VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES
MAI THỊ HỒNG HÀ
EFFECTS OF APPROPRIATE PRE-LISTENING ACTIVITIES
ON 10
TH
FORM STUDENTS' ENGLISH LISTENING
COMPREHENSION: A CASE STUDY AT BUON MA THUOT
HIGH SCHOOL IN DAC LAC

(Hiệu quả của hoạt động trước khi nghe phù hợp đối với việc nghe
hiểu của học sinh lớp 10. Điển cứu tại trường THPT Buôn Ma Thuột
tỉnh Đắc Lắc) M.A. MINOR THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 601410

Hanoi - 2010 4
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Declaration
Acknowledgements
Abstract
Part A: INTRODUCTION

1. Rationale
1
2. Aims of the study
2
3. Scope of the study
2
4. Methods of the study
2
5. Design of the study
2
Part B: DEVELOPMENT
Chapter 1: Literature Review
1.1 Theory of listening


1.2.2 Types of pre-listening activities
13
1.2.3 Factors affecting the choice of pre-listening activities
14 5
1.3 Summary
14
Chapter 2: Methods of the Study

2.1. The setting of the study

2.1.1. English teaching and learning situation at Buon Ma Thuot High Shool
15
2.1.2. The materials
15
2.2. Research methods

2.2.1. Research questions
16
2.2.2. The subjects
16
2.3. Data collection instruments
17
Chapter 3: Data analysis and major findings

3.1 Results of the questionnaires

3.1.1 Questionnaire for the teachers

28
3.1.2.7 Students' suggestions with the changes in pre-listening activities in Tieng
Anh 10
29 6
3.1.2.8 Students' self-evaluation of their ability of listening
30
3.3 Findings
32
3.4 Summary
35
Chapter 4: Recommendations for implementing pre-listening activities

4.1. Paying attention to students' personal factors and their proficiency
36
4.2. Using pre-listening activities in a flexible and appropriate way
36
4.3. Improving the pre-listening activities in the textbook
37
PART C: CONCLUSION

1. Conclusions
38
2. Limitations and suggestions for the study
39
References

Appendices

and learning. New textbooks have been issued with new methods of teaching including
English. Before, we focused too much on grammar, reading, vocabulary but now, with some
changes, writing speaking, listening, pronunciation have been added. Students' four skills can
be improved but in learning English listening still seems to be the most difficult skill for
students of high schools. We all know, listening comprehension is one of the four skills
needed for effective communication in everyday conversation and it is also a source for
obtaining the necessary input for language development. In spite of teachers and students'
efforts, there are still difficulties in listening acquisition. Almost students who fail to take
listening input hardly receive spoken messages as the result they get bored and ignorant in
listening classes although they are aware of the importance of this skill. Therefore, with the
new English textbook for high school, the editors have paid attention to how to stimulate
students to be keen on a listening class. So, the application of pre-listening activities is
considered the best way to motivate students' interests.
As a teacher teaching English of Buon Ma Thuot High School for years, I find that although
the text book has provided pre-listening activities for motivating students but the students do
not achieve much from listening, they feel listening is boring because of the following reasons
:
First, the teachers apply these pre-listening activities mechanically, uncreatively. Next, some
teachers even ignore pre-listening stage, they just begin the lesson with while-listening stage.
Last, some employ inappropriate activities, which might be not suitable for students' interests
and proficiency. Therefore, it is essential for teachers to find out some ways to help students
feel like studying listening and make them motivated in participating in all the activities in a
listening lesson to improve their listening skills. 8
All in all, the above has encouraged the writer of the thesis to carry out the study titled:
"Effects of appropriate pre-listening activities on 10
th
form students' English listening

chapter also includes the research methods which cover research questions, the subjects, data
collection instruments.
+ Chapter 3: Data analysis and major findings. This chapter presents the data results, some
major findings
+ Chapter 4: some recommendations for implementing the pre-listening activities are
discussed in this chapter.
- Part C: Conclusion. This part summarizes what are addressed in the study and some
limitations and suggestions for further study.


listening was basically cognitive. They defined listening as the process of receiving, attending 11
to and assigning meaning to aural stimuli. Rost (2002) defined listening as a process of
receiving what the speaker actually says, constructing and representing meaning, negotiating
meaning with the speaker and responding, and creating meaning through involvement,
imagination and empathy.
Shelton (2006) believes that listening effectively is a demanding and involved process. One
must be able to deal with different accents of pronunciation, unfamiliar lexical items and
syntactic structure, competing background noise and also make a conscious effort to not
"switch off" or become distracted while listening. All of this must be achieved and dealt with
more or less simultaneously in order to identify and understand the meaning in any given
message.
There are two dimensions often cited in relation to listening comprehension processes-
"bottom-up" and "top-down". Anderson and Lynch (1988) describe bottom-up processing as
"listener as tape recorder (p.9) that involves decoding or text-based processes while top-down
processing relates to the "listeners as active model builder (p.11) and involves knowledge-
based processes. It means that listeners use top-down processes when they use context and
prior knowledge (topic, genre, culture ) to build a conceptual framework for comprehension.
Listeners use top-down processes when they construct meaning by accretion, gradually
combining increasingly larger units of meaning from the phoneme-level up to discourse-level
features. It is suggested that successful listening comprehension relies on the integration of
and the balance between both bottom-up and top-down facets (Flowerdew & Miler, 2005;
Vandergrift, 2004).
In the view of Brown (1994), in bottom-up processing, learners rely on their linguistic
knowledge to recognize linguistic elements - vowels, consonants, words, sentences to do the
construction of meaning. They build meaning from lower level sounds to words to grammar
relationships to lexical meanings in order to arrive at the final message. In top-down
processing, learners use their prior knowledge to make predictions about the text. Prior

keeps the students' motivation and interest high. Story telling is an example of extensive
listening.
1.1.3 Approaches to teaching listening
When studying listening, Rost (1994) points out that foreign language has been taught for
centuries and the record of language teaching materials has been around for over 500 years.
And he also suggests some approach to teach listening such as grammar translation method,
the direct method, the oral approach, the audio-lingual method and communication language 13
teaching. While Underwood (1989, p.90-109) mentions grammar translation method,
grammar method, audio-lingual method and task-based method.
- Grammar translation method: students listen to a description of the rules of the second
language in the first language. As a result, when the second language is used, the focus of any
listening is on translation of lexical items or grammar structures.
- Grammar method: to follow this method, the teacher requires students to look at a written
text when they listen to a recording. This forces them to do several things: identify words by
their position in the sentence, work out the relationship between words and phrases, use
forward and backward inferencing cues, and make intelligent guesses based on textual cues.
- Audio-lingual method: audio-lingual method of listening emphasizes first listening to
pronunciation and grammatical forms and then imitating those forms by way of drills and
exercises. Dialogues and drills are the basic of classroom practice with this method. Students
are encouraged to listen carefully either to a tape recording or a teacher reading out, a
dialogue or a drill. Basically, the more the students repeat a correct phrase or a sentence, the
stronger of their memory of the structures will be.
- Task-based method: this method places stress on activities or tasks that learners do in class
in order to develop their community competence. A task-based syllabus should be constructed
according to the difficulty of the tasks required of the learners at different stages in a course.
In summary, the four methods of the teaching of listening are not mutually exclusive and in
reality they may be mixed in any particular course or classroom. However, nowadays, with

active and flexible learning environment that helps increase students' motivation for learning.
1.1.4.3 Students' role
Of course students themselves play an important role in improving their own listening skill.
Nunan (1999) argues that in order to comprehend, listener need to reconstruct the original
intention of the speaker by making use of the bottom-up and top-down processing strategies,
by drawing on what they already know to make use of new knowledge. The students should
be given the chance to decide for themselves what will be interesting or useful and to work by
them selves. (Rison, 1986)
1.1.5 Stages of a listening lesson 15
In order to help learners get most from a listening lesson, a lesson plan of listening is usually
divided into three stages: (1) Things learners do before listening; (2) Activities and exercises
are done by learners when the discourse is played; (3) Things learners do after listening. In
short, the first stage is called "pre-listening", the second "while-listening", the third "post-
listening".
There is an association between expectation, purpose, and comprehension, therefore a purpose
should be given to our learners. We should train students to understand what is being said in
conversations to get them to disregard redundancy, hesitation, and ungrammaticality. The
major problem is the actual way listening material is presented to the students. We should
give a clear lead in what they are going to hear; use some kinds of visual back up for them to
understand; give questions and tasks in order to clarify the things in their minds; and be sure
that these tasks help in learning, not confusing. Students should learn how use the
environmental clues; the speaker's facial expression, posture, eye direction, proximity,
gesture, tone of voice, and that general surroundings contribute information.
In listening activities, we listen for a purpose. We make an immediate response to what we
hear. There are some visual or environmental clues as to the meaning of what is heard.
Stretches of heard discourse come in short chunks, and most heard discourse is spontaneous,
therefore differs from formal spoken prose in the amount of redundancy 'noise' and

the while-listening activities. Students may get bored if they have to do the same kind of work
over and over again. Thus, for each purpose and on different occasions, various activities are
needed. Moreover, it is advisable to have activities which are locally relevant, of the common
interest and not too long or laborious.
Activities of this stage should be suitable with students' ability. This means that while-
listening activities can be done by most students, from low students to the best one.
Stating about this view, Underwood (1989) says that "teachers should consider some other
points when selecting while-listening activities such as: the possibilities for varying the level
of difficulty if required, the inconvenience of carrying out the activities which required
individuals to give their responses orally in the classroom, whether the work is to be done by
the students with the teacher's presentation or whether it is to be done as private study either
in a listening center or at home and whether or not the while-listening activities generate
material or ideas which might be used for others.
1.1.5.3 Post-listening 17
This stage is carried out when the listening is completed. Some post-listening activities are
extensions of the work done at the pre-listening and while-listening stage. According to
Underwood (1989) the first purpose of post-listening activities is to check how well the
students understood and whether they have completed the listening task. The teacher may
give an answer orally, showing the answer on the board or on the over-head projector or ask
students to check again the answer in the book. Students can work in pair to check each other
answer or work in group to discuss any problem relate to the listening text. The second
purpose of post-listening work is to reflect on what some students have failed to understand or
miss parts of the passage.
Another purpose of post-listening activities is to expand the topic or the language of the
listening text. Students are asked to deal with activities with are more or less general language
learning activities. Sometimes, this does not mean that they should not be done but it should
be recognized they do not give practice in listening skill although the additional language

activities" and "guidance activities". "Readiness activities" aim at activating students' prior
knowledge by reading the title, new words of the text, sometimes looking at the picture given
before the exercises in the textbook and also by asking provocative questions or introducing
background knowledge. "Guidance activities" are intended to specific aspects of language
input by letting them bear certain purposes in mind in advance, in other words, letting
students know what task or tasks they are going to do with the text, or letting the students
themselves decide what they want to do with the text.
Broughter (1978) argues that pre-listening technique keeps students' interest in learning and
therefore, improve their language competence.
Mary (1989) reminds "pre-listening work can be done in a variety of ways and often occurs
quite naturally when listening forms part of an integrated skills course. When planning lesson,
time must be allocated for pre-listening activities and the activities should not be rushed."
1.2.2 Types of pre-listening activities
There are many kinds of pre-listening activities so teachers should be flexibly choose the most
suitable activities for each situation in order to help them to catch the purpose a listening
lesson requires.
- Vocabulary introduction: is the basic step before listening to a text with a strange topic.
Teachers must be aware of the fact that if the students are taught all the vocabulary, it is not
sure that they can understand the whole text. Therefore, teachers can list some important 19
words for students to look up while they have spare time and remember the meaning of the
words in the context.
- Brainstorming: to a familiar topic, this kind of activities is very helpful. Before listening to a
text, teachers can let students work alone or divide them into groups to discuss the problems
they are encountering. This step helps students to activate students' poor knowledge and
enable them to make inferences and form expectation about common situation. The students
can benefit a lot from such preparatory activities. Before listening to a text, students think of
the possible answers and they will perform the answers when needed. With this kind of pre-
21
Chapter 2: METHODS OF THE STUDY
The study attempts to investigate the effects of pre-listening activities on the 10
th
form
students at Buon Ma Thuot High School. In order to achieve the mentioned aims, two kinds of
questionnaire for both teachers and students were conducted to collect data for the study. In
addition, 3 class observations, interviews and discussion with teachers and students were also
carried out.
2.1 The setting of the study
2.1.1 English teaching and learning situation at Buon Ma Thuot school
This study was conducted at Buon Ma Thuot High School which was established 55 years
ago. Since then this school has increasingly developed and become one of the largest and

students to follow. So when teaching listening as well as the rest 4 lessons, teachers should be
flexible when dealing with the problems.
2.2 Research methods
2.2.1 Research questions
The purpose of this study is to find out the effects of appropriate pre-listening activities on
students' listening comprehension at Buon Ma Thuot high school. To achieve this aim, the
following questions were proposed:
1. What are the teachers' and students' opinions about pre-listening activities?
2. Which pre-listening activities are frequently used by the teachers and which students like
most?
3. What are the effects of applying appropriate pre-listening activities on students' listening
comprehension?
2.2.2 The subjects
The subjects for the study are 13 teachers teaching English at Buon Ma Thuot high school.
Two of them are doing the post-graduate studies in the CFL, 6 teachers are over 40 with more
than 20 years of teaching experience, 2 are nearly 40 and the rest are from 31 to 35 years old.
Generally, all of them have experience in teaching English.
The participants for the study consist of 135 tenth form students (age 16-17) from 3 classes
10A1, 10A4, and 10A5. 60% of them come from Buon Ma Thuot city and the rest come from
some communes such as Eakao, Hoa Thang or some districts like Cư M'gar, Ea H'leo, Ea
Kar All of them have learnt English at least for four years (from grade 6 to grade 9).
However, their ability of using English is not the same. 23
2.3 Data collection instruments
The questionnaires (see appendix 1) were delivered to both teachers and students, in which
there are 06 questions in English for teachers to answer. The questionnaire designed for
students consists of 07 questions aimed of finding out appropriate pre-listening activities that
motivate students in the listening class and the effects of them on students' listening

3.1 Results of the questionnaire
3.1.1 Questionnaire for the teachers
3.1.1.1 Teachers' opinions about the necessity of pre-listening activities
Item
Number of the teachers
Percentages (%)
Very necessary
11
84,6
Necessary
2
15,4
Not necessary
0
0

Table 1: Teachers' opinions about the necessity of pre-listening activities
When being asked about this question, all teachers agreed that doing some lead-in activities
before asking students to listen is quite necessary. They said that it is important if teachers
begin the lessons with some games or some questions related to the topic of the lesson.
Through lead-in activities, students can guess what the listening text is about and an active
and relaxing environment is created.
short, whatever purposes of teachers are, what they want to do is to help students to be able to
hear and do all the tasks in the book. 26
3.1.1.3 Teachers' activities to motivate students to listen and the frequency of using them

Always
Sometimes
Rarely
Never
1. Using games to introduce the topic of the text.
15%
62%
15%
8%
2. Using visual aids to introduce the topic of the text.
15%
23%
47%
15%
3. Giving a brief introduction of the text.
69%
15%

31%
31%
15%
10. Giving listening tasks to students.
15%
70%
15%
0%
Table 2: Teachers' activities to motivate students to listen and the frequency of
using them
Looking at the table above we can see that nearly all teachers always begin the lesson by
giving a brief introduction of the text (69%) or pre-teaching new words in the listening text
(77%) or using pre-listening questions (69%), while some sometimes employ games, give
listening tasks to motivate students. Although visual aids are preferred by almost students but
there are only 2 teachers (15%) always use it, 15% never uses it 33% sometimes uses it and
47% rarely uses it. Perhaps, because of time-consuming on preparing the lesson with some
objects, or teach students by using computers and projectors, teachers don't take care much on
this activity. Through this question, we can see traditional methods of teaching still affect
teachers a lot.
Discussing in group is rather easy to carry out because teachers can just prepare some
questions or some topics or even they can adapt the questions in the pre-listening stage for
students to discuss. But the problem here is how to control the class? Because of the big size
of a class, teachers can hardly observe whether all students work or not. So teachers apply
these activities whenever they feel it is suitable.