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

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


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

LÊ THỊ MÙI

A STUDY ON THE EFFECTS OF PRE-LISTENING ACTIVITIES ON



ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
On the completion of this thesis, I am indebted to many people.
First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere thanks to my supervisor,
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nguyen Xuan Thom for his valuable and prompt advice and helps,
without which, this thesis could not come into being.
My thanks also go to all my lecturers and officers from Post Graduate
Department, College of Foreign Languages, Vietnam National University, who have
facilitated me with the best possible conditions during my whole course of studying.
Last but not least, let my gratitude go to my family and friends, whose
encouragement and assistance are of extreme importance during the course of my
writing this thesis.

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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


III. Scope of the study ..................................................................................

2

IV. Methods of the study .............................................................................

2

V. Design of the study .................................................................................

3

PART B: DEVELOPMENT......................................................................

4

CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW .................................................

4

I. The concept of listening ........................................................................

4

I.1. What is listening? ..................................................................................

4

I.2. Listening processes ................................................................................


III.1.2. While-listening stage .......................................................................

9

III.1.3. Post-listening stage ..........................................................................

9

III.2. Definitions of pre-listening activities .................................................

9

III.3. Types of pre-listening activities ..........................................................

10

iv


III.4. Factors affecting the choice of pre-listening activities........................

11

IV. Prior studies related to pre-listening activities .................................

11

V. Summary ................................................................................................


14

II.2. Data collection instrumentations ..........................................................

15

II.3. Summary ..............................................................................................

16

CHAPTER

III:

DATA

ANALYSIS,

DISCUSSION,

MAJOR

FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS.............................................

17

I. Questionnaires ........................................................................................

17


20


I.1.7. Teachers’ frequency of using techniques for introducing the topic ...

21

I.1.8. Teachers’ frequency of using techniques for questioning ..................

21

I.1.9. Teachers’ frequency of using techniques for previewing tasks ..........

22

I.1.10. Teachers’ frequency of using pre-listening activities in the textbook
“English 10” ..................................................................................

22

I.2. The questionnaire for the students ....................................................

23

I.2.1 Students’ opinions about the importance of pre-listening activities ...

23

I.2.2. Students’ opinions about the factors that make listening lessons
more difficult ..............................................................................................


I.2.9. Students’ opinions about the most effective technique to guess the
topic .............................................................................................................

29

I.2.10. Students’ opinions about the most effective technique to brainstorm
for the content. .......................................................................................

30

I.2.11. Students’ opinions about the most effective technique to pre-view
tasks. ......................................................................................................

31

I.2.12. Students’ opinions about the pre-listening activities in the textbook
“English 10”. ..........................................................................................
vi

31


II. Class observation ..................................................................................

32

III. Interviews .............................................................................................

33


39

REFERENCES............................................................................................

40

APPENDICES ............................................................................................

I

Appendix 1: Survey questionnaires ..............................................................

I

Appendix 2: Interview questions...................................................................

IX

Appendix 3: Class observation .....................................................................

X

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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

comprehension tasks as well as their studying results.

1


II. Objectives of the study
The study aims at:
- investigating the teachers and students’ opinions about pre-listening activities of a
listening lesson in the classroom at Bac Ninh gifted high school.
- discovering the frequency the teachers use pre-listening activities; the pre-listening
activities students like best; the most effective ways to carry out these activities and
their effects on listening comprehension tasks in the training program.
- recommending some useful techniques in order to make pre-listening activities more
effective on listening comprehension tasks.
Above all, the purpose of the study is to encourage non-English major students
at Bac Ninh gifted high school to eagerly take part in the lesson and listen effectively
through interesting and suitable pre-listening activities.
In order to achieve these objectives, four research questions are raised:
1. What are the teachers and students’ opinions about pre-listening activities?
2. Which pre-listening activities are the most frequently used by the teachers and
which activity do students like best?
3. What are the most effective techniques to carry out pre-listening activities?
4. What are the effects of pre-listening activities on listening comprehension tasks in
the textbook English10?
III. Scope of the study
This study is carried out at Bac Ninh gifted high school in order 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.
IV. Methods of the study
In order to achieve the objectives of the study, the researcher uses qualitative

This part includes a review of the study, suggestions for further study and
limitations of the study.

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PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW
I. The concept of listening
I.1. What is listening?
Basically, listening is not the same as hearing. Hearing refers to the sounds that
you hear, whereas listening requires more than that. It is defined as a process whose
nature is active and complex. Listening is the mental process of constructing meaning
from spoken input (Rost, M. 2002 : 279). Helgesen, M. (2003 : 24) defines listening as
an active, purposeful processing of making sense of what we hear. It is clear that the
listener is doing more than simply decoding what is heard. He gets information, relates
them to what he already knows to figure out the meaning or the message that the
speakers convey. Underwood, M. (1989: 1) also agrees that listening is a complex
process that allows us to understand spoken language. She states: “Listening is the
activity of paying attention and trying to get meaning for something we hear".
Other scholars have also maintained the active and complex nature of listening
comprehension by describing what listeners actually do when they are involved in
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

knowledge and global understanding as to derive meaning from and interpret the
message. Bottom-up processing refers to deriving the meaning of the message based
on the incoming language data, from sounds, to words, to grammatical relationships, to
meaning.
The bottom-up process encourages students to use their knowledge of
vocabulary, grammar and sounds to make sense of what they hear while the top-down
one enables them to use their background knowledge or what they have already known
from life experience and situational routines to predict the meaning. However, all the
factors like vocabulary, grammar, sounds and background knowledge are very
necessary to understand spoken language. In an English listening lesson, hence,
teachers can use the most suitable process or make a good combination of two
processes in certain tasks. Of course, students need to be approached with both of them
in order that they can well activate their knowledge of all listening factors involved
and finally improve their listening skills.

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I.3. Component skills for listening
As mentioned above, listening is an active and complex process, hence it
requires much practice of sub-skill combination. A lot of components are drawn up by
Rost (1994: 142) as:
-

discriminating between sounds (phonemes)

-

recognizing syllables to identify words.


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).

6


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
require students to do something in response to what they hear that will demonstrate
their understanding" (Ur 1984: 25). Candlin (1987), as cited in Rost (1990: 158),
suggests that any language learning task should contain six identifiable elements:
input, setting and roles, procedures, outcomes, monitoring and feed-back. However,
Nunan (1989: 48) argues that the framework which combines simplicity with the

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.

-


III.1.2. While-listening stage
This stage is the time when students listen to the text and do while-listening
tasks, the purpose of which is to help learners develop the skills of eliciting messages
from spoken language (Underwood, 1989: 45). To achieve this aim, listening
comprehension tasks must be chosen carefully in order that they can both meet
students’ interests and match the listening text. As a result, they can raise students’
motivation in the lesson. However, this stage of the listening task is usually the most
problematic for the teacher to prepare because it involves designing a task that
involves only minimal reading or writing (Rost 2002: 20). In English classroom, it is
very important to use listening tasks to check and improve listening skills. Hence,
teachers need to pay much attention to choose the most suitable tasks in the textbook
and design the new ones to make the lesson successful.
III.1.3. Post-listening stage
This stage is carried out after the students finish listening through post-listening
activities that embrace all the work related to a particular listening text done after the
listening is completed. Some activities are extensions of the work done at the prelistening and while-listening stages and some relate only by loosely to the listening
text itself (Underwood 1989: 74). She affirms the roles of this stage by stating a lot of
its purposes besides to practice for the exam. Firstly, it is to check whether the students
have understood what they need to understand and whether they have completed
whatever while-listening task has been set successfully. Secondly, it gives students the
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

9



the students looking at pictures;

-

discussion of the topic or situation;

-

a question and answer session;

-

written exercises;

-

following the instructions relevant for the while-listening activity;

-

consideration of how the while-listening activity will be done;
Underwood also states other important roles of these activities: For students

without sufficient prior knowledge of the topic, such activities provide a chance to
gain some (even if limited) knowledge which will help them to follow the listening
text. In addition, it is likely that in this kind of pre-listening activity, students will

10



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

11


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
given first according to some leading scholars. This helps to get to know clearly about
the nature of listening. Then, the concepts and types of both listening comprehension
tasks and pre-listening activities are presented. Besides, three stages of teaching
listening are also mentioned. All presented has helped to form the theoretical and
conceptual framework for the study.

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CHAPTER II: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY



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
school
As mentioned above, to non- English major students, the textbook – standard
program – is used at higher secondary school in general and at Bac Ninh gifted high
school in particular. The content of the book consists of many topics that are useful in
communication and daily routines. Generally, each topic has been developed in one
unit which comprises five forty-five minute lessons: reading, speaking, listening,
writing, and language focus. Of course, all language skills are closely related and
practiced during learning, but students and teachers tend to focus on the skills in each
lesson, for example, listening skills in the listening lesson. So the time to practice
listening in the classroom is limited. Secondly, the evaluation results of the subject are
mainly based on written tests of grammar, vocabulary and reading comprehension or
oral tests of previous lessons. Therefore, students practice listening in the lessons but
be rarely tested or evaluated. This results in the fact that students do not pay much
attention to the listening skills and it is very difficult to have a good listening lesson in
the classroom. Students take part in the lesson passively. Thirdly, non-English major
students are considered as those who are not good at English listening.
Next, in the classroom, there are some problems discouraging students’
participation in the lesson. They are poor quality of equipments such as cassette
players and CDs, the difficult tasks, unfamiliar topics, and noise. Last but not least, the
way to conduct a listening lesson is sometimes not suitable to the content of the lesson
or the students’ ability.
II. Research methods

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.

15


However, the observer especially paid attention to students’ reactions to pre-listening
activities as well as techniques used in pre-listening tasks to discover the effects of
them on students’ ability to do listening comprehension tasks.
II.3. Summary
In short, this chapter presents the background information resulted in the study
such as the context of English learning and teaching at Bac Ninh gifted high school;
the materials and the limitations of a listening lesson in the classroom. Then, the
subjects and instruments of the study are also clearly stated.

16