VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES
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LÊ THỊ MÙI A STUDY ON THE EFFECTS OF PRE-LISTENING ACTIVITIES ON
LISTENING COMPREHENSION TASKS IN THE TRAINING
PROGRAM TO NON-ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS OF GRADE 10 AT
BAC NINH GIFTED HIGH SCHOOL

(NGHIÊN CỨU TÁC ĐỘNG CỦA NHỮNG HOẠT ĐỘNG TRƢỚC KHI
NGHE TỚI CÁC BÀI TẬP NGHE HIỂU TRONG CHƢƠNG TRÌNH ĐÀO
TẠO DÀNH CHO HỌC SINH LỚP 10 KHÔNG CHUYÊN TIẾNG ANH
TRƢỜNG THPT CHUYÊN BẮC NINH)

M.A. Minor Programme Thesis Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 60140111

Hanoi, 2014

I, Lê Thi
̣
Mu
̀
i, hereby certify that the thesis entitled “A Study on the Effects of
Pre-listening Activities on Listening Comprehension Tasks in the Training Program
to Non-English Major Students of Grade 10 at Bac Ninh Gifted high school” is my
own study in the fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts at
VNU University of Languages and International Studies. Hanoi, September, 2014
Lê Thi
̣
Mu
̀
i
iii

ABSTRACT

The present study attempted to find out the effects of pre-listening activities on
listening comprehension tasks in the training program to non-English major students
of grade 10 at Bac Ninh Gifted high school. The survey was randomly conducted with
7 teachers of English and 105 tenth form students in 5 classes whose major subject is
not English. The data used to analyze in this study were the participants’ answers to
questionnaires, to some interview questions and the researcher’s observation in four
listening lessons. The results of the study show that both teachers and students at the
school highly appreciate the importance of pre-listening activities. Besides, some
activities that are the most frequently used by the teachers are also considered the most
effective on listening comprehension tasks in the training program by students. They
are pre-teaching vocabulary and structures; guessing the topic of the listening text and
questioning. Moreover, some effective techniques teachers often use to implement
these activities are really helpful. After taking part in pre-listening activities, students
get better results of listening comprehension tasks.


II.2. Types of listening comprehension tasks
III. The concept of pre-listening activities
III.1. Stages of teaching listening
III.1.1. Pre-listening stage
III.1.2. While-listening stage
III.1.3. Post-listening stage
III.2. Definitions of pre-listening activities
III.3. Types of pre-listening activities
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I.1.7. Teachers’ frequency of using techniques for introducing the topic
I.1.8. Teachers’ frequency of using techniques for questioning

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II. Class observation
III. Interviews
III.1. Interviews for students
III.2. Interviews for teachers
IV. Major findings
V. Recommendations for implementing pre-listening activities

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PART A. INTRODUCTION
I. Rationale
In our modern society, English plays an essential role because it is a very
effective means of communication and of course it is a factor that decides the success
of a person as well as a nation.
As second language learners, it is not easy at all to acquire English. This
requires good combination of four skills. While reading and writing are important
ways of gaining and consolidating information, vocabulary and structures in language
learning, listening and speaking are the means of language communication. Therefore,
these four skills cannot be separated and they can be improved only by training and
practicing.
Among four skills, listening is considered the most difficult. Like other skills,
listening is closely related to store of vocabulary that carries most meanings of the
passage but learners have to get it aurally, which is very difficult because of the speed,
the accent, the intonation of the speakers and even the external factors that interrupt
the sound. Moreover, Vietnamese learners do not have many opportunities to
communicate or speak to native speakers, especially high school students. They only
learn language through materials or Vietnamese teachers that do not provide them so
good pronunciation as native speakers. Last but not least, learners’ motivation, one of
the most important factors to study language well, is discouraged by all of the factors
mentioned above. If they cannot hear anything or little, they cannot communicate in
the language they are listening to.
As a result, to help students improve listening skills, teachers first have to find
out teaching techniques to attract them to the listening lesson, then to help them
enlarge store of vocabulary, be familiar with the pronunciation of native speakers. As a
teacher of English, I think interesting and suitable pre-listening activities can raise
students’ motivation and have other positive effects on learning procedures. Hence, I
choose the topic “A Study on the Effects of Pre-listening Activities on Listening

In order to achieve the objectives of the study, the researcher uses qualitative
method with some data collection instruments: interviews, survey questionnaires, and
class observation. The survey is carried out with the participation of 105 non-English
major students of grade 10 and 7 teachers who have been teaching non-English major
students for years at Bac Ninh Gifted High School. They are asked to give their
responses by completing the questionnaires. Then the collected data are analyzed and
interpreted. In addition to the questionnaires, some interviews with students and
teachers and class observation during listening lessons are also carried out to support
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the findings.
V. Design of the study
The study includes three parts:
Part A: Introduction
This part presents the basic information of the study such as the rationale, the
objectives, the scope, the methods and the design of the study.
Part B: Development
This part is divided into three chapters:
Chapter 1: Literature review
In this chapter, the researcher discusses theoretical background of listening, pre-
listening activities and related prior studies.
Chapter 2: Research Methodology
The researcher presents the setting of the study and research methods including
research questions, participants and data collection instruments.
Chapter 3: Data analysis, discussion, major findings and recommendations
The researcher shows the detailed results of the survey, analyzes the data
collected from questionnaires, interviews and class observation and then presents
major findings for the study and some suggestions for implementing pre-listening
activities.
Part C: Conclusion

listening activities. For example, Richards (1985: 187) says: "Three related levels of
discourse processing appear to be involved in listening comprehension: propositional
identification, interpretation of illocutionary forces, and activation of real world
knowledge”. Having the same view, Vandergrift (1999: 168) further describes,
“Listening comprehension is anything, but a passive activity. It is a complex, active
process in which the listener must discriminate between sounds, understand
vocabulary and grammatical structures, interpret stress and intonation, retain what was
gathered in all of the above and interpret it within the immediate as well as the larger
socio-cultural context of the utterance.”
This view of listening as a complex and active process is also shared by Rost
(2001) and Cook (2001). They argue that as a goal-oriented activity, listening
comprehension involves both bottom-up and top-down processing that are assumed to
take place at various levels of cognitive organization: phonological, grammatical,
lexical and propositional. In bottom-up processing, listeners attend to data in the
incoming speech signals, whereas, in top-down processing the listeners utilize prior
knowledge and expectations to create meaning. It involves "prediction and inference
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on the basis of hierarchies of facts, propositions and expectations" (Morley, 1991: 87).
All the views given above show that listening comprehension is a hard task
which demands a great deal of mental analysis on the part of the listener. In order to
construct the message the speaker intends, the listener must actively contribute skills
and knowledge from both linguistic and non linguistic resources. These include having
an appropriate purpose for listening, social and cultural knowledge and background
knowledge (Littlewood 1981, Richards 1985, Anderson and Lynch 1988, Morley
1991).
To develop this complex but essential skills, students need much support from
their teachers. They must be exposed to a variety of input sources in the form of
listening opportunities embedded in social and academic situations. Besides, they
should be provided with varying listening activities that enable them to employ

- connecting linguistic cues to paralinguistic cues (intonation and stress) and to
non-linguistic cues (gestures and relevant objects in the situation) in order to
construct meaning.
- using background knowledge and context to predict and then to confirm
meaning.
- recalling important words, topics and ideas.
- giving appropriate feedback to the speaker.
- reformulating what the speaker has said.
He affirms that “successful listening involves an integration of these component
skills. In this sense, listening is a co-ordination of the component skills, not the
individual skills themselves. This integration of these skills constitutes a person’s
listening ability”. Consequently, it is assumed that the teacher, in teaching listening,
need to identify the component skills and design specific tasks and activities that
include the use of these component skills.
II. The concept of listening comprehension tasks
II.1. Definitions
A task is defined in several ways. It is a classroom activity or exercise that has
an objective attainable only by the interaction among participants; a mechanism for
structuring and sequencing interaction, and a focus on meaning exchange. It is also a
language learning endeavor that requires learners to comprehend, manipulate, and/or
produce the target language as they perform some set of work plans. (Lee 2000:32).
Besides, the term “task” is used in a specific pedagogic sense to refer to “a unit of
teaching/ learning activity which involves relevant instructional variables to be
manipulated by the learners using some kind of data” (Rost 1990: 156).
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Language learning tasks are considered units of pedagogic planning in which
teachers can identify in advance the factors that are likely to affect learning focus and
learning outcomes in classroom activities (Breen 1987, Nunan 1988, 1989). To be
more specific, listening comprehension tasks are "language learning activities which

- Transferring: This type involves receiving information in one form and
transferring the information or part of it into another.
- Scanning: Listeners must extract selected items by scanning the input in order
to find a specific piece of information
- Predicting: Guessing or predicting outcomes, causes, relationships, and so
forth, based on information presented in a conversation or narrative.
B. Bottom-up process
- Matching or distinguishing: Choosing a response in written or pictorial form
that corresponds with what was heard.
- Transcribing: Listening, and then writing down what was heard. Dictation is
the most common example of this activity.
- Extending: This type involve going beyond what is provided, such as -
reconstructing a dialogue when alternate lines are missing or providing a
conclusion to a story.
- Condensing: Reducing what is heard to an outline of main points, such as is
required in taking notes.
- Answering: Answering questions from the input. Different kinds of questions
will focus on different levels of listening.
III. The concept of pre-listening activities
III.1. Stages of teaching listening
A listening lesson usually consists of three stages: pre-listening stage, while-
listening stage and post-listening stage.
III.1.1. Pre-listening stage
This stage is considered as preparatory work because through suitable activities,
it helps students to focus their minds on the topic by narrowing down the things that
the students expect to hear and activating relevant knowledge and already known
language (Underwood, 1989: 30, 31). She also affirms the importance of this stage: “It
is unfair to plunge students straight into the listening text, even when testing rather
than teaching listening comprehension.” Rost (2002: 20) also emphasizes that
“Effective listening tasks often involve an explicit pre-listening step, some activities

opportunity to consider the manner and attitude of the speakers of the listening text.
Next, it is to expand on the topic or language of the listening text, and perhaps transfer
things learned to another context. These purposes depend on the tasks designed, so the
teachers have to choose the appropriate tasks to achieve the purpose of the lesson.
III.2. Definitions of pre-listening activities
As mentioned above, the pre-listening stage plays a very important role when
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teaching listening, so do the activities in this stage. Ur (1984) states that teaching
listening has been suggested including pre-task period to benefit from tasks. The
period prior to act on listening tasks, pre-listening phase, is associated to preparation
stage in which learners are provided by some activities as a kind of support to help
them act on tasks. Also defining pre-listening activities as preparation stage,
Underwood (1989) says before listening, students should be “tuned in” so that they
know what to expect, both in general and for particular tasks. This kind of preparatory
work is generally described as “pre-listening work” or just “pre-listening.” Chastain
(1988) considers pre-listening activities as the most crucial aspects in listening process
because other activities depend on the extent to which the teacher has been successful
in activating students’ background and directing them to reach the goal of activity.
In short, pre-listening activities give students time to get confident and
interested in the lesson thanks to the given knowledge as well as the new one. When
planning lessons, time must be allocated for pre-listening activities and these activities
should not be rushed (Underwood 1989: 31)
III.3. Types of pre-listening activities
Underwood (1989: 31) declares that pre-listening tasks can consist of a variety
of activities, which can help the teacher to focus the students’ minds on the topic by
narrowing down the things that the learners anticipate to hear and stimulating relevant
previous knowledge and already known language, including:
- the teacher giving background information;
- the students reading something relevant;

- the nature and content of the listening text itself.
Then she adds that among these factors, the last one is very important when
choosing activities. Therefore, teachers first need to pay much more attention to the
nature and content of the listening text to design some suitable activities, then consider
whether they fit to the other factors to choose the best pre-listening activities.
IV. Prior studies related to pre-listening activities
Most of studies focus on listening comprehension in general. Researchers state
the factors that affect listening teaching and learning and suggest methods, procedures,
techniques teachers use to teach listening comprehension (Underwood 1989, Ur 1984,
Rost 2001, Rixon 1986, Nunan 1998, Moley 1991, Richards 1983). The purpose of the
researchers is to help understand the nature of listening and find the ways to improve
learners’ listening skills as well as the effectiveness of the teaching process. In these
studies, of course, most of the researchers focus on the roles of pre-listening activities
but they do not mention what activities are the most or least effective to listening
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teaching and learning in classroom environment. Based on these theories, a lot of
studies are carried out to find the effects of particular pre-listening activities on
listening comprehension. For example, Elkhafaifi, H. (2008) conducts a research on
the effect of vocabulary preview and question preview. It shows these activities help
learners get higher results for the test. Similarly, Farrokhi, F. (2012) studies the effect
of two pre-task activities (glossary of unknown vocabulary items and content related
support) on improvement of Irian EFL learners’ listening comprehension. However,
the learners’ proficiency level is also the factor to decide the effect of both activities.
Theoretical knowledge and prior related studies will be used as the base to
conduct my research, one of its objectives is to find out the effects of pre-listening
activities on listening comprehension tasks in the training program to non-English
major students of grade 10.
V. Summary
In this chapter, a number of concepts about listening and component skills are

been present. This helps motivate English teaching and learning at school.
One problem often raised in specialized high schools is deviation learning. It
means that the students often focus their learning on their major subject and two
related others called sub-major that are used to take part in the university entrance
exam. In other words, they do not pay much attention to the other subjects called non-
major. This may be either true or false because attracting students to any subject
(major, sub-major or non-major ) much depends on the teaching process. To non-
English major students, there are a lot of limitations in English learning in classroom,
especially listening skills, so it is useful to take account for good techniques in
teaching to make students interested in the lesson, then actively participate in it and
improve their skills naturally. Besides, English teachers need to study more to discover
the most suitable and effective methods to listening tasks.
I.2. Materials
There are two types of English textbook used in specialized high schools:
advanced and standard program. The advanced is used for English class (English as
major subject) and literature class (English as sub-major subject). The standard is used
for the other classes (English as non-major subject).
The textbook “English 10” – standard program- by Hoang Van Van, Hoang Thi
Xuan Hoa, Do Tuan Minh, Nguyen Thu Phuong and Nguyen Quoc Tuan is theme-
based one including 16 units and 6 Test Yourself sections. Each unit mentions a
specific topic that is familiar with daily life and consists of five lessons: Reading,
Listening, Speaking, Writing and Language Focus. Generally, this book aims to
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develop students’ communication competence through the four skills of English
learning and consolidate grammar structures through Language Focus. According to
the syllabus, students have three periods a week for their English class and each period
lasts 45 minutes to focus on one lesson. As a result, students do not have much time to
further practice with other materials prepared by the teachers
I.3. Limitations of a listening lesson in the classroom at Bac Ninh gifted high

effective techniques to help students improve their English. Five of whom have got
M.A degree and they have a lot of experience in teaching non-English major students.
The participants for the study also consist of 105 tenth form non-English major
students from five classes: 10 Maths, 10 Physics, 10 Informatics, 10 Biology and 10
History-Geography. All of them have learnt English at least for six years. However,
their ability of using English is not the same.
II.2. Data collection instrumentations
Survey questionnaires (Appendix 1) were delivered to both teachers and students.
The questionnaire for the teachers is written in English and includes 10 questions, both
closed and open –ended. These questions aim at finding out the teachers’ opinions
about pre-listening activities in general and activities in “Textbook 10” in specific; the
frequency the teachers use pre-listening activities and teaching techniques to carry
them out in a listening lesson; and their opinions to improve the effectiveness of pre-
listening activities on listening comprehension tasks.
The questionnaire for the students is written in Vietnamese in order that they can
clearly understand the content of the questions and the answers given. To open
questions, they can write their answers in Vietnamese also. There are 10 questions for
students to answer to show their attitudes towards the importance of pre-listening
activities; to show their preferences to types of activities and their opinions about the
effects of them on listening comprehension tasks.
Interviews (Appendix 2): Some interview questions are raised for both teachers and
students to get better insights into research questions. The interviews include 6
questions for 5 out of 7 teachers and other 6 items for 30 students during break time.
While teachers and students give their answers, the researcher takes notes to key
points. All of the interview questions are about the same matters as shown in
questionnaires.
Class observation (Appendix 3) was carried out to have realistic investigation into the
problems raised in the study. Four listening lessons in four research participation
classes, each lasting 45 minutes, were observed and recorded. All the activities of
teachers and students, along with the interaction between them were written down.