VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES
************

TRẦN THỊ OANH

THE USE OF SONGS TO IMPROVE LISTENING SKILLS FOR
STUDENTS AT ITC FOREIGN LANGUAGE CENTRE
IN HAI DUONG
( SỬ DỤNG BÀI HÁT NHẰM CẢI THIỆN KỸ NĂNG NGHE CHO
SINH VIÊN TẠI TRUNG TÂM NGOẠI NGỮ ITC, THÀNH PHỐ
HẢI DƯƠNG)
M.A. MINOR THESIS
Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 60 14 10 H NI - 2011

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI


TABLE OF CONTENT
Certificate of originality…………………………………… ………… ……… …… i
Acknowledgements………………………………………… …… ………………… ii
Abstract…………………………………………………… …………………………….iii
List of abbreviations………………………………………… … … …………………iv
List of tables and charts………………………………………………… ………….… v
Table of contents…………………………………………………… ………………… vi
PART I: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale …………………………………………… …… ………… …… ………1
2. Aims of the study…………………………………………… …… …… ……… 2
3. Research questions……………………………………………… ………… …… 2
4. Scope of the study…………………………………………… …………….…… 2
5. Methodology ……………………………………………….…… ….……… … 2
6. Design of the study………………………………………………… … … 3
PART II: DEVELOPMENT
Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
a. The definition of listening skill ……………………………………….……… … 4
b. Listening skill in learning a foreign language teaching…………………… ……5
i. The importance of listening skill in foreign language teaching…… ……5
ii. The difficulties in learning listening skill ………………………… ….….6
iii. Teaching listening skill according to CLT…………………………… 8
c. Teaching listening skill through English songs……………………….…………… 8
i. The importance of songs in foreign language teaching ………… 8
ii. Using songs as a motivator for students to learn listening skill… ……… 10
iii. Tasks designed for listening texts……………………………………….…… 11
d. Summary ………… …………………………………………………….……….….12
Chapter 2: USING SONGS TO TEACH LISTENING FOR STUDENTS AT ITC
FOREIGN LANGUAGE
2.1. Hypothesis ……………………………………………… …… ……………….…13

2. Limitations and suggestions for further study …………………… 33
References …………………………… ………………………………….…….… 35
Appendix 1………………………………………………………… ……….……… i
Appendix 2…………………………… …………………………… …….……… xiii 1

PART A: INTRODUCTION
I. Rationale
The Vietnam’s participation in World Trade Organization in 2007 has given us good
chance to integrate in the global development. We can see changes in all fields of life such as
cultural, social, economic and educational ones. Many foreign companies have recently
invested in Vietnam, which has boosted our economy to develop remarkably; it is the reason
why English has played a very important role in our society nowadays.
As we know, in 2008 the Ministry of Education and Training made a decision on
approval of the project “Teaching and learning foreign languages in the national education
system period 2008 – 2020”. Its main purpose is to reform the teaching and learning of
foreign languages in the national education system at all levels so that students will have
been able to achieve a remarkable improvement in learning foreign languages by 2015. Also,
students at colleges and universities will be able to use the foreign language confidently in
communication in an environment of integration, multi – languages, multi – cultural
variables to serve the cause of industrializating and modernizating of the country.
In the past, most textbooks paid more attention to reading and grammar, but recently they
have been reformed to develop the four language skills (listening, speaking, reading, and
writing) equally. Despite the innovation in textbooks and teaching methods, we can see a
little change in students. Among the four language skills “listening, speaking, reading and
writing”, listening skill seems to be the most difficult to be mastered by the students and be
far more difficult than many people can imagine. (Mee, 1990 cited in M. Fadlij, 2000).
During an observation at an extra – curriculum activity at ITC foreign language center in

- observation;
The questionnaire was designed for both students and teachers. However, sometimes
interviews were also applied if the author found that the answer of respondents were not
clear enough.
V. Design of the study
3

The minor thesis consists of three parts:
Part I is the introduction in which the author presents the rationale, hypothesis of the
study, aims of the study, scope of the study, methodology and design of the study.
Part II is the development which is divided into 3 chapters:
o Chapter 1 set up theoretical background that is relevant to the purpose of the study.
o Chapter 2 investigated the learning situation at ITC Foreign Language Center,
difficulties in teaching and learning listening skill and find out the students’ point of
view about using songs in classes.
o Chapter 3 emphasizes the implications of the study in which discusses about the
problems when applying in classes and suggests some criteria of choosing songs and
some suggested tasks designed from songs.
Part III is the conclusion, summarizes the key issues in the study, points out the
limitations and provides some suggestions for further study.
Chapter I: LITERATURE REVIEW
1.1. The definition of listening skill
Listening is one of the fundamental language skills, and crucial in the development of the
second language competence so there are many definitions of listening which present
different views of scholars towards the concept.
Listening is the ability to identify and understand what others are saying. According to Anderson
and Lynch (1988), listening is really a receptive skill along side with reading skills and the role
of listeners is no longer passive but active. Rost (1994) says that “listening is referred to a
complex process that enables us to understand spoken language.” It is an invisible mental
process, so it is very difficult to describe. This involves understanding the speaker’s accent or

1.2.2. The difficulties in learning listening skill
Of the four language basic English language skills (listening, speaking, reading, writing),
listening skill seems to be the most difficult skill to be acquired by students. Many authors
have mentioned this problem such as Underwood (1989), Ur (1996), Rost (1994) or Lynch
(2005) in their writings.
5

According to Underwood (1989), there are seven problems in listening skill that students
may encounter: (1) lack of control over the speed at which speakers speak; (2) not being able
to get things repeated; (3) the listener’s limited vocabulary; (4) failure to recognize the
signals; (5) problems of interpretation; (6) inability to concentrate and (7) established
learning habit. She explains that these problems of students relate to students’ different
backgrounds such as their culture and educations. Students whose “culture and education
includes a strong storytelling and oral communication tradition are generally “better” at
listening than those from a reading and book-based culture and education background”.
Furthermore, “students for whom the stress and intonation which occur in English are
reasonably familiar have less trouble than those whose own language is based on different
rhythms and tones” (Underwood, 1989). From that point of view, students in Vietnam whose
language is made of different tones face a great deal of difficulties in learning listening skills.
1.2.3. Teaching listening skill according to CLT
Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), derived from the late 1970s and early 1980s,
can be said to be the product of educators and linguists who had grown dissatisfied with the
audio-lingual and grammar-translation methods of foreign language instruction. It can be
understood as a set of principles about the goals of language teaching, how learners learn a
language, the kinds of classroom activities that best facilitate learning, and the roles of
teachers and learners in the classroom. According to Richards (2002), “CLT was an attempt to
operationalize the concept of communicative competence and to apply it across all levels of
language program design, from theory, to syllabus design, to teaching techniques.” In other
words, CLT makes use of real-life situations that necessitate communication. The Teacher
sets up a situation that students are likely to encounter in real life. As a part of

best way. Besides, songs can be utilized in foreign language teaching for many purposes.
According to Eken (1996), songs can be used:
 To present a topic, a language point, lexis, etc.
 To practice a language point, lexis, etc.
 To focus on common learner errors in more direct way.
7

 To encourage extensive and intensive listening.
 To stimulate discussion of attitudes and feelings.
 To encourage creativity and use of imagination.
 To provide a relaxed classroom atmosphere.
 To bring variety and fun to learning.
 Tasks designed for listening texts
There are various kinds of listening tasks. According to Ur (1984), possible and
applicable listening tasks should be:
- Dictation exercise: This is common listening exercise which is usually practices in the
earlier years of school education. It requires students an integrative knowledge of the
phonological, syntactic and semantic systems of a language. To do this task, teacher gives
students handout, omitting some sentences of the text, then plays the tape and asks students to
listen to the text and write the missing sentences down.
- Ticking off items: Learners tick beside the items: Learners tick beside the items that they
hear in the listening
- True/False: Identify whether the statement is true or false based on the listening.
- Detecting mistakes: Some fact is mentioned with intentional mistakes for students to point
out.
- Gap-filling: Students are given a passage with several gaps in it, they have to listen and fill
in the missing words in the gaps.
- Pictures: one picture or a series of pictures may be used. Sts are then asked to identify
pictures or components as they are referred to, either naming or ordering them in the order in
which they are mentioned


PART B : METHODOLOGY AND DATA ANALYSIS
2.2. The setting of the study
2.2.1. Students’ background information
ITC Foreign Language Centre (ITCFLC), part of Thinh Phat Company, was established 3
years ago. From the beginning of its establishment, there have been 82 classes of English
opened of level A, 70 classes of level C and 33 classes of level C. Most of the students at the
centre are students and workers at all age ranging from 18-35. They come from all parts of the
country, so their learning background varies a lot, most of them were learning at universities
and colleges in Hai Duong, but the workers did not learn English for a long time. This caused
a lot of difficulties for both teachers and students in teaching and learning English.
2.2.2. The teachers and teaching methods
Up to now, there are seven teachers of English at ITCFLC. Four of them graduated from
University of Languages and International Studies, two from Hanoi University, and one from
Hanoi Pedagogical University No.2. None of them had ever been trained in an English
speaking country. The oldest had over ten years experience in teaching English, the youngest
had three years.
Most of them were aware of the importance of listening skill and tried hard to improve
their teaching of listening, motivate students and help them over come those difficulties.
However, not all of the teachers choose the same techniques to teach listening. Some chose to
use giving background information and new words, while others chose authentic materials or
some extra activities that were suitable for their students.
2.2.3. Materials and facilities
The materials for the whole course were New Headway textbook, workbook, and CDs. In
this series of book, all four language skills were equally developed. The centre also supplied
10

teachers and students with some other books to improve their listening skills such as sheep or
ship, etc.
Besides, facilities are also an important factor in teaching and learning process. ITCFLC
PART C: CONCLUSIONS
1. Summary of the study
Being a teacher of English at ITCFLC, the researcher can see clearly the situation of
teaching and learning English at this centre. It is the fact that both teachers and students have
considered listening skill as the most difficult skill among the four skills. Bearing this in
mind, the investigator has conducted this research with a view of situation of teaching and
learning listening skill and applying English songs to improve students’ listening skill.
To gain the theoretical background, relevant literature on the listening was review.
The study was carried out with the data for the analysis collected from two questionnaires
which were completed by teachers and students, interview and informal discussions. The
result collected from questionnaires showed that students at level A at ITCFLC have
encountered a lot of difficulties in listening skill. This is the reason why the researcher
suggested applying English songs as an extra material to teach listening skill. The result from
the experimental lesson showed that they had a positive attitude to the using of English songs
in class. The students themselves agreed that they felt like listening much more than before. It
could help them reduce tension and pressure as well as motivate them to study during the
lesson a lot.
Beside a lot of benefits that they can gain, there are some problems that students may
encounter from using songs in class. Therefore, the researcher has proposed several
recommendations for teachers in choosing and using suitable songs class so that they can
make the lesson more interesting and help students enjoy the lesson.
2. Limitations and suggestions for further study
12

In this paper, the scope of the study was limited only in one foreign language centre, ITC
foreign language center. The research was restricted to only a small number of objects and the
researcher could only look at the situation of using songs to teach listening skill to students at
level A at ITCFLC. Hence, the results could not be generalized to all the schools, colleges, or