PART ONE: INTRODUCTION
I. RATIONALE OF THE STUDY
Nowadays English has become an international language because it is
widely used in many parts of the world. English may not be the most spoken
language in the world, but it is the official language in a large number of
countries. It is estimated that the number of people in the world that use English
to communicate on a regular basis is about 2 billion. In the tendency of
integration of the global economy, English is one of the effective communicative
tools for everybody. The role of English is considered to be very important in the
fields of economics, politics, science, culture and education. Especially,
Vietnam’s official membership of WTO on 7th November 2006 opened a new
door for integrating into the world economy. Hence, more and more people want
to learn English to communicate with foreign partners, tourists, study tours; or
getting good position in the work force.
Thanks to the innovation of ways in teaching English which is stated by
the MOET, English lessons are taught with four skills (speaking, reading,
listening, and writing) in one unit. Moreover, there exist three stages - Pre While - Post - teaching in one lesson. This really helps students improve their
skills beside the grammar exercises to pass the exams.
Among these four skills, listening skill is the language modality that is
used most frequently. It has been estimated that adults spend almost half their
communication time listening, and students may receive as much as 90% of
their in - school information through listening to instructors and to one another.
Often, however, language learners do not recognize the level of effort that goes
into developing listening ability. Far from passively receiving and recording
aural input, listeners actively involve themselves in the interpretation of what
they hear, bringing their own background knowledge and linguistic knowledge
to bear on the information contained in the aural text. Not all listening is the
same; casual greetings, for example, require a different sort of listening
capability than do academic lectures. Language learning requires intentional
listening that employs strategies for identifying sounds and making meaning
from them.

This study aims at finding answer to the following research question:
How can some authentic listening techniques help the students at Nhu Thanh
High School improve their listening skill?
How do Practical listening activities affect the students’ listening
performance?
IV. PARTICIPANTS
The subjects chosen for the research include 80 grade 10 th non – major
English students in class 10C1, 10C2 of Nhu Thanh High School with the
survey questionnaires, and 7 teachers who are currently teaching English. To be
more specific, the teachers’ ages range from 30 to 44. Their experience of
teaching English varied from 8 year to 20 years. The research was carried out
during the academic year 2016 - 2017 at Nhu Thanh High School.
V. METHODS OF THE STUDY
The study is basically a qualitative research, which employs the following
methods:
1. Data is collected by means of three sets of questionnaires, one on the teachers
and the others on the students in pre – improvement stage and post –
improvement one. The questions are of the three – kinds: close – ended
questions, open – ended questions and scaling
2. Other sources of data come from listening tasks from the textbooks English
10 of the MOET. The analysis of the data hopefully will bring about reliable
findings useful for the teaching of listening to non – major students at Nhu thanh
high school Thanh Hoa

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PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
I. OVERVIEW OF AUTHENTIC TECHNIQUE.

to existing knowledge.
Recently, Imhof (1988) stated that listening is “the active process of
selecting and integrating relevant information from acoustic input and this
process is controlled by personal intentions which is critical to listening”.
Rost (2002) confirmed, “Listening is experiencing contextual effects” which can
be translated as “listening as a neurological event (experiencing) overlaying a
cognitive event creating a change in a representation”.
In the general meaning, listening is a critical element in the competent
language performance of all learners, whether they are communicating at school,
at work, or in the community they truly need a good listening skill.
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III. SOME FACTORS THAT AFFECT THE LISTENING PROCESS
Listening is a demanding process, not only because of the complexity of the
process itself, but also due to factors that characterize the listener, the speaker,
the content of the message, and any visual support that accompanies the
massage.
1. The listener
The interest in a topic increases the listener's comprehension; the listener
may tune out topics that are not of interest. A listener who is an active
participant in a conversation generally has more background knowledge to
facilitate understanding of the topic than a listener who is, in effect,
eavesdropping on a conversation between two people whose communication has
been recorded on an audiotape. Further, the ability to use negotiation skills, such
as asking for clarification, repetition, or definition of points not understood;
enable a listener to make sense of what they hear.
2. The speaker
Colloquial language and reduced forms make comprehension more
difficult. The extent to which the speaker uses these language forms impacts

The task should involve the listener in getting information and
immediately doing something with it.
Engage in a post – listening activity.
This activity should help the listener to evaluate success in carrying out
the task and to integrate listening with the other language skills. The teacher
should encourage practice outside of the classroom whenever possible.
CHAPTER 2: PRACTICAL SITUATIONS
I. THE INFRASTRUCTURE OF TEACHING AND LEARNING
ENGLISH LISTENING SKILLS AT NHU THANH HIGH SCHOOL
Nhu Thanh high school’s board of managers always deeply care about
the English teaching condition of the teachers and students. The school has
been equipped with full conditions about facilities for study like language
laboratory, books, tapes, and radios. However, after many years teaching
English in this mountainous school, I have noticed the fact that the majority of
students in this high school are afraid of learning English. Moreover, they
constantly have a heavy feeling in the English lesson, especially in a listening
lesson. In addition, there is a deep seated belief in their mind that they can not
evenly listening any thing. These are a truly barrier for the quality of students’
listening skill
Bearing in mind, I really indeed want to make students have a real
enthusiasm about learning a foreign language, namely English subject and
make students look forward to and hope for this subject without feeling bored.
Or, how to help students be able to understand when listening to a foreigner?
Therefore, I start on this study to try to find out the effect of some practical
listening techniques to help my students integrate to the new world.
II. THE PRACTICAL SITUATION OF TEACHERS AND STUDENTS
1. The advantages of teaching listening lesson:
1.1. For students:
Most students in Nhu Thanh high school have studied English since they
were in secondary school and the knowledge they are provided at this level of

I have use the whole procedure of teaching and learning similarly to all
students of the classes of different sizes. However, due to the limit of the study, I
only focus to collect information from the learning engagement of two classes
(C1, C2) during this process as the data for analysis.
At the beginning of the academic school year 2016 - 2017, I have test students
on their listening skill and the statistics will be shown below.
Survey: Practical Situation of learning Listening Skill at Nhu Thanh High
School.
Questions for
students
1. Do you like
studying listening
lesson?

A

B

C

D

Very Much
10%

Not Very
much
20%

Do not like

12%

Monotonous
41%

Not
essential at
all
10%
Really
boring
43%

From the survey, we can see that even though listening skill is considered
to be very necessary, its importance has not been paid much attention in Nhu

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Thanh high school. Consequently, student often feel that listening is a difficult,
boring skill to acquire.
Basing on the Experimental English Curriculum of the National Foreign
Languages 2020 Project, I really want to help students to improve English
communication which will certainly bring them variety of chances in the work
force. Then I decide to work on this research.
CHAPTER 3:
RECOMMENDATIONS TO IMPROVE THE STUDENTS’ ENGLISH
LISTENING SKILLS
I. RECOMMENDATIONS
Basing on the result of the above survey, I personally found that it is



activated. They can even have a framework of the organization of the passage to
be read if the questions are arranged in a well-arranged order.
For instance, In unit 1: A Day In A Life Of….. – Part C listening, students are
expected to answer the following questions before they listen to a passage.
•
Have you ever traveled by cyclo?
•
What are the benefits of traveling by cyclo?
•
What do you think a cyclo - driver often does everyday?
•
Do you think that working as a cyclo is a hard work?
Ask the students to read the questions carefully, they will know the main idea of
the passage is day in the life of a cyclo - driver, and the speaker will mainly talk
about his activities.
We can also 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 ask their classmates to give answers to the questions. Before
they listen to a dialogue between a policeman and a thief, tell them who the two
speakers are, then ask what they may talk about. You may also ask the learners
to role play the dialogue.
1.2. Brain storming Activities.
Brain storming is originally an effective activity to evolve students to new
lesson because this lets students to feel active to new lesson. Consequently,
teachers should take the advance of this kind of activity. Some of the useful
activities which the author of this innovation has used are presented below.
1.2.1. Word association task.
This method helps to determine what prior knowledge students bring to

dictionary as they generate their ideas.
When the text contains lists, even short lists of possibilities /ideas
/suggestions or whatever, it is often a good idea to use list making as the prelistening activity. This way the students can use their lists during the listening
stage. While the students make the list, they can use the words and phrases they
have already known, or they can ask their partners to help. Any checking type
activity carried out while listening can then be limited to matching with known
language. This can increase the likelihood of students succeeding with the task.
So it is a very motivating activity, especially for the lower level students.
1.3. Regular - Song Listening Activity.
Since this activity aims at having students practice listening more
frequently. Teacher should hold this activity regularly to improve listening
comprehension skill of students, not only for pre – stage in a listening
lesson.
Normally in listening skill, the most typical reasons that lead to
misunderstand the meaning of what we listen are possibly the different accent,
speed of speaking, so the author has help students get acquainted to different
accent by way of listening to English songs. Moreover, listening skill in English
itself is a communicative skill. Students should be motivated to practice
listening at home by themselves so that they can improve their communicative
skill. In this practical research I gave my student some English modern songs to
practice listening. Surprisingly, some students who dislike or even hate listening
classes become more excited about listening lessons. After 1 month, I hold a
singing club in order that my students have chance to perform what they have
learnt. And the author found that most of the students not only are getting more
and more interested but also more active in acting in front of their classmates.
2. Using Authentic While - Listening Activities.
2.1. Gap filling Activities.
This technique can be done by way of emptying some words in a passage,
a dialogue or a sentence. Then teacher asks students to listen to the tape spoken
and then fill in that empty words. However, the author suggests that in addition

Education and Training)
Task 1: You will here some information about Pelé, a famous Brazilian
football player. Listen and complete the table below.
Year
(1)_________
1956

Events
Born In Brazil
(2)_____________________________________

(3)________

First world cup Champion ship

(4)________

1,200th goal

1977

(5)_____________________________________
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In traditional method, teacher often has students listen to the tape script
and then fill in the missing words or phrases. This, however, is very difficult for
most students to catch the missing word.
Therefore, to help students finish their task, I suggest that in stead of have
students listen and fill in the blanks; teacher should provide students some prior

- participate in (v):
take part in
- ambassador(n)
-promote(v):to help
- Championship(n)
- Teacher reads the
words and asks
students to repeat.
- Teacher asks
students to read the
words
2.
While
you
listen:
+ Task 1:
Aims:
Students
practice listening

Before you listen:
Step 1. Teacher uses the picture of Pelé – one of
the most famous football players, and asks
students in class 10 C2 to work in groups and
discuss about him.

Picture of Pelé teacher has used to guide student
to the topic.
Step 2: Teacher gives some guiding question as
follow. Then a teacher asks students to work

fill in the table.
- Teacher asks
students
to
compare
their
answers in pairs.
- Teacher asks
students to report.
- Teacher plays the
tape once again,
stops
the
tape
where
necessary
and conducts the
correction.

Question 1. When and where was Pelé born?
Question 2. When did he join Brazilian football
club?
Question 3. When did Brazil won the first world
cup champion ship?
Question4. How many goal did he score?
Question5. What did he do after retirement?

Students in Class 10C2 are discussing about
Pelé’s picture based on guiding question..


First world cup championship

(4)

1,200th goal

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1977

(5)

Step 5: Teacher checks student’s answer.
Example 2: Using “Regular - Song Listening Activity”.
As music plays an integral part in our daily life, it helps people relax. So
when the author of this research gives students some piece of English music to
listen the students mostly are excited. Thus, they practice listening to these
songs every day. Now that they can catch up with the accent of native, they are
more active in listening activities in class.
Before giving the songs to the student, teacher should remember some of
the following tips:
Tip 1: Choose the suitable song. Teacher may find suggested songs on You tube
or Vimeo
Tip 2: Get “scaffold” and vocabularies for students to digest the songs.
Tip 3: Having student study the lyrics and vocabularies.
Tip 4: Periodically review.
Step 1: Teacher gives students in class 10C1 one song and its lyrics every week.
English - song - list that teacher has used:
Song 1: My Valentine

Course book: English 10 Text Book (Published by the
Ministry of Education)
Task 2: Listen to the old man’s story again and write in the missing word.
“He was very helpful. He (1)______ me to sit down in front of the
computer screen. I did not know what it was called. When I asked him what it
was, he said that it was a VDU. I (2)________ didn’t know what VDU was, but
I only too shy to ask him anymore. From that moment my memory (3) ______to
learn because he told me a lot of things that I really didn’t understand at all.
After a few lessons, I began to feel tired. I made an (4) ________ , saying that I
had a headache. I suggested we should leave the lesson for another day. Since
then, I haven’t said (5)________ about the computer to my son and my
secretary.”
Aim of this task is having student practice listening for specific
information by filling in the gaps. In traditional method, teacher often has
students listen to the tape script and then fill in the missing words or phrases.
This, however, is very difficult for most students to catch the missing word.
Therefore, to help students finish their task, I suggest that in stead of have
students listen and fill in the blanks; teacher should provide students with six
words for five blanks, and asks students to choose the suitable word to fill in
each of the blank from six - given - words.
The difference in teaching procedure could be made more specifically as follow:
Task

Traditional
method

Innovation of the author

Unit
5:

invited
something
Refused anything Excuse
- Teacher explains these words to students.
- Teacher asks students to work in pairs to read the
passage guess the word they could use for each of
the five blanks base on their part of speech,
meaning.

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twice
again
and fill in the
gaps with the
missing
words.
Students
listen and do
the task.
- Teacher asks
students
to
compare their
answer
in
pairs.
-Teacher
checks

word then checks students’ answer to give the
most correct answer for each blanks.
Suggested answer:
1. invited
2. still
3. refused 4.excuse
5. anything

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CHAPTER 4: RESULT
In conclusion, using top - down activities is an efficient way to teach
listening skill in the English classroom. By This way I get the best results in the
classroom. It raises students’ motivation. These activities take advances of their
social knowledge and help student to apply their ability to acquire English as
well as enhance their listening skill. By experiencing these activities student will
feel that they are not only studying but they also be involved in learning
activities. Students have also chance to practice team - work, acting, speaking
skill. They truly become the center of the class as in the project of the new
Curriculum of the MOET.
Moreover, the result of testing students’ Listening skill has considerably
improved. The effects will be shown in the table below:

Class

Before
Using authentic activities
Excellent Good Fair Poor
(%)

3

14

43,2

39,8

18

42

33,3

6,7

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PART THREE: CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTION
I. CONCLUSION
The idea of using some techniques to improve students’ listening skill at
Nhu Thanh high school is not a much concerning problem. As not many teachers
are interested in teaching listening for non – major students, listening will
forever become a nightmare for most students. Although the author will continue
to explore the use of these activities during lessons, future research should be
conducted so that listening soon is an attractive topic for entirely generation of
students. And finally, our dearest students will be more confident
communicating with people from English speaking countries with the purpose of
launching Viet Nam Stand side by side along with other nations like president

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dục.
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