literature review relevant to the study. It presents the
theoretical background: the concepts relating to listening skill, its importance to
language learners and listening teaching as a second language. Potential Problems
in Learning to Listen to English are also mentioned in this chapter.
Chapter 3 is an overview of the new English textbook ‚Tieng Anh 10‛ and the
current situation of teaching the textbook at TH high school.
Chapter 4 deals with the introduction of the research methods which are: research
questions, subject, questionnaire, class observation and informal interview.
Chapter 5 is for analyzing the data collected from survey questionnaires, interview
as well as classroom observation.
Chapter 6 concludes the findings the researcher has from the study and proposes
some solutions to the teaching of listening skill for grade 10 at TH high school.
The last part of the study ‚Conclusion‛ gives a brief description of the study and
states the limitations as well as recommendations for further research.
ideas, sense of values, and their appreciation. There are different controversies on the nature of LC. According to Howatt
and Dakin (1974), listening is the ability to identify and understand what others are
saying. This process involves understanding a speaker's accent or pronunciation, the
speaker’s grammar and vocabulary, and comprehension of meaning. An able
listener is capable of doing these four things simultaneously. Thomlison's (1984)
definition of listening includes "active listening," which goes beyond comprehending
as understanding the message content, to comprehension as an act of empathetic
understanding of the speaker. Ronald and Roskelly (1985) define listening as an
active process requiring the same skills of prediction, hypothesizing, checking,
revising, and these authors present specific exercises to "inner voice" one hears when
writing.
As defined by Oxford (1993:206), ‚Listening is a complex, problem solving skill‛
and it is ‚more than just perception of the sounds. Listening includes comprehension
of meaning bearing words, phrases, clauses, sentences and connected discourses‛.
She also points out that listening is usually a hard skill to master in one’s own
language, let alone in another language.
Like reading, listening is an internal process that cannot be directly observed. It’s
rather difficult to say what happens when we listen and understand others.
Ommagio
(1986 in Persulessy 1986: 3) say that
Listening and reading are both highly complex process that draw on the
knowledge of the linguistic code (language form), cognitive processing skill (the
skill to
process in the mind). Schome-based nderstanding (background knowledge), and
contextual cues both within and outside the text.
Listening is the absorption of the meanings of words and sentences by the
brain. Listening leads to the understanding of facts and ideas. But listening takes

communication. The ability to speak well is a necessary component to successful
communication. The ability to listen is equally important. The importance of listening in communication is something worthwhile to
consider. Good listeners are often some of the best speakers because they have
taken the time to find out what people are truly interested in. If you understand what
is important to people that you understand how to reach them.
Listening is an important part of foreign language learning process, and it has
also been defined as an active process during which listeners construct meaning
from oral input (Bentley & Bacon, 1996). Listening skill developed faster than the
other three skills and could affect reading and writing abilities in learning a new
language (Scarcella & Oxford, 1992; Vandergrift, 1997).
For high school students nowadays, listening skill is becoming more and more
important. If students have a good competence of listening, they also have much
confidence when communicating with other people, especially with foreigners. As a
result, it is of vital importance that students are taught to listen effectively and
critically. It is also the aim of foreign language teaching.

2.1.3. Teaching listening skills
2.1.3.1. Listening skills
Listening is one of aspects in learning a foreign language, including English.
For
many students, listening is a very difficult skill to be acquired. So, teacher has to get
the right method in improving students’ listening skill.
Rost (1994:4) says, successful listening involves an integration of these
component skills. In some case, listening is a coordination of the component skills, not
the individual skills themselves. This integration of these perception skills, analysis skills
and synthesis skills is what we will call a person’s listening ability. Rost (1991:4) has also
argued that even though a person may have a good

who declares ‚Let’s listen again‛ - Underwood (1989:17) Also, because of the
speed at which native speakers usually speak, students feel that they cannot keep up
with the speakers’ speed and they are lost. Therefore, when the teacher asks the
students to listen to the overall message and forget about what they could not catch,
which probably mean what they did not understand, the teacher has no idea that sometimes what they do not really understand can ‚add up to 75% of what is heard‛
Rixon (1986:37)
2.1.3.2.2. Limited vocabulary or grammar structures
Another problem concerns the learners’ limited vocabulary in the new
language. They can sometimes hear the words clearly, but the problem may occur in
the understanding the meaning of the words that they do not know. Sometimes the
listeners have to guess the meaning of a word or a phrase. Working out the meaning
with the help of its context is common in the mother tongue. However, when people
listening to a foreign language, an unknown word or structure can be like a barrier
causing them to stop and work out the meaning. As a result, it makes them miss the
next part of speech.

2.1.3.2.3. Learners learning habit
Moreover, Underwood (1989) mentions some other kinds of problems that
are directly related to the students themselves. One of the problems, she points out,
has to do with the idea that the learners have ‚established learning habits‛ in the
sense that they were encouraged to understand everything by listening carefully to
teachers who probably speak slowly and clearly. Hence, when they fail to
understand every word while listening, they stop listening and lose the ‚thread‛,
which seems to be the reason for the state of ‚panic‛ and worrying they usually
show before and during listening.

2.1.3.2.4. Lack of concentration

the students will probably ‘switch off’. Difficulties may lie in the speed at which the
speakers talk, vocabulary, grammar structures, density, or the number of voices on
the recording. Subject matter is another factor. Will the students be interested in the
topic? Will they be motivated to listen? Is the topic culturally accessible?
2.2.2. A stand-up comedian or a storyteller The teacher is often the best source of input. Teachers know their students
better than any materials writer. They can grade their language appropriately and
react in real time to the students’ responses. A teacher’s anecdotes, stories, advice,
and even classroom instructions can all form the basis of excellent roughly-tuned
input (input that is not precisely targeted at the students’ level but can be ‘roughly’
understood by them). For the more extended genres such as anecdotes, teachers who
can ‘hold’ an audience have a valuable skill. Just remember the public speaker’s
maxim: make sure you’ve stopped speaking before the audience has stopped
listening!
2.2.3. A sleuth
Before class, teachers need to be able to analyze the language in a recording
as closely as Sherlock Holmes analyzed clues. These are the type of questions to ask:
will my students understand this idiom? Can they deal with the variety of verb tenses
here? Will they be able to decode all the contractions in this passage? Do they need
to? Will they get the joke? A further aspect of this sleuthing includes actually
listening to the passage before class. Do not rely on reading a transcript; transcripts
tell us nothing of speed, accent or clarity.
2.2.4. An engineer
When using recordings, the teacher needs a basic knowledge of the way in
which the equipment works, and more pertinently, the way in which the equipment
sometimes doesn’t work. And if your engineering skills aren’t great, and suddenly
you find that the CD jumps, the cassette erupts in an explosion of mangled ribbon, or
there’s a power cut, be prepared to stay cool and read the transcript or improvise (by


In short, which of these roles have you played while teaching listening? It is
likely that, at one stage or another, language teachers will find themselves playing
most – if not all – of them. Our mastery in the roles depends on how well-prepared
we are. As the writer Denis Waitley once said, ‘Expect the best, plan for the worst
and prepare to be surprised’. And leave the big stick at home.
(adapted from an extract from Chapter 4 of How to Teach Listening, the new book in Pearson Longman’s How to … series)
have learnt. Understand the main ideas of the text or understand the text in detail.
Develop vocabulary comprehension: gap filling, matching, true or false, etc.
- Write paragraphs (about 80 – 120 words) relating to the topics they have
learnt with some cues

3.1.2. Content of the textbook
The new English textbook ‚Tieng Anh 10‛ is designed under theme-based
approach with 16 units. Each unit is about one theme. The units are arranged in the
following order:

- Unit 1: A day in the life of …
- Unit 2: School talks
- Unit 9: Undersea world
- Unit 10: Conservation - Unit 3: People’s background
- Unit 4: Special education
- Unit 5: Technology and you
- Unit 6: An excursion
- Unit 7: The mass media
- Unit 8: The story of my village
- Unit 11: National parks
- Unit 12: Music
- Unit 13: Films and cinema
- Unit 14: The world cup
- Unit 15: Cities
- Unit 16: Historical places

These units cover six topics required:

their accent. It takes time to replay the tape, or pause many times so that students
can recognize the sound they need to hear.
3.2.2. Characteristics of listening tasks
There are usually 2 tasks in each listening lesson. If any listening lesson has
3 tasks, task 1 always relates to picture matching or re-arranging. (This helps
students get familiar with the listening tasks below and also help them to become
more motivated and interested in the listening lesson.
- Task 1 helps students have general idea about the listening lesson.
Therefore, the following exercises are usually included: True or False, Matching
with Pictures, Gap-Filling
- Task 2 helps students have deep and detailed understanding about the
listening lesson, so, these kinds of exercises are included: Gap-Filling, Answering
the questions
Among these exercises, Gap-Filling exercise appears most because it is suitable and
typical for listening.

3.3. The current situation of teaching the textbook at Tay Ho high school
3.3.1. Introduction of Tay Ho high school and its students
Tay Ho high school is located at Phu Thuong precinct, Tay Ho district, Hanoi
City. It was established 8 years ago, in 2002. It is a new high school with 32 classes.
Like other high schools, its duty is to educate students from the 10
th
form to the 12
th

form. Every year the school recruits about over 600 students for the 10
th
form. We

available answers (namely ‚De hoc tot Tieng Anh‛) The students become really
passive in English lessons.
This fact asks the teachers to find out suitable teaching method to help
students get out of this bad situation and become more active in their English
learning.

3.3.2. English teachers and teaching methods
At Tay Ho high school, we have 10 English teachers aged from 24 to 37. All
of us graduated from University of Languages and International Studies (Vietnam
National University, Hanoi). The oldest teacher has nearly 15 years of teaching
experience and the youngest teacher has got 2 years. All of us took part in the
advanced English course held by Hanoi Ministry of Education which last 6 months.
We also have been to some workshops in language teaching and some summer
workshops on changes in English textbooks. I myself had a chance to join in a
workshop (about teaching method renovation) which took place in Singapore with
many other teachers who came from some high schools in Hanoi.

‚Learner-centered approach‛ is a new trend in teaching nowadays. All
teachers in my school in general and English teachers in particular are trying to
apply this new teaching method in teaching at Tay Ho school – It means that we are
trying to give students more chances to present themselves, to help them become
more independent and confident. However, the 10
th
graders are so passive in
learning (Maybe it is a learning habit that formed when they were in secondary
school). As a result, our English teachers find it difficult to follow ‚Learner-
centered approach‛ and most of us still apply traditional teaching methods in
teaching. Especially, in listening skill, the teachers keep the key role in the class.
The teachers explain new and difficult words or structures to students. Then, we ask