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Luận văn tiếng Anh: An investigation of demotivators in English listening lessons of the 10th form non- English majors at Cao Bang Upper Secondary School for the Gifted. = Nghiên cứu các yếu tố gây nên sự mất hứng thú trong các giờ học nghe tiếng Anh của học sinh một số lớp 10 không chuyên Anh tại trường THPT Chuyên Cao Bằng . M.A Thesis Linguistics: 60 14 10
Nhà xuất bản: ĐHNN
Ngày: 2011
Chủ đề: Tiếng Anh
Phương pháp giảng dạy
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Miêu tả: 37 p. + CD-ROM
M.A Thesis. English Teaching Methodology -- University of Languages and International Studies. Vietnam National University, Hanoi, 2011
Listening has long been considered a boring and difficult skill by many second language (L2) learners. This study was carried out in an attempt to investigate the demotivators in listening lessons of the 10th non- English majors at Cao Bang Upper Secondary School for the Gifted (CBUSSG). Specifically, the study has been conducted in the form of survey research with the informants of 102 students in the 10th form of non- English Section and 6 teachers of English at CBUSSG. The main instruments employed for the data collection were survey questionnaires and structured interviews. Four factors including teachers’ behaviors and teaching methods, students’ characteristics and learning environment were extracted through the analysis of data collected. The research also reveals that the teachers’ behaviors and teaching methods were the most dominant demotivating factors for many students at CBUSSG. It is interesting to find that textbook and curriculum were not a very strong source of demotivation. Based on the findings, recommendations which are of significance to both teachers and students are provided to solve the problems. At last, it is hoped that the results of this study could be of much benefit for developing teaching and learning listening English at CBUSSG
PART A: INTRODUCTION.
1. Rationale 1
2. Aims of the study 2
3. Research questions 2
4. Significance of the study 2
5. Scope of the study 2
6. Method of the study 2
7. Design of the study 3
PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
1.1 Theoretical background of demotivation 4
1.1.1 What is demotivation? 4
1.1.2 Factors demotivating foreign language learning 5
1.2 Theoretical background of listening comprehension 8
1.2.1 Definitions of listening 8
1.2.2. Significance of listening 9
1.2.3. The process of listening comprehension 10
1.2.4. Potential problems in learning listening comprehension 11
Summary
CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY
2.1 The setting of the study 13
2.1.1. The school 13iv
2.1.2. The teachers and the students 13
2.1.3. The English textbook 10 14
2.2 Subjects of the study 15
2.3 Data collection instruments 15
Summary
CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS
3.1 Data analysis of students’ responses 17
3.2 Data analysis of teachers’ responses 25
3.3 Findings and discussion 28
3.4. Recommendations 30
Summary
PART C: CONCLUSION
1. Summary of the study 33
2. Limitations and suggestions for further study 33
REFERENCES
APPENDICE
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LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS
Chart 3.1: Students’ attitudes towards the learning of listening English
Chart 3.2: Students’ opinions on what motivates them to learn listening English
Chart 3.3: Teachers’ perceptions of students’ thought over of listening skills
Table 3.1: Students’ motivation in learning listening English
Table 3.2: Students’ demotivation in class
Table 3.3: Students’ opinions on kinds of tasks in listening lessons
Table 3.4: Students’ expectations towards teachers of listening skills
Table 3.5: Students’ expectations towards learning environment of listening skills
Table 3.6: Teachers’ perceptions of students’ demotivation in listening skills
Table 3.7: Teachers’ employment of teaching aids
Table 3.8: Activities adopted by teachers in listening lessonsvi
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
L2 Second language
CBUSSG Cao Bang Upper Secondary School for the Gifted
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ABSTRACT
Listening has long been considered a boring and difficult skill by many second
language (L2) learners. This study was carried out in an attempt to investigate the
demotivators in listening lessons of the 10th non- English majors at Cao Bang Upper
Secondary School for the Gifted (CBUSSG). Specifically, the study has been conducted
in the form of survey research with the informants of 102 students in the 10th form of nonEnglish Section and 6 teachers of English at CBUSSG. The main instruments employed
for the data collection were survey questionnaires and structured interviews. Four factors
including teachers’ behaviors and teaching methods, students’ characteristics and learning
environment were extracted through the analysis of data collected. The research also
reveals that the teachers’ behaviors and teaching methods were the most dominant
demotivating factors for many students at CBUSSG. It is interesting to find that textbook
and curriculum were not a very strong source of demotivation. Based on the findings,
recommendations which are of significance to both teachers and students are provided to
solve the problems. At last, it is hoped that the results of this study could be of much
benefit for developing teaching and learning listening English at CBUSSG.1
PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale of the study
With Vietnam‟s entry into the WTO and opening its markets to the outside world,
the demand for English speaking proficiency among people especially students is on the
rise than ever before. In fact, large numbers of students are being required to learn it
through compulsory programs in schools and universities. Therefore, the teaching and
learning of English at all levels especially at high schools has been given a lot of special
attention in recent years. Since the introduction of the new English textbook 10 which
emphasizes the need for the development of students‟ communicative competence through
the four skills including speaking, listening, reading and writing, there has been shift from
the traditional teaching methods to communicative language teaching. However, most
English language classrooms continue to be places to memorize textbooks rather than
practise communication and English is still to be treated as a school subject that needs to
be mastered and tested rather than a tool for communication. The current teaching and
learning English at CBUSSG has shown that in spite of the great efforts exerted to teach
English, weakness in listening and speaking skills is a matter of great concerns because
teachers tend to educate students in a manner which is directed to meet the requirements of
the exams which mainly focus on extensive vocabulary and grammatical rules. Because the
General Secondary Exam is not directed toward the speaking and listening skills, nonEnglish major students find themselves uninterested in learning the skills which will not be
examined. As a result of my experience in the teaching field, I found out that most students
have passive attitudes toward learning listening English due to the previous experiences
that listening skill is hard to learn and they fail to take listenig input. That is the reason
why many of them get bored and become demotivated when listening classes start. For
these reasons, it is necessary to have a study on factors causing demotivation in listening
lessons for students in general and for non- English majors at CBUSSG in particular.
In literature so far, there have been so few studies on demotivation because it is
considered a relatively new issue in the field of L2. However, most of the researchers have
come to an agreement to a list of common demotivating factors facing students in learning
English generally and learning listening particularly. These factors involve learning
environment, teachers‟ teaching methods and personality.
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2. Aims of the study
The main purpose of the study is:
- to investigate the demotivators in listening lessons of the 10th form non- English
majors at CBUSSG.
- to give some suggestions to eliminate demotivation factors in listening lessons in
order to improve students‟ listening skills.
3. Research questions
To achieve the aims mentioned above, the following research questions were
proposed:
(1) What are demotivators in listening lessons of the 10th non- English majors at
CBUSSG?
(2) What can teachers do to motivate students in their listening lessons?
4. Significance of the study
This study points out factors causing demotivations in listening lessons of the 10th
form non- English majors at CBUSSG. More importantly, it can be used as additional
evidence for demotivation factors that Vietnamese Upper Secondary School students have
when listening in English. The findings and recommendations of this study will be of great
use to the improvement of the teaching and learning of listening of Upper Secondary
School students in general and of the 10th form non- English majors at CBUSSG in
particular. The study may guide teachers to Giúp their students eliminate demotivators in
listening lessons and better their listening skills. The results of the study may also be
helpful for the students themselves and those who are interested in this field.
5. Scope of the study
This study mainly focuses on the demotivation factors that the 10th form nonEnglish majors at CBUSSG have in their listening lessons. The study of demotivators in
other skills would be beyond of the scope. It involves the participants of 6 teachers of
English and 102 students in the 10th form of non- English Section at CBUSSG. To go
ahead, the thesis also offers some appropriate suggestions to better the current context.
6. Method of the study
In order to achieve its aims, the research is carried out by both quantitative and
qualitative methods: Firstly, the data were collected with the use of the survey
questionnaire which was conducted with informants of 6 teachers of English and 1023
students in the 10th form of non- English Section at CBUSSG. Then, interviews were
employed with students randomly selected from non- English Section for further
information.
7. Design of the study
The study is organized as follows:
Part A, INTRODUCTION, presents the rationale, the aims, and research questions,
significance of study, method and design of the study.
Part B, DEVELOPMENT, consists of the following chapters
Chapter 1, LITERATURE REVIEW, presents the theoretical background related to
demotivation including the definition of demotivation, factors demotivating foreign
language learning. In addition, this chapter also covers the followings: the definitions of
listening, the significance of listening, the listening comprehension process and potential
problems in learning listening comprehension.
Chapter 2, METHODOLOGY, provides general information about the current
situation of teaching and learning listening at CBUSSG as well as study subjects and data
collection instruments.
Chapter 3, ANALYSIS OF DATA, gives a detailed analysis of data collected.
Besides, the chapter also presents some explanations and interpretations of the findings of
the study.
Part C, CONCLUSION, summmarizes the major findings and points out the
limitations of the study. Furthermore, some suggestions for further studies are also given in
this part.
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PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: REVIEW OF LITERATURE
This chapter presents theoretical background of demotivation, nature of listening
comprehension and discussion of issues and aspects concerning the topic of the study.
1.1 Theoretical background of demotivation
1.1.1 What is demotivation?
Motivation plays an important role in the process of English learning – teaching,
research shows that motivation is one of the main determining factors in an individual‟s
success in developing a L2, it is crucial for L2 learning (Dornyei,1994;
Oxford&Shearin,1996) because it directly influences how much effort students make, how
often students use L2 learning strategies, how much students interact with native speakers,
how much input they receive in the language being learned, how well they do on
curriculum related achievement tests, how high their general proficiency level becomes,
and how long they preserve and maintain L2 skills after language study is over. In recent
decades, there have been studies carried out on motivation, however, motivation research
alone cannot explained all the faucets of motivation, it is necessary to investigate other
variables, one of which is demotivation (Hamada & Kito, 2007). Demotivation as a
concept is relatively new in the field of L2 motivation and therefore not many
definitions can be found for it.
In light of Dornyei‟s considerations, “demotivation” concerns “specific external
forces that reduce or diminish the motivational basis of a behavioral intention or an
ongoing action”. Furthermore, a demotivated learner is defined as someone who is
originately motivated and lost his/her interest or motivation in learning because of negative
external factors. According to him, there are two sources of demotivators: external and
internal, external factors include grading and assignment, learning facilities etc and internal
factors include reduced confidence (Dornyei, 2001a) and negative attitude toward the
foreign language. In his study, Dornyei identifies the three negative factors that cannot be
considered as instances of demotivation. Firstly, powerful distractions, such as watching
TV instead of doing one‟s homework, are not demotives because they do not carry a
negative value in the same way as demotives. Secondly, the gradual loss of interest in a
long-lasting, ongoing activity cannot be seen as a demotive because it does not result5
from a particular incident. Thirdly, sudden recognitions of the costs of an activity, for
example, realizing that how demanding it is to attend an evening course while working
during the day, cannot be regarded as demotives because these types of recognitions do
not have any specific external trigger but result from internal processes of deliberation.
Dornyei also makes the distinction between „demotivation‟and „amotivation‟. For
him, „amotivation‟ refers to a lack of motivation brought about by the realisation that
„there is no point…‟ or „it’s beyond my ken…‟ Thus, „amotivation‟ is inextricably related to
general outcome expectations that are deemed to be unrealistic, whereas „demotivation‟ is
related to specific external causes. Dornyei also pointed out that some demotives can lead
to amotivation (e.g. a series of horrendous classroom experiences can put paid to the
learner‟s self-efficacy), but with some other demotives, as soon as the detrimental external
influence ceases to exist, other positive motives may again surface (e.g. if it turns out that
someone who dissuaded the individual from doing something was not telling the truth.
Researchers have taken an interest in demotivation, as it is considered to be a frequent
phenomenon related to the teacher‟s interaction with the students. In L2 studies, in
particular, the interest in demotivation has been aroused by a different reason. The L2
domain is most often characterised by learning failure, in the sense that merely everyone
has failed in the study of at least one foreign language. So, language learning failure is
directly related to demotivation.
1.1.2. Factors demotivating foreign language learning
Much research has been conducted on language learning motivation but less on
the demotivating factors in learning L2. The studies by such authors as Gorham and
Christophel (1992), Chambers (1993), Keblawi (2005), Rebecca Oxford (1998), Sakai and
Kikuchi (2007), Ushioda (1998), Tran and Baldauf (2007) discussed in the following
illustrate that demotivation in learning a L2 is a matter of concern worldwide.
Therefore, much more information is needed on the nature of the phenomenon.
Gorham and Christophel (1992) tried to determine what factors were perceived
as demotives by college students taking introductory communication classes. Demotivators
were collected from students‟ responses to the open-ended question: “ What things
decrease your motivation to try hard to do your best in that class?” the research findings
revealed three main categories of demotives, i.e., context demotives (factors likely to be
regarded as antecedent to the teacher‟s influence), structure/format demotives (factors over
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which the teacher is likely to have some degree of influence, if not complete control), the
teacher behaviour (factors likely to be perceived as under the teacher‟s direct control.
Teacher-related factors, which consist of class structure or format-related demotives and
the demotives resulting from teacher behavior, accounted for 79% of all responses. In a
follow-up study to ascertain whether the perceived sources of demotivation could be
replicated, Christophel and Gorham (1995), using the same question to detect demotives
with another group of college students studying communication, obtained findings that
were consistent with those from the first study. However, in both studies, no attempt was
made to examine the cases of the students who might have already been demotivated
before entering the class or was it clear whether the responses were not real or hypothetical
sources of demotivation.
To examine the degree to which teachers‟ perceptions of what affects student
motivation were similar to those found in student reports, Gorham and Millette (1997)
conducted a further study based on Gorham‟s previous research in which teacher
participants were asked, with reference a specific class, to respond to the open-ended
question, “What do you perceive decreases students‟ motivation to try to do their best in
this class and to achieve your instructional goals?” The results indicated that teachers and
students agreed on a set of central factors that are relevant to demotivation. teachers were
more likely to attribute student demotivation to performance-related factors such as the
students‟ lack of success on graded work, the students‟ lack of prerequisite skills or
knowledge and the students‟ heavy workload. In contrast, students attributed more of their
demotivation to teacher behavior, in particular poor presentational skills, lack of
enthusiasm and organization of course material.
. In contrast to the findings of the Gorham and Millette‟s study (1997), Chambers
(1993) investigated demotivation in language learning in four schools in the UK. The
study was conducted on the school students and their teachers. Students placed most blame
on teachers and learning materials. While the teachers claimed that the students' motivation
caused by psychological, social and attitudinal reasons.
Keblawi (2005) conducted a study to explore the factors affecting negatively
learning English in Palestine high schools. The data revealed that English teachers were
referred to directly or indirectly-as demotivators- by almost half of the respondents.
Interestingly, the study revealed that about half of the respondents referred to aspects of7
English (grammar, vocabulary) as main demotivators. Furthermore, depending on the
results of a study conducted on secondary students in Budapest who were identified as
demotivated, Dornyei (2001) categorized nine demotivating factors including: the teacher -
personality, commitment, competence, teaching method; inadequate school facilities -
group is too big or not the right level; frequent change of teachers; reduced self-confidence
- experience of failure or lack of success; negative attitude towards the L2; compulsory
nature of L2 study; coursebook.
Rebecca Oxford (1998) carried out a content analysis of essays written by 250
American students (in high schools and universities) about their learning experiences over
a period of five years. In this analysis, four demotivating factors were extracted, they are:
The teacher’s personal relationship with the students, including hypercriticism,
belligerence, a lack of caring, and favouritism; the teacher’s attitude towards the course or
the material, including lack of enthusiasm, sloppy management and close-mindedness;
style conflicts between teachers and students, including multiple style conflicts, conflicts
about the amount of structure or detail, and conflicts about the degree of closure or
„seriousness‟ of the class; the nature of the classroom activities, including overload,
repetitiveness, and irrelevance.
Sakai and Kikuchi (2009) explored Japanese high school students‟ demotivation
by collecting data from 656 students through a 35-item questionnaire. The
questionnaire were designed to measure six constructs derived from previous studies:
teachers, characteristics of classes, experiences of failure, class environment, class
materials, and lack of interest. Five demotivational factors found were learning
contents and materials, teacher’s competence and teaching styles, inadequate school
facilities, lack of intrinsic motivation, and test scores. Contrary to most of the
previous studies presented so far, factors related to teacher were not found to have very
strong demotivating influence compared to learning contents and materials or test
scores which were found to be the two most dominant demotives among participants. In
addition, lack of intrinsic motivation was found to be as salient as a teacher‟s
competence and teaching styles which suggests that internal forces have to also be
taken into account when discussing demotivation. Inadequate school facilities were
not found as demotivating although it was mentioned by some participants.
Ushioda (1998) asked the participants to identify what they found to be
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demotivating in their L2-related learning experience. Her findings were not unlike the
conclusions arrived at in the previous studies, that is, the demotives were related to
negative aspects of the institutionalized learning context such as particular teaching
methods and learning tasks.
Reviewing above - discussed studies discussed above, Tran and Baldauf (2007)
conducted a case study project with Vietnamese students by using stimulated recall essays
from 100 students of their foreign language learning experiences. The results of the study
revealed that there are two groups of demotives: including internal attributions and
external attributions. The internal attributions includes students‟ attitudes towards English,
their experiences of failure or lack of success and the incidents related to their self- esteem,
meanwhile the external attributions contain teacher-related factors, the learning
environment and other external factors. The researchers have given a specific and
comparatively full description of the issue in Vietnamese condition.
Generally, most studies conducted in the field of motivation and demotivation
found out that the personality of the teacher, teaching methods, learning context in
addition to the learner's attitudes toward L2 could play a vital role in the students'
motivation or demotivation toward learning.
1.2 Theoretical background of listening comprehension
1.2.1 Definitions of listening comprehension
There are many different approaches to the definition of listening comprehension.
However, most researchers agree that all listening comprehension involves the use both
linguistics and non-linguistics knowledge. Linguistic knowledge includes phonology, lexis,
semantics and discourse structure as well as the ability to interact with the input in real
time (Buck, 2001:3). Meanwile non- linguistic is concerned with contextual knowledge
(Buck, 2001:2; Lynch, 1998: 3).
According to Buck, listening comprehension is a process whereby listeners extract
meaning based on their own knowledge and experience. He believes that since
comprehension takes place in the listener‟s mind, the setting or context for interpretation is
the cognitive environment of the listener.
Like Buck, Rost (2002:59) believes that listening comprehension is a process
whereby language is linked to previous stored notions and associations in real life. In other9
words, it is the understanding of what the language is referring to, based on one‟s past
experience or knowledge.
From the viewpoint of Shohamy and Inbar (1991:26), listening comprehension
entails an ability to receive and interprete input simultaneously because a listener cannot
replay what he or she has heard. A competent listener is therefore dependent on instant
comprehension as well as an ability to remember information. Unlike written text,
utterances are dependent on the context and are usually unedited. In accordance with the
ideas of Buck and Rost, Shohamy and Inbar also believe that listening comprehension
necessitates an interaction between the listener‟s background knowledge and the spoken
text.
Listening is described by Bejar, Douglas, Jamieson, Nissan and Turner (2000:2) as
“the process of receiving an acoustic signal which is then structures”. According to them,
the reception of the signal occurs in real-time but the structuring is dependent on cognitive
processes which involve linguistic, situational and background knowledge which have to
be synthesized in order to achieve meaning.
Brinley (1998:181) also defines listening as a multi-faceted and interactive process
“listeners use verbal and non-verbal cues to interprete messages.
1.2.2. The significance of listening comprehension
Listening plays a very important role in student‟s academic success. Research
shows that language learning depends on listening because it provides the aural input that
serves as the basis for language acquisition and enables learners to interact in spoken
communication.
It is undeniable that “listening is the first language mode that children acquire. It
provides the foundation for all aspects of language and cognitive development, and it plays
a life-long role in the process of communicating” (Guo, N. & Wills, R., 2006:3). A study
by Wilt (1950), found that people listen 45 % of the time they spend communicating, 30 %
of communication time was spent speaking, 16 % reading, and 9 % writing. That finding
confirmed what Rankin discovered in 1928, that people spent 70 % of their waking time
communicating and that three-fourths of this time was spent listening and speaking.
According to Bulletin (1952), listening is the fundamental language skill. It is the
medium through which people gain a large portion of their education, their information,
their understanding of the world and of human affairs, their ideals, sense of values, and
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their appreciation. In this day of mass communication, much of it oral, it is of vital
importance that students are taught to listen effectively and critically.
According to second language acquisition theory, language input is the most
essential condition of language acquisition. As an input skill, listening plays a crucial role
in students‟ language development. Krashen (1985) argues that people acquire language by
understanding the linguistic information they hear. Thus language acquisition is achieved
mainly through receiving understandable input and listening ability is the critical
component in achieving understandable language input. Given the importance of listening
in language learning and teaching, it is essential for language teachers to Giúp students
become effective listeners. In the communicative approach to language teaching, this
means modeling listening strategies and providing listening practice in authentic situations:
precisely those that learners are likely to encounter when they use the language outside the
classroom.
1.2.3. The process of listening comprehension
Listening comprehension is a complex psychological process of listeners‟
understanding language by sense of hearing. It is an interactive process of language
knowledge and psychological activities. However, this process is not simply decoding
the message; it also involves the combining of the decoding of the message process with
its reconstruction as meaning (Ma Lihua, 2002).
According to Underwood, there are three distinctive stages in the listening process.
At the first stage, the sounds go into a sensory store called the “echoic memory”, and are
organized into meaningful units according to the knowledge of the language the listener
has. The second stage is the processing of the information by the short – term memory.
This is a brief stage at which words or groups of words are checked and compare with the
information already held in the long-term memory and the meaning is extracted from them.
When the meaning has been grasped, the actual words are generally forgotten. Once the
listener has constructed a meaning from the utterance, he or she might transfer the
information to the long-term memory for later use. It can be seen that here Underwood
relates the aural process in terms of time and memory. The background knowledge of
listeners is also mentioned in the listening process.
In addition, the conception of bottom- up and top- down processes in
comprehension are also mentioned by such authors as Lynch (1988), Rubin (1994) and11
Rost (2002). According to them, listeners use top- down processes when they use context
and prior knowledge to build a conceptual framework for comprehension. Prior-knowledge
includes topic of the listening material, context of the listening material, culture of the
listening material, text type of the listening material. Whereas bottom- up processes are
used when they construct meaning by accretion from phoneme-level to discourse- level
features. In the past, people used to prefer top- down to bottom- up processes because they
thought that the using of top- down processes would Giúp English learners listen more
effectively. Nowadays, both processes are equally appreciated and should be applied
properly in a specific context and for certain purpose of listening. It is important for both
teachers and students to recognize the existence of these two types of processing listening
input as they both contribute to the development of listening skills.
1.2.4. Potential problems in learning listening comprehension
It cannot be denied that, listening is regarded as the most difficult among the four
skills for many second language learners. The problems they may have in learning
listening are various.
From the points of view of Underwood (1989), there are seven problems which
learners often encounter in learning listening. First, listeners cannot control the speed at
which speakers speak. Another problem is that listeners cannot always have words
repeated. Next, the listeners have a limited vocabulary, the speakers may use words that
the listener doesn‟t know. Fourth, listeners may fail to recognize the signals indicating that
the speaker is moving from one point to another, giving an example or repeating a point.
Fifth, listeners may lack contextual knowledge because sharing mutual knowledge and
common contexts makes communication easier. Sixth, it can be difficult for listeners to
concentrate in a foreign language, concentration is easier when the students find the topic
of listening interesting. Finally, students may have established learning habbits such as a
wish to understand every word.
Meanwhile, Yagang (1984) attributes the difficulties of listening comprehension to
four sources: the messages, the speaker, the listener and the physical setting. Higgi (1995)
studies Omani students‟ problems in listening comprehension and finds the factors which
hinder or facilitating listening are speech rate, vocabulary and pronunciation. Rubin (1994)
identified five factors that affect listening comprehension such as text characteristics,
interlocutor characteristics, task characteristics, listener characteristics and process
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characteristics. Besides, he also identifies some problems which listeners often face
including the speed of the speaker and the language he uses; students‟ unfamiliarity with
the sounds, stress, intonation and rhythm of natural spoken English; different varieties or
accents; false starts, hesitation, repetitions and incomplete sentences. In addition, he also
points out that boredom, fatigue or distraction outside the classroom may affect the
concentration of the listeners.13
CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY
This chapter deals with the context of the study, subjects and methods of the study
as well as the analysis of data collected.
2.1. The setting of the study
2.1.1. The school
The study was conducted at CBUSSG which is located in the center of Cao Bang
town, a mountainous province of Vietnam. It is also the only specialized school in Cao
Bang province. The school was originally founded in 1974 with only one class specializing
in Maths. After many years of establishment and development, today, it has been widened
with 18 classes specializing in different subjects such as Maths, Physics, Chemistry,
Biology, Literature and English. The main duty of the school is to train and foster talents
for the country in general and the province in particular. Therefore, the teachers and
students are carefully selected from schools in the province and there is always competitive
learning environment, which creates real opportunities for students to develop their full
ability.
The school has 18 classes with a number of students ranging from 30 to 36 for each.
This class size seems favorable for students to study English comparing with that in other
schools in the province. However, the school is equipped with only one language
laboratory, which is not good enough because teachers and students sometimes get troubles
when using it. So students often practise listening to English at their classroom with a
cassette player.
2.1.2. The teachers and the students
As in every high school, English is taught here as a compulsory subject by 7
teachers aged from 26 to 48. Two of them graduated from the English Department of
College of Foreign Languages, Vietnam National University, Hanoi four others were
from Thai Nguyen University of Education and one is taking MA course. Most of them
are so young and have at least 5 years of teaching experiences, some of them have had
opportunities to attend the national or provincial textbook introduction workshops or
training programmes to get the ideas about the textbook and new teaching methodology.
However, they do not have chances to contact with native speakers or specialists who can
give them precious Giúp and advice
interested in their listening lessons. In addition, teachers need to select a wide range
of materials to increase listening content besides using textbooks. Students need
to listen to different levels of English in order to be exposed to natural, lively, rich
language, such as listening to English songs, seeing films with English text. In these
ways, it is possible to raise students‟ enthusiasm, cultivate their listening interests,
and achieve the goals of learning English.
(3) Give students clear instructions and corrective feedback
Giving feedback is necessary for the students because they are informed how well
or badly they have performed. By providing corrective feedback, the teacher can help
students evaluate their success and progress. As discussed above, the majority of students
in the interview found it difficult to understand and follow the listening text due to their
lack of pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar structures. Thus, teachers should
encourage students to practise pronouncing words more and try to memorize as many
words as possible. Another thing is that, teachers should guide students how to do with
different kids of tasks. One of the findings shows that students feel demotivated with
activities in the classroom because they did not know how to do with the listening without
clear instructions from their teachers.
(4) Create a pleasant and relaxing atmosphere in the classroom
As suggested by the respondents, teachers should create a relaxing atmostphere
within the classroom while taking into account students‟ demotivation. In order to achieve
this, it is necessary for teachers to establish relationships of mutual trust and respect with
the students. This involves finding opportunities to talk with them on a personal level and
letting them know that teachers have thought about them and that their individual effort is
recognized. Besides, teachers ought to develop positive personality types such as patience
or sense of humour to make students more comfortable. In addition, teachers can create
relaxing atmostphere by using some techniques such as using games, visual aids,
exploiting songs and music in listening lessons.
(5) Increase students’ self – confidence
Self-confidence is generally seen as a key factor in learning a language but the
important question is how to maintain and increase students‟ self-confidence and in a
language classroom. Teachers should encourage students to set realistic goals for
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themselves and improve their listening English. If their language proficiency is improved,
they are likely to overcome the difficulties such as speech rate, native speakers‟
pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar structures.
(6) Raise students’ awareness of the importance of learning listening English
Students‟ awareness of the importance of English was the most frequent motive
that helped them to overcome demotivation and recover their interest in learning.
Nevertheless, an awareness of the importance of English alone was not enough to help
students to overcome demotivation absolutely. Students were more likely to completely
overcome demotivation if their awareness of the importance of English triggered their
self-determination to learn English, making them more autonomous and independent of
affective factors. In this respect, teachers need to support this effective internal strategy in
order to Giúp students set up and maintain their self-determination by making clear
the practical benefits of learning English.
(7) Make better use of advanced teaching facilities and learning conditions
In order to utilize technology effectively in teaching English , schools should be
equipped with adequate numbers of technological devices (language labs,
projectors…etc.) . Additionally, teachers should be trained intensively on utilizing
technology in teaching English. It should be noted that teachers cannot be expected
to learn how to use educational technology in their teaching after a one-time
workshop. Teachers need in-depth, sustained assistance not only in the use of the
technology but in their efforts to integrate technology into the curriculum (Kanaya
& Light, 2005)
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Ngày: 2011
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Miêu tả: 37 p. + CD-ROM
M.A Thesis. English Teaching Methodology -- University of Languages and International Studies. Vietnam National University, Hanoi, 2011
Listening has long been considered a boring and difficult skill by many second language (L2) learners. This study was carried out in an attempt to investigate the demotivators in listening lessons of the 10th non- English majors at Cao Bang Upper Secondary School for the Gifted (CBUSSG). Specifically, the study has been conducted in the form of survey research with the informants of 102 students in the 10th form of non- English Section and 6 teachers of English at CBUSSG. The main instruments employed for the data collection were survey questionnaires and structured interviews. Four factors including teachers’ behaviors and teaching methods, students’ characteristics and learning environment were extracted through the analysis of data collected. The research also reveals that the teachers’ behaviors and teaching methods were the most dominant demotivating factors for many students at CBUSSG. It is interesting to find that textbook and curriculum were not a very strong source of demotivation. Based on the findings, recommendations which are of significance to both teachers and students are provided to solve the problems. At last, it is hoped that the results of this study could be of much benefit for developing teaching and learning listening English at CBUSSG
PART A: INTRODUCTION.
1. Rationale 1
2. Aims of the study 2
3. Research questions 2
4. Significance of the study 2
5. Scope of the study 2
6. Method of the study 2
7. Design of the study 3
PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
1.1 Theoretical background of demotivation 4
1.1.1 What is demotivation? 4
1.1.2 Factors demotivating foreign language learning 5
1.2 Theoretical background of listening comprehension 8
1.2.1 Definitions of listening 8
1.2.2. Significance of listening 9
1.2.3. The process of listening comprehension 10
1.2.4. Potential problems in learning listening comprehension 11
Summary
CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY
2.1 The setting of the study 13
2.1.1. The school 13iv
2.1.2. The teachers and the students 13
2.1.3. The English textbook 10 14
2.2 Subjects of the study 15
2.3 Data collection instruments 15
Summary
CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS
3.1 Data analysis of students’ responses 17
3.2 Data analysis of teachers’ responses 25
3.3 Findings and discussion 28
3.4. Recommendations 30
Summary
PART C: CONCLUSION
1. Summary of the study 33
2. Limitations and suggestions for further study 33
REFERENCES
APPENDICE
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LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS
Chart 3.1: Students’ attitudes towards the learning of listening English
Chart 3.2: Students’ opinions on what motivates them to learn listening English
Chart 3.3: Teachers’ perceptions of students’ thought over of listening skills
Table 3.1: Students’ motivation in learning listening English
Table 3.2: Students’ demotivation in class
Table 3.3: Students’ opinions on kinds of tasks in listening lessons
Table 3.4: Students’ expectations towards teachers of listening skills
Table 3.5: Students’ expectations towards learning environment of listening skills
Table 3.6: Teachers’ perceptions of students’ demotivation in listening skills
Table 3.7: Teachers’ employment of teaching aids
Table 3.8: Activities adopted by teachers in listening lessonsvi
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
L2 Second language
CBUSSG Cao Bang Upper Secondary School for the Gifted
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ABSTRACT
Listening has long been considered a boring and difficult skill by many second
language (L2) learners. This study was carried out in an attempt to investigate the
demotivators in listening lessons of the 10th non- English majors at Cao Bang Upper
Secondary School for the Gifted (CBUSSG). Specifically, the study has been conducted
in the form of survey research with the informants of 102 students in the 10th form of nonEnglish Section and 6 teachers of English at CBUSSG. The main instruments employed
for the data collection were survey questionnaires and structured interviews. Four factors
including teachers’ behaviors and teaching methods, students’ characteristics and learning
environment were extracted through the analysis of data collected. The research also
reveals that the teachers’ behaviors and teaching methods were the most dominant
demotivating factors for many students at CBUSSG. It is interesting to find that textbook
and curriculum were not a very strong source of demotivation. Based on the findings,
recommendations which are of significance to both teachers and students are provided to
solve the problems. At last, it is hoped that the results of this study could be of much
benefit for developing teaching and learning listening English at CBUSSG.1
PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale of the study
With Vietnam‟s entry into the WTO and opening its markets to the outside world,
the demand for English speaking proficiency among people especially students is on the
rise than ever before. In fact, large numbers of students are being required to learn it
through compulsory programs in schools and universities. Therefore, the teaching and
learning of English at all levels especially at high schools has been given a lot of special
attention in recent years. Since the introduction of the new English textbook 10 which
emphasizes the need for the development of students‟ communicative competence through
the four skills including speaking, listening, reading and writing, there has been shift from
the traditional teaching methods to communicative language teaching. However, most
English language classrooms continue to be places to memorize textbooks rather than
practise communication and English is still to be treated as a school subject that needs to
be mastered and tested rather than a tool for communication. The current teaching and
learning English at CBUSSG has shown that in spite of the great efforts exerted to teach
English, weakness in listening and speaking skills is a matter of great concerns because
teachers tend to educate students in a manner which is directed to meet the requirements of
the exams which mainly focus on extensive vocabulary and grammatical rules. Because the
General Secondary Exam is not directed toward the speaking and listening skills, nonEnglish major students find themselves uninterested in learning the skills which will not be
examined. As a result of my experience in the teaching field, I found out that most students
have passive attitudes toward learning listening English due to the previous experiences
that listening skill is hard to learn and they fail to take listenig input. That is the reason
why many of them get bored and become demotivated when listening classes start. For
these reasons, it is necessary to have a study on factors causing demotivation in listening
lessons for students in general and for non- English majors at CBUSSG in particular.
In literature so far, there have been so few studies on demotivation because it is
considered a relatively new issue in the field of L2. However, most of the researchers have
come to an agreement to a list of common demotivating factors facing students in learning
English generally and learning listening particularly. These factors involve learning
environment, teachers‟ teaching methods and personality.
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2. Aims of the study
The main purpose of the study is:
- to investigate the demotivators in listening lessons of the 10th form non- English
majors at CBUSSG.
- to give some suggestions to eliminate demotivation factors in listening lessons in
order to improve students‟ listening skills.
3. Research questions
To achieve the aims mentioned above, the following research questions were
proposed:
(1) What are demotivators in listening lessons of the 10th non- English majors at
CBUSSG?
(2) What can teachers do to motivate students in their listening lessons?
4. Significance of the study
This study points out factors causing demotivations in listening lessons of the 10th
form non- English majors at CBUSSG. More importantly, it can be used as additional
evidence for demotivation factors that Vietnamese Upper Secondary School students have
when listening in English. The findings and recommendations of this study will be of great
use to the improvement of the teaching and learning of listening of Upper Secondary
School students in general and of the 10th form non- English majors at CBUSSG in
particular. The study may guide teachers to Giúp their students eliminate demotivators in
listening lessons and better their listening skills. The results of the study may also be
helpful for the students themselves and those who are interested in this field.
5. Scope of the study
This study mainly focuses on the demotivation factors that the 10th form nonEnglish majors at CBUSSG have in their listening lessons. The study of demotivators in
other skills would be beyond of the scope. It involves the participants of 6 teachers of
English and 102 students in the 10th form of non- English Section at CBUSSG. To go
ahead, the thesis also offers some appropriate suggestions to better the current context.
6. Method of the study
In order to achieve its aims, the research is carried out by both quantitative and
qualitative methods: Firstly, the data were collected with the use of the survey
questionnaire which was conducted with informants of 6 teachers of English and 1023
students in the 10th form of non- English Section at CBUSSG. Then, interviews were
employed with students randomly selected from non- English Section for further
information.
7. Design of the study
The study is organized as follows:
Part A, INTRODUCTION, presents the rationale, the aims, and research questions,
significance of study, method and design of the study.
Part B, DEVELOPMENT, consists of the following chapters
Chapter 1, LITERATURE REVIEW, presents the theoretical background related to
demotivation including the definition of demotivation, factors demotivating foreign
language learning. In addition, this chapter also covers the followings: the definitions of
listening, the significance of listening, the listening comprehension process and potential
problems in learning listening comprehension.
Chapter 2, METHODOLOGY, provides general information about the current
situation of teaching and learning listening at CBUSSG as well as study subjects and data
collection instruments.
Chapter 3, ANALYSIS OF DATA, gives a detailed analysis of data collected.
Besides, the chapter also presents some explanations and interpretations of the findings of
the study.
Part C, CONCLUSION, summmarizes the major findings and points out the
limitations of the study. Furthermore, some suggestions for further studies are also given in
this part.
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PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: REVIEW OF LITERATURE
This chapter presents theoretical background of demotivation, nature of listening
comprehension and discussion of issues and aspects concerning the topic of the study.
1.1 Theoretical background of demotivation
1.1.1 What is demotivation?
Motivation plays an important role in the process of English learning – teaching,
research shows that motivation is one of the main determining factors in an individual‟s
success in developing a L2, it is crucial for L2 learning (Dornyei,1994;
Oxford&Shearin,1996) because it directly influences how much effort students make, how
often students use L2 learning strategies, how much students interact with native speakers,
how much input they receive in the language being learned, how well they do on
curriculum related achievement tests, how high their general proficiency level becomes,
and how long they preserve and maintain L2 skills after language study is over. In recent
decades, there have been studies carried out on motivation, however, motivation research
alone cannot explained all the faucets of motivation, it is necessary to investigate other
variables, one of which is demotivation (Hamada & Kito, 2007). Demotivation as a
concept is relatively new in the field of L2 motivation and therefore not many
definitions can be found for it.
In light of Dornyei‟s considerations, “demotivation” concerns “specific external
forces that reduce or diminish the motivational basis of a behavioral intention or an
ongoing action”. Furthermore, a demotivated learner is defined as someone who is
originately motivated and lost his/her interest or motivation in learning because of negative
external factors. According to him, there are two sources of demotivators: external and
internal, external factors include grading and assignment, learning facilities etc and internal
factors include reduced confidence (Dornyei, 2001a) and negative attitude toward the
foreign language. In his study, Dornyei identifies the three negative factors that cannot be
considered as instances of demotivation. Firstly, powerful distractions, such as watching
TV instead of doing one‟s homework, are not demotives because they do not carry a
negative value in the same way as demotives. Secondly, the gradual loss of interest in a
long-lasting, ongoing activity cannot be seen as a demotive because it does not result5
from a particular incident. Thirdly, sudden recognitions of the costs of an activity, for
example, realizing that how demanding it is to attend an evening course while working
during the day, cannot be regarded as demotives because these types of recognitions do
not have any specific external trigger but result from internal processes of deliberation.
Dornyei also makes the distinction between „demotivation‟and „amotivation‟. For
him, „amotivation‟ refers to a lack of motivation brought about by the realisation that
„there is no point…‟ or „it’s beyond my ken…‟ Thus, „amotivation‟ is inextricably related to
general outcome expectations that are deemed to be unrealistic, whereas „demotivation‟ is
related to specific external causes. Dornyei also pointed out that some demotives can lead
to amotivation (e.g. a series of horrendous classroom experiences can put paid to the
learner‟s self-efficacy), but with some other demotives, as soon as the detrimental external
influence ceases to exist, other positive motives may again surface (e.g. if it turns out that
someone who dissuaded the individual from doing something was not telling the truth.
Researchers have taken an interest in demotivation, as it is considered to be a frequent
phenomenon related to the teacher‟s interaction with the students. In L2 studies, in
particular, the interest in demotivation has been aroused by a different reason. The L2
domain is most often characterised by learning failure, in the sense that merely everyone
has failed in the study of at least one foreign language. So, language learning failure is
directly related to demotivation.
1.1.2. Factors demotivating foreign language learning
Much research has been conducted on language learning motivation but less on
the demotivating factors in learning L2. The studies by such authors as Gorham and
Christophel (1992), Chambers (1993), Keblawi (2005), Rebecca Oxford (1998), Sakai and
Kikuchi (2007), Ushioda (1998), Tran and Baldauf (2007) discussed in the following
illustrate that demotivation in learning a L2 is a matter of concern worldwide.
Therefore, much more information is needed on the nature of the phenomenon.
Gorham and Christophel (1992) tried to determine what factors were perceived
as demotives by college students taking introductory communication classes. Demotivators
were collected from students‟ responses to the open-ended question: “ What things
decrease your motivation to try hard to do your best in that class?” the research findings
revealed three main categories of demotives, i.e., context demotives (factors likely to be
regarded as antecedent to the teacher‟s influence), structure/format demotives (factors over
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which the teacher is likely to have some degree of influence, if not complete control), the
teacher behaviour (factors likely to be perceived as under the teacher‟s direct control.
Teacher-related factors, which consist of class structure or format-related demotives and
the demotives resulting from teacher behavior, accounted for 79% of all responses. In a
follow-up study to ascertain whether the perceived sources of demotivation could be
replicated, Christophel and Gorham (1995), using the same question to detect demotives
with another group of college students studying communication, obtained findings that
were consistent with those from the first study. However, in both studies, no attempt was
made to examine the cases of the students who might have already been demotivated
before entering the class or was it clear whether the responses were not real or hypothetical
sources of demotivation.
To examine the degree to which teachers‟ perceptions of what affects student
motivation were similar to those found in student reports, Gorham and Millette (1997)
conducted a further study based on Gorham‟s previous research in which teacher
participants were asked, with reference a specific class, to respond to the open-ended
question, “What do you perceive decreases students‟ motivation to try to do their best in
this class and to achieve your instructional goals?” The results indicated that teachers and
students agreed on a set of central factors that are relevant to demotivation. teachers were
more likely to attribute student demotivation to performance-related factors such as the
students‟ lack of success on graded work, the students‟ lack of prerequisite skills or
knowledge and the students‟ heavy workload. In contrast, students attributed more of their
demotivation to teacher behavior, in particular poor presentational skills, lack of
enthusiasm and organization of course material.
. In contrast to the findings of the Gorham and Millette‟s study (1997), Chambers
(1993) investigated demotivation in language learning in four schools in the UK. The
study was conducted on the school students and their teachers. Students placed most blame
on teachers and learning materials. While the teachers claimed that the students' motivation
caused by psychological, social and attitudinal reasons.
Keblawi (2005) conducted a study to explore the factors affecting negatively
learning English in Palestine high schools. The data revealed that English teachers were
referred to directly or indirectly-as demotivators- by almost half of the respondents.
Interestingly, the study revealed that about half of the respondents referred to aspects of7
English (grammar, vocabulary) as main demotivators. Furthermore, depending on the
results of a study conducted on secondary students in Budapest who were identified as
demotivated, Dornyei (2001) categorized nine demotivating factors including: the teacher -
personality, commitment, competence, teaching method; inadequate school facilities -
group is too big or not the right level; frequent change of teachers; reduced self-confidence
- experience of failure or lack of success; negative attitude towards the L2; compulsory
nature of L2 study; coursebook.
Rebecca Oxford (1998) carried out a content analysis of essays written by 250
American students (in high schools and universities) about their learning experiences over
a period of five years. In this analysis, four demotivating factors were extracted, they are:
The teacher’s personal relationship with the students, including hypercriticism,
belligerence, a lack of caring, and favouritism; the teacher’s attitude towards the course or
the material, including lack of enthusiasm, sloppy management and close-mindedness;
style conflicts between teachers and students, including multiple style conflicts, conflicts
about the amount of structure or detail, and conflicts about the degree of closure or
„seriousness‟ of the class; the nature of the classroom activities, including overload,
repetitiveness, and irrelevance.
Sakai and Kikuchi (2009) explored Japanese high school students‟ demotivation
by collecting data from 656 students through a 35-item questionnaire. The
questionnaire were designed to measure six constructs derived from previous studies:
teachers, characteristics of classes, experiences of failure, class environment, class
materials, and lack of interest. Five demotivational factors found were learning
contents and materials, teacher’s competence and teaching styles, inadequate school
facilities, lack of intrinsic motivation, and test scores. Contrary to most of the
previous studies presented so far, factors related to teacher were not found to have very
strong demotivating influence compared to learning contents and materials or test
scores which were found to be the two most dominant demotives among participants. In
addition, lack of intrinsic motivation was found to be as salient as a teacher‟s
competence and teaching styles which suggests that internal forces have to also be
taken into account when discussing demotivation. Inadequate school facilities were
not found as demotivating although it was mentioned by some participants.
Ushioda (1998) asked the participants to identify what they found to be
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demotivating in their L2-related learning experience. Her findings were not unlike the
conclusions arrived at in the previous studies, that is, the demotives were related to
negative aspects of the institutionalized learning context such as particular teaching
methods and learning tasks.
Reviewing above - discussed studies discussed above, Tran and Baldauf (2007)
conducted a case study project with Vietnamese students by using stimulated recall essays
from 100 students of their foreign language learning experiences. The results of the study
revealed that there are two groups of demotives: including internal attributions and
external attributions. The internal attributions includes students‟ attitudes towards English,
their experiences of failure or lack of success and the incidents related to their self- esteem,
meanwhile the external attributions contain teacher-related factors, the learning
environment and other external factors. The researchers have given a specific and
comparatively full description of the issue in Vietnamese condition.
Generally, most studies conducted in the field of motivation and demotivation
found out that the personality of the teacher, teaching methods, learning context in
addition to the learner's attitudes toward L2 could play a vital role in the students'
motivation or demotivation toward learning.
1.2 Theoretical background of listening comprehension
1.2.1 Definitions of listening comprehension
There are many different approaches to the definition of listening comprehension.
However, most researchers agree that all listening comprehension involves the use both
linguistics and non-linguistics knowledge. Linguistic knowledge includes phonology, lexis,
semantics and discourse structure as well as the ability to interact with the input in real
time (Buck, 2001:3). Meanwile non- linguistic is concerned with contextual knowledge
(Buck, 2001:2; Lynch, 1998: 3).
According to Buck, listening comprehension is a process whereby listeners extract
meaning based on their own knowledge and experience. He believes that since
comprehension takes place in the listener‟s mind, the setting or context for interpretation is
the cognitive environment of the listener.
Like Buck, Rost (2002:59) believes that listening comprehension is a process
whereby language is linked to previous stored notions and associations in real life. In other9
words, it is the understanding of what the language is referring to, based on one‟s past
experience or knowledge.
From the viewpoint of Shohamy and Inbar (1991:26), listening comprehension
entails an ability to receive and interprete input simultaneously because a listener cannot
replay what he or she has heard. A competent listener is therefore dependent on instant
comprehension as well as an ability to remember information. Unlike written text,
utterances are dependent on the context and are usually unedited. In accordance with the
ideas of Buck and Rost, Shohamy and Inbar also believe that listening comprehension
necessitates an interaction between the listener‟s background knowledge and the spoken
text.
Listening is described by Bejar, Douglas, Jamieson, Nissan and Turner (2000:2) as
“the process of receiving an acoustic signal which is then structures”. According to them,
the reception of the signal occurs in real-time but the structuring is dependent on cognitive
processes which involve linguistic, situational and background knowledge which have to
be synthesized in order to achieve meaning.
Brinley (1998:181) also defines listening as a multi-faceted and interactive process
“listeners use verbal and non-verbal cues to interprete messages.
1.2.2. The significance of listening comprehension
Listening plays a very important role in student‟s academic success. Research
shows that language learning depends on listening because it provides the aural input that
serves as the basis for language acquisition and enables learners to interact in spoken
communication.
It is undeniable that “listening is the first language mode that children acquire. It
provides the foundation for all aspects of language and cognitive development, and it plays
a life-long role in the process of communicating” (Guo, N. & Wills, R., 2006:3). A study
by Wilt (1950), found that people listen 45 % of the time they spend communicating, 30 %
of communication time was spent speaking, 16 % reading, and 9 % writing. That finding
confirmed what Rankin discovered in 1928, that people spent 70 % of their waking time
communicating and that three-fourths of this time was spent listening and speaking.
According to Bulletin (1952), listening is the fundamental language skill. It is the
medium through which people gain a large portion of their education, their information,
their understanding of the world and of human affairs, their ideals, sense of values, and
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their appreciation. In this day of mass communication, much of it oral, it is of vital
importance that students are taught to listen effectively and critically.
According to second language acquisition theory, language input is the most
essential condition of language acquisition. As an input skill, listening plays a crucial role
in students‟ language development. Krashen (1985) argues that people acquire language by
understanding the linguistic information they hear. Thus language acquisition is achieved
mainly through receiving understandable input and listening ability is the critical
component in achieving understandable language input. Given the importance of listening
in language learning and teaching, it is essential for language teachers to Giúp students
become effective listeners. In the communicative approach to language teaching, this
means modeling listening strategies and providing listening practice in authentic situations:
precisely those that learners are likely to encounter when they use the language outside the
classroom.
1.2.3. The process of listening comprehension
Listening comprehension is a complex psychological process of listeners‟
understanding language by sense of hearing. It is an interactive process of language
knowledge and psychological activities. However, this process is not simply decoding
the message; it also involves the combining of the decoding of the message process with
its reconstruction as meaning (Ma Lihua, 2002).
According to Underwood, there are three distinctive stages in the listening process.
At the first stage, the sounds go into a sensory store called the “echoic memory”, and are
organized into meaningful units according to the knowledge of the language the listener
has. The second stage is the processing of the information by the short – term memory.
This is a brief stage at which words or groups of words are checked and compare with the
information already held in the long-term memory and the meaning is extracted from them.
When the meaning has been grasped, the actual words are generally forgotten. Once the
listener has constructed a meaning from the utterance, he or she might transfer the
information to the long-term memory for later use. It can be seen that here Underwood
relates the aural process in terms of time and memory. The background knowledge of
listeners is also mentioned in the listening process.
In addition, the conception of bottom- up and top- down processes in
comprehension are also mentioned by such authors as Lynch (1988), Rubin (1994) and11
Rost (2002). According to them, listeners use top- down processes when they use context
and prior knowledge to build a conceptual framework for comprehension. Prior-knowledge
includes topic of the listening material, context of the listening material, culture of the
listening material, text type of the listening material. Whereas bottom- up processes are
used when they construct meaning by accretion from phoneme-level to discourse- level
features. In the past, people used to prefer top- down to bottom- up processes because they
thought that the using of top- down processes would Giúp English learners listen more
effectively. Nowadays, both processes are equally appreciated and should be applied
properly in a specific context and for certain purpose of listening. It is important for both
teachers and students to recognize the existence of these two types of processing listening
input as they both contribute to the development of listening skills.
1.2.4. Potential problems in learning listening comprehension
It cannot be denied that, listening is regarded as the most difficult among the four
skills for many second language learners. The problems they may have in learning
listening are various.
From the points of view of Underwood (1989), there are seven problems which
learners often encounter in learning listening. First, listeners cannot control the speed at
which speakers speak. Another problem is that listeners cannot always have words
repeated. Next, the listeners have a limited vocabulary, the speakers may use words that
the listener doesn‟t know. Fourth, listeners may fail to recognize the signals indicating that
the speaker is moving from one point to another, giving an example or repeating a point.
Fifth, listeners may lack contextual knowledge because sharing mutual knowledge and
common contexts makes communication easier. Sixth, it can be difficult for listeners to
concentrate in a foreign language, concentration is easier when the students find the topic
of listening interesting. Finally, students may have established learning habbits such as a
wish to understand every word.
Meanwhile, Yagang (1984) attributes the difficulties of listening comprehension to
four sources: the messages, the speaker, the listener and the physical setting. Higgi (1995)
studies Omani students‟ problems in listening comprehension and finds the factors which
hinder or facilitating listening are speech rate, vocabulary and pronunciation. Rubin (1994)
identified five factors that affect listening comprehension such as text characteristics,
interlocutor characteristics, task characteristics, listener characteristics and process
Ket-noi.com kho tai lieu mien phi Ket-noi.com kho tai lieu mien phi12
characteristics. Besides, he also identifies some problems which listeners often face
including the speed of the speaker and the language he uses; students‟ unfamiliarity with
the sounds, stress, intonation and rhythm of natural spoken English; different varieties or
accents; false starts, hesitation, repetitions and incomplete sentences. In addition, he also
points out that boredom, fatigue or distraction outside the classroom may affect the
concentration of the listeners.13
CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY
This chapter deals with the context of the study, subjects and methods of the study
as well as the analysis of data collected.
2.1. The setting of the study
2.1.1. The school
The study was conducted at CBUSSG which is located in the center of Cao Bang
town, a mountainous province of Vietnam. It is also the only specialized school in Cao
Bang province. The school was originally founded in 1974 with only one class specializing
in Maths. After many years of establishment and development, today, it has been widened
with 18 classes specializing in different subjects such as Maths, Physics, Chemistry,
Biology, Literature and English. The main duty of the school is to train and foster talents
for the country in general and the province in particular. Therefore, the teachers and
students are carefully selected from schools in the province and there is always competitive
learning environment, which creates real opportunities for students to develop their full
ability.
The school has 18 classes with a number of students ranging from 30 to 36 for each.
This class size seems favorable for students to study English comparing with that in other
schools in the province. However, the school is equipped with only one language
laboratory, which is not good enough because teachers and students sometimes get troubles
when using it. So students often practise listening to English at their classroom with a
cassette player.
2.1.2. The teachers and the students
As in every high school, English is taught here as a compulsory subject by 7
teachers aged from 26 to 48. Two of them graduated from the English Department of
College of Foreign Languages, Vietnam National University, Hanoi four others were
from Thai Nguyen University of Education and one is taking MA course. Most of them
are so young and have at least 5 years of teaching experiences, some of them have had
opportunities to attend the national or provincial textbook introduction workshops or
training programmes to get the ideas about the textbook and new teaching methodology.
However, they do not have chances to contact with native speakers or specialists who can
give them precious Giúp and advice
interested in their listening lessons. In addition, teachers need to select a wide range
of materials to increase listening content besides using textbooks. Students need
to listen to different levels of English in order to be exposed to natural, lively, rich
language, such as listening to English songs, seeing films with English text. In these
ways, it is possible to raise students‟ enthusiasm, cultivate their listening interests,
and achieve the goals of learning English.
(3) Give students clear instructions and corrective feedback
Giving feedback is necessary for the students because they are informed how well
or badly they have performed. By providing corrective feedback, the teacher can help
students evaluate their success and progress. As discussed above, the majority of students
in the interview found it difficult to understand and follow the listening text due to their
lack of pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar structures. Thus, teachers should
encourage students to practise pronouncing words more and try to memorize as many
words as possible. Another thing is that, teachers should guide students how to do with
different kids of tasks. One of the findings shows that students feel demotivated with
activities in the classroom because they did not know how to do with the listening without
clear instructions from their teachers.
(4) Create a pleasant and relaxing atmosphere in the classroom
As suggested by the respondents, teachers should create a relaxing atmostphere
within the classroom while taking into account students‟ demotivation. In order to achieve
this, it is necessary for teachers to establish relationships of mutual trust and respect with
the students. This involves finding opportunities to talk with them on a personal level and
letting them know that teachers have thought about them and that their individual effort is
recognized. Besides, teachers ought to develop positive personality types such as patience
or sense of humour to make students more comfortable. In addition, teachers can create
relaxing atmostphere by using some techniques such as using games, visual aids,
exploiting songs and music in listening lessons.
(5) Increase students’ self – confidence
Self-confidence is generally seen as a key factor in learning a language but the
important question is how to maintain and increase students‟ self-confidence and in a
language classroom. Teachers should encourage students to set realistic goals for
Ket-noi.com kho tai lieu mien phi Ket-noi.com kho tai lieu mien phi32
themselves and improve their listening English. If their language proficiency is improved,
they are likely to overcome the difficulties such as speech rate, native speakers‟
pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar structures.
(6) Raise students’ awareness of the importance of learning listening English
Students‟ awareness of the importance of English was the most frequent motive
that helped them to overcome demotivation and recover their interest in learning.
Nevertheless, an awareness of the importance of English alone was not enough to help
students to overcome demotivation absolutely. Students were more likely to completely
overcome demotivation if their awareness of the importance of English triggered their
self-determination to learn English, making them more autonomous and independent of
affective factors. In this respect, teachers need to support this effective internal strategy in
order to Giúp students set up and maintain their self-determination by making clear
the practical benefits of learning English.
(7) Make better use of advanced teaching facilities and learning conditions
In order to utilize technology effectively in teaching English , schools should be
equipped with adequate numbers of technological devices (language labs,
projectors…etc.) . Additionally, teachers should be trained intensively on utilizing
technology in teaching English. It should be noted that teachers cannot be expected
to learn how to use educational technology in their teaching after a one-time
workshop. Teachers need in-depth, sustained assistance not only in the use of the
technology but in their efforts to integrate technology into the curriculum (Kanaya
& Light, 2005)
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Tags: Teacher attitude and student demotivation, Wyse (2001) lack of grammatical knowledge has been presented as the main cause of poor writing., Now reflect on the textbooks you are currently using in your teaching. In your opinion, how far have these textbooks helped the students achieve these curriculum aims above? Give some examples for your evaluation. Write your answers and send it to the trainer via this website.
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