DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING
THANH HOA PROVINCE

LÊ LAI HIGH SCHOOL

EXPERIENCE INITIATIVE:

DESIGNING SUPPLEMENTARY ACTIVITIES TO ENHANCE
LISTENING SKILL FOR 11TH GRADERS
AT LÊ LAI HIGH SCHOOL

Implementer: Lê Văn Bằng
Job title: Group leader
Experience initiative: English

THANH HOÁ YEAR 2016


TABLE OF CONTENS
Page
1. Introduction
- Rational............................................................................................................1
- Purposes and significance of the study............................................................1
- Methods and instruments.................................................................................2
2. The study
2.1. English teaching and learning at Le Lai High School...................................3
2. 2. Listening tasks at the 11th grade and MBA/MBT.........................................3
2. 3. Data analysis and findings.............................................................................3
2.3.1. Initial
data..........................................................................................3
2.3. 1.1. Results from pre-listening test............................................3


2.6. Supplementary activities and modified listening tasks. ..............................14
Page
3. Conclusion
- Conclusions...............................................................................................18
- Recommendations.....................................................................................18
- Limitations of the study.............................................................................19
- Suggestions for further study.....................................................................19
REFERENCES
APPENDIES
APPENDIX 1: PRE-TEST
APPENDIX 2: PHIẾU ĐIỀU TRA 1
APPENDIX 3: PHIẾU ĐIỀU TRA 2
APPENDIX 4: OBSERVATION SHEET
APPENDIX 5: TEACHING DIARY
APPENDIX 6: POST-TEST

TABLE OF CONTENS...................................................................................2
2.1. English teaching and learning at Le Lai High School.............................................3
2.2. Listening tasks at the 11th grade and MBA/MBT...........................................................3

2.3. Data analysis and findings.......................................................................3
2.3. 1.1. Results from pre-listening test..........................................................................3
2.3.1.2. Results from pre-action stage observations.......................................................4
2.3.1.3. Results from students’ questionnaire 1..............................................................5
2.3.2. Results from document analysis...................................................................................7
2.3.2.1. English 11..........................................................................................................7
2.3.2.2. Listening tasks in listening sections of English 11............................................8
2.3.2.3. Conclusion.........................................................................................................9
2.4. The hypothesis...............................................................................................................10

Pag
e
List of tables
Table 1: Results from pre-listening test................................................................3
Table 2: Students’ involvement in the task...........................................................5
Table 3: Frequency of listening tasks in listening lessons....................................5
Table 4: Students’ feelings when doing listening tasks in English 11..................6
Table 5: Students’ evaluation about the effectiveness of listening tasks..............6
Table 6: Students’ preferences for listening tasks.................................................6
Table 7: Students’ opinions about the ways their teachers treat listening tasks....7
Table 8: Topic in English 11.................................................................................8
Table 9: Types of listening tasks in English 11.....................................................8
Table 10: Students’ involvement in the tasks......................................................10
Table 11: Students’ evaluation about supplementary activities and modified
listening tasks......................................................................................................11
Table 12: Results of post-test..............................................................................12


1. Introduction
- Rationale for the study
For some recent years, English has played more and more important part
in Vietnam; therefore, it has been taught in Vietnamese secondary schools as a
compulsory subject. So far, there have been remarkable changes in the way of
teaching and learning English. However, English teaching in general and
teaching listening in particular still is far from satisfactory. How to motivate
students to listen is really necessary, and is a big question to most teachers in
Vietnam now. On the other hand, each student has different language learning
capacity. Especially, in my high school in a mountainous area, students have
quite low levels of English. So it is important for me to find effective ways to
increase my students’ interest in listening and hence improve their listening skill.

listening tasks in English 11 for 11th Graders at Le Lai High School, which
1


will benefit other teachers and students at my school apart from myself and
those I teach. This provides my study with its practical significance.
- Research questions, methods and instruments
In the attempt to achieve the afore-mentioned aims, the following
research questions are formulated so as to gather necessary information and
data:
i)
What is the level of the 11th graders’ English listening skill, and
what difficulties they may face with in listening? Why?
ii)
What makes listening lessons in English 11 difficult and why?
iii) What additional activities can be designed to help the students
address those difficulties?
To seek answers to the three research questions above, I will apply
the following methods and instruments:
Question 1:
- Interviewing a number of 11th graders to find out what difficulties they
expect to encounter in listening lessons in the 11 th grade and causes of
those difficulties;
- Discussing with English teachers at my school to gather more information
on difficulties 11th graders have faced with, or may have to face with, and
their causes. Part of the information from teacher discussions will also
help answer question 2 below.
Question 2:
Analyzing listening tasks, texts and audio resources in English 11 to
identify problems and their possible causes, including new words,

students are offered opportunities to interact and co-operate.
In English Textbook 11, Listening is the most challenging and important
skill in each unit. It is put after two other skills due to its productive nature and
dependence on input from other skills. In the 11th grade, students are expected to
work on a variety of listening tasks, each of which goes with a particular topic.
2.3. Data analysis and findings
This section, first of all, analyzes the initial data collected from pre –
listening test, questionnaires and teaching diaries. Then, the hypothesis and
planning and action phases are presented. Finally, the researcher discusses the
techniques used for supplementary listening activities and modifying listening
tasks as well his attempts to evaluate the action research.
2.3.1. Initial data
2.3. 1.1. Results from pre-listening test
As stated above, on the first day of week 2 students would do a test to
measure their level. Below are the results of the test:
Table 1: Results of the pre-test
Marks
Marks 1-2 Marks 3-4 Marks 5-6 Marks 7-8 Marks 9-10
Numbers
9
22
6
3
0
of students
Percentag
22.5%
55%
15%
7.5%

Then students continued the lesson with task 1 choosing the best answer A, B, C
or D. They were asked to work individually, run through the 05 sentences in task
1 and underline the key words. Then teacher played the tape twice. After that,
the teacher asked students to give answers. However, few of them had all the
answers. Some even paid no attention to the task. The teacher stopped by each
sentence for checking. Students, then, came to task 2 answering five questions
about the development of Vietnam’s telephone system over the past few years.
The teacher again played the tape twice. However, this task seemed to be
difficult for students as almost no student noted down anything. The teacher had
to provide help. The lesson flew slowly. Finally, the teacher gave some cues and
asked students to work in pairs to talk about the development of Vietnam’s
telephone system. Here are the results from the observations. First, it should be
mentioned that the observation sheet had six items, but during unit 9 and 10 the
observer only used four items to observe students’ involvement in the tasks. The
highest mark for each item was 5 and the highest mark for the whole class in
each lesson was 20. The highest total mark for the observations during two
lessons was 40.
Below are the concrete results:
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Table 2: Students’ involvement in the tasks
Unit 9
Unit 10
Units
(The post office) (Nature in danger)
Marks of students’
8
9
involvement in the tasks

The results are clearly presented in the table below:
Table 3: Frequency of listening tasks in listening lessons
Completin Ticking
Answering Filling Decidin
Multiple
Numberin
g missing
the
openmissin
g T/F
choice
g the
informatio things
ended
g
statequestion
pictures
n in the
you
questions words
ments
s
(%)
table/
hear
(%)
(%)
(%)
(%)
charts (%)

(%)
2%
6%
38%
0%
54%
When asked to express their feeling when doing listening tasks in English
11, the majority of the students (accounting for 54%) said they felt very bored
with the listening tasks in the textbook. 38% of them felt normal and only a
small number of students were interested in the tasks.
It is obvious that listening tasks in the textbook dissatisfy most of the students,
which can not motivate students to participate in the lessons as well as not to
encourage them to develop their listening skill.
2.3.1.3.4. Students’ evaluation about the effectiveness of listening tasks to
their listening competence.
Table 5: Students’ evaluation about the effectiveness of listening tasks
Very effective
Ineffective
Effective (%)
Not clear (%)
(%)
(%)
6%
8%
34%
52%
Table 5 presents that only 6% and 8 % of the students thought that
listening tasks in the textbook were very effective and effective, while 34% of
them spoke that they were not clear whether the tasks could help them improve
their listening comprehension. Especially, 52% believed that their ability for


2%

36%

29%

30%

64%

charts (%)
16%

(%)
28%

According to the information in the table, the most preferred listening task
is multiple choice questions. The next one is tasks with filling missing words.
Tasks of deciding T/F statements rank third. Followings are such kinds of tasks
as ticking the things you hear and completing missing information in the
table/charts respectively. The least favorite one is answering open-ended
questions.
2.3.1.3.6. Students’ opinions about the way their teachers treat listening
tasks
Table 7: Students’ opinions about the way their teachers treat listening
tasks
9. In what way does your teacher teach listening tasks in the Textbook?
Options
Result (%)

TOPICS
UNIT
Friendship
9
Personal experiences
10
A party
11
Volunteer work
12
Illiteracy
13
Competitions
14
World population
15

TOPICS
The post office
Nature in danger
Sources of energy
The Asian Games
Hobbies
Recreation
Space Conquest
7


8


Unit 2
Task 1
Task 2
Unit 3
Task 1
Task 2
Unit 4
Task 1
Task 2
Unit 5
Task 1
Task 2

True/False statements
Note-taking
True/False statements
Gap-filling
True/False statements
Comprehension
questions
Gap-filling
Comprehension
questions
Multiple choice
questions
Comprehension

Unit 9
Task 1
Task 2

Task 2

Gap-filling

True/False statements
Gap-filling
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questions
Unit 6
Task 1
Task 2
Unit 7
Task 1
Task 2

True/False statements
Comprehension
questions
Multiple choice
questions
Comprehension
questions

Unit 14
Task 1
Task 2
Unit 15
Task 1

is quite familiar; task 2 is too long with five comprehension questions, not to
mention some questions which can cause students’ difficulties in answering.
In Unit 15 (Space conquest) the listening passage is about the first human moon
landing. It can be certain that most of the students have never heard about this
before. Besides that when dealing with task 2, students can meet difficulties in
answering question 3 (What was the portable life support system for?) and
question 5 (What did they do while they were staying on the surface of the
moon?) as to get answers, students must listen to very long sentences, which
require them to have good skills of remembering and taking notes.
In short, despite some good points, listening tasks in English 11 are not really
diversified. Some tasks seem not to be appropriate as they do not fit students’
level. This unsuitability of the original tasks might lead to the boredom and then
affect students’ listening comprehension.
2.3.2.3. Conclusion
The data analysis at the initial stage of this research clearly shows that
most students are not very interested in doing listening tasks in English 11. In
fact, they feel very bored with the repetitive tasks and believe that these tasks
hardly help them improve their listening competence. It is due to the
unsuitability of the original tasks which discourages students from engaging in
listening. Then the answer for the first research question ‘What is the level of the
9


11th graders’ English listening skill, and what difficulties they may face with in
listening? Why?’ was found out.
Furthermore, basing on collected data, the researcher can draw out some
causes of unsuitability of the original listening tasks. First of all, some original
tasks are beyond students’ knowledge and competence. Secondly, some tasks
are too long. Finally, the repetition of some kinds of task cannot attract students’
attention.

19
22
23
tasks
Percent
63.3%
73.3%
76.7%
It can be seen from the table that students’ involvement in tasks increased
gradually through the lessons which used modified listening tasks and the
supplementary activities. In Unit 11, more than half of the students (63.3%) paid
attention to the lesson. In Unit 12, the percent of students’ involvement in tasks
was 10% higher than that of Unit 11. It means that students were more and more
engaged in modified listening tasks and the supplementary activities. In the last
lesson of the action plan- Unit 15- students’ involvement in tasks added up to
76.7%. Obviously, modified listening tasks and the supplementary activities
increased students’ interest in learning listening. However, the average
10


percentage of students’ involvement in tasks in three lessons (71.1%) was not so
high as it is expected. There were some students uninterested in supplementary
activities and modified listening tasks. This encourages the researcher to
continue adjusting modified listening tasks and design supplementary activities
so as to increase students’ participation in the lessons.
2.5.2. Results from Questionnaire 2
Questionnaire 2 (Appendix3) was delivered to each student after finishing
each lesson during three weeks (from week 4 to week 7) to see how students
evaluate the supplementary activities and the modified listening tasks.
The total number of questionnaires collected during three lessons was 120. The

changes made by the teacher. Especially, according to what they said in their
comments after each lesson, the supplementary activities and the modified
listening tasks of the teacher help facilitate their process of listening. They
somewhat felt less stressful when dealing with the tasks as they could be easier
get information from the listening passages and finish most of the given tasks.
They, finally, expressed their wish that the teacher often modified the tasks and
design supplementary activities to help them listen easier and better.
In brief, the results from the observations and questionnaire 3 once again
confirmed that modified listening tasks and supplementary activities increased
students’ involvements in the tasks. Students concentrated more on the lessons
and most of them could complete the listening tasks themselves. In other words,
students’ listening competence was partly improved because of more appropriate
listening tasks.
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2.5.3. Results from teaching diaries
With the hope of following closely what was happening during the
lessons, how effective the supplementary activities and the modified listening
tasks were as well as what problems came up, the researcher wrote teaching
diaries after each lesson.
As mentioned above, at the pre-action stage, when the teacher taught Unit 9 and
10 with non-supplementary activities and non-modified listening tasks, nearly a
half of students paid no interest to the lessons. They even didn’t finish the lesson
in 45 minutes. However, this situation changed when supplementary activities
were designed and modified tasks were applied in Unit 11, 12 and 15.
As perceived by the researcher through her teaching diaries, students’
listening comprehension was improved a lot during three lessons at the action
stage. The supplementary activities and the modified listening tasks really had
good effects on students’ progress. Most of the students could finish the tasks

1
of students
Percent
7.5%
27.5%
37.5%
25%
2.5%

12


Obviously, students achieved certain progresses in this test. The number
of students getting below average marks reduced remarkably. More than half of
the students scored better marks than in the test before. This figures once again
confirmed that the supplementary activities and the modified listening tasks had
good effects on students. The majority of them got some success in improving
their listening comprehension
2.5.5. Summary of major findings and discussions
2.5.5.1. The unsuitability of listening tasks in the textbook and its effects on
students’ listening comprehension
There have been a large number of researches investigating factors
affecting students’ listening comprehension. These factors are various. It may
come from the teachers or the students themselves. However, basing on what has
been analyzed in questionnaires and observations, the researcher found out that
the unsuitability of listening tasks in the textbook also has a great influence on
students’ listening competence.
The unsuitability of the tasks in the textbook English 11 may fall into
three categories. The first is the tasks which are too difficult for students. They
are not appropriate with students’ level, therefore, students often feel very

lessons at the action stage, the majority of students feel satisfied as they can
complete the tasks themselves.
2.6. Supplementary activities
In this section, the researcher focuses on designing supplementary
activities and modifying inappropriate listening tasks basing on criteria of a
good listening task presented in section 1.3.2 of Chapter 1 to make the tasks
more appropriate for students at Le Lai High School. The choice of each specific
criterion depends on students’ opinions and the analysis of original listening
tasks. With a carefully prepared plan, the researcher wishes to attract students to
listening lessons, then, in part, help them better at listening.
The followings are some supplementary activities and modified listening tasks:
2.6.1. Unit 11: Supplementary activity one.
Unit 11: Sources of energy
 Type of game: Matching
 Material: hand-outs
 Time: 5-7 minutes
 Classroom management: group work
 Procedure
The teacher divides the class into groups of four students. The teacher
gives each group a hand-out as below. Students have to work in groups and
quickly match the sentences in column A with an appropriate energy in column
B (a sentence in column A can contain more than one in column B). Which
group finishes first and has all correct answers will be the winner.
Hand-out
A
B
1. People use it to turn windmills and move a. Fossil fuel
sailboats.
2. It comes from oil, coal, and natural gas.
b. Air energy

Teacher calls on students to write down the words on the board.
Ask students to speak out all these words
Jumbled words
 efer tysle
 emlad
 dercro
 ymganst
 pujm
 emetr
 rab

Words

2.6.2.2. Modified task.
Replacing
In Task 2 of Unit 12 (The Asian Games), students are required to listen to
a passage and answer questions. According to questionnaire 1, most of the
students felt bored with such the repetitive listening tasks as answering the
questions. Moreover, this kind of task seems a bit difficult for students. So task 2
(Answering five questions) would be replaced by the following task:
Modified task: Listen to the passage about the Asian Games report and write
the missing words.
15


Good evening. It’s (1)......... and it’s time for “The Asian Games Report”.
It’s the 3rd day of the Games. Well, today’s most important (2)........was the
women’s 200-metre freestyle. The Japanese, Yuko was the first and got the gold
medal. She made a new record time of 1 minute 58 seconds. The Japanese
athletes won (3).......gold medals yesterday, and three the day before, so in the

P
Y
A

T
H
U
S
C

E
A
R
T
H

N
M
I
R
I

I
T
G
O
N

N
U

2.6.3.2. Modified task
Omitted and changing
As mentioned in section 3.2.2, some tasks in the textbook are too long for
students to complete in a limited time. For Unit 15 (Space conquest), there are
two tasks. In task 1, students have to listen and decide True/False statements (5
statements). In task 2, students listen again and answer open-ended questions;
the six open-ended questions are quite long and a bit difficult for weak students
to understand. Therefore, to ensure to have enough time for two tasks and
students can be easier to understand, two questions of task 2 (Questions No 3
and No 6) are omitted and some questions would be changed as follow:
Modified task: Listen to the passage again and then answer the following
questions:
1. According to the tape script, which program was developed after 1961?
2. When was the Apollo 11 launched?
3. How much time did the astronauts spend on the surface of the moon?
4. What did they do on the surface of the moon?

17


3. Conclusion
There are four parts in this section. The first part deals with conclusions.
The second part states some recommendations. Following are some limitations
of the present study. The last part suggests some suggestions for further study.
- Conclusions
The action research was conducted within eight weeks. In the first week,
by observing lessons, discussing with colleague teachers and talking with
students, the problem of students’ uninterest in listening lessons was identified.
In the following week, at the pre-action stage, observations, questionnaire 1 and
document analysis were employed to confirm the problem. After analyzing data

listening tasks should be well and thoroughly prepared. The teacher must point
out what he/ she intends to do.
18


Thirdly, after each listening lesson with supplementary activities and
modified listening tasks were taught to students, a small survey or an informal
interview may be helpful as it will help teachers measure the appropriateness of
those activities.
Last but not least, the researcher also recommends some useful techniques
which can be often used to modify listening tasks. These techniques are
omitting, replacing, changing, adding or simplifying. Depending on a particular
situation of each class, the teacher can choose some suitable techniques for the
action plan.
- Limitations of the study
The study has gained some success in improving students’ listening
comprehension through designed supplementary activities and modified
listening tasks. However, it still bears some limitations
First of all, the whole research lasted for eight weeks and the designed
supplementary activities and the modified tasks were applied within three weeks
merely with three lessons. The results would be more reliable if the researcher
had more time to study and experiment with more lessons.
Secondly, within the scope of the study, the participants in the study were
limited in a class with 40 students. The researcher really wishes that he could
conduct the research on a larger scale to produce better results.
Finally, the study would be more effective if the researcher were much better at
academic language proficiency, and had more experience in carrying out the
research.
- Suggestions for further study
This study is of small-scale with limited participants. Therefore, a similar