VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES PHẠM THỊ HẢI HÀ USING INTERACTIVE PROCESS TO IMPROVE FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS’ LISTENING SKILLS AT HANOI COLLEGE OF EDUCATION SỬ DỤNG TIẾN TRÌNH TƯƠNG TÁC ĐỂ PHÁT TRIỂN KỸ NĂNG NGHE CỦA SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ NHẤT TRƯỜNG CAO ĐẲNG SƯ PHẠM HÀ NỘI 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 PHẠM THỊ HẢI HÀ USING INTERACTIVE PROCESS TO IMPROVE FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS’ LISTENING SKILLS AT HANOI COLLEGE OF EDUCATION SỬ DỤNG TIẾN TRÌNH TƯƠNG TÁC ĐỂ PHÁT TRIỂN KỸ NĂNG NGHE CỦA SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ NHẤT TRƯỜNG CAO ĐẲNG SƯ PHẠM HÀ NỘI M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111 Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. PhD. Trần Xuân Điệp HANOI - 2014 i DECLARATION I hereby certify that the minor thesis entitled: “Using Interactive Process to Improve First-Year Students’ Listening Skills at Hanoi College of Education”, which is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in English Language Teaching Methodology at Faculty of Post-Graduate Studies, Hanoi University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, is the result of my own work. I have provided fully documented references to the work of others. The material in this thesis has not been submitted for any other university or institution wholly and partially. Hanoi, 2014 Phạm Thị Hải Hà ii ACKNOWLEDGTMENTS This research paper would not have been completed without the help of people to whom I would like to express my deep gratitude. First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Assoc. Prof. Dr. Tran Xuan Diep, my supervisor, for his wholehearted support, continuous motivation and precious guidance which were decisive factors to the completion of the thesis. I would like to extend my special thanks to all the research participants. Without their valuable opinions and ideas in the questionnaires, the study would not have been accomplished. Last but not least, I owe my parents their continuous support. Their patience and love have helped me go beyond what sometimes looks like an insurmountable task. iii ABSTRACT This study was intended to investigate the impact of interactive process on first-year students’ listening skills at Hanoi College of Education. More specifically, the researcher strived to (1) investigate problems related to interactive process the students may have while learning listening, and (2) examine the effects of using interactive process in teaching listening to the first- year students. To achieve the above mentioned objectives, an action research was conducted with the participation of 60 first-year students from two classes at Hanoi College of Education. The study included: (1) a pre-test and a questionnaire, (2) the instruction of interactive process, (3) a post-test and a questionnaire, (4) and students’ diaries. Later, all the data were collected and analysed. The main findings of the research were as follows: (1) Such problems as difficulties in new vocabulary and structures, background knowledge of the topics, the unfamiliarity of topics, the inability to catch up with what speakers said, the students’ limited ability of pronunciation as well as listening to stress and intonation were what caused the students troubles in listening. (2) After interactive process had been applied, the students’ scores in the post-test were higher than in the pre-test. Overall, the instruction of interactive process improved their listening skills. iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS, L2: Second language EFL: English as a foreign language v TABLES AND FIGURES Table 1: Procedures of the Study 26 Table 2: Results of Question 1 in the Questionnaire after the Pre-test 27 Table 3: Results of Question 2 in the Questionnaire after the Pre-test 27 Table 4: Results of Question 3 in the Questionnaire after the Pre-test 27 Table 5: Results of Question 4 in the Questionnaire after the Pre-test 28 Table 6: Results of Question 5 in the Questionnaire after the Pre-test 28 Table 7: Results of Question 6 in the Questionnaire after the Pre-test 29 Table 08: Results of Question 7 in the Questionnaire after the Pre-test 30 Table 9: Results of Question 8 in the Questionnaire after the Pre-test 30 Table 10: Results of Question 9 in the Questionnaire after the Pre-test 30 Table 11: Results of Question 10 in the Questionnaire after the Pre-test 31 Table 12: Results of Question 11 in the Questionnaire after the Pre-test 31 Table 13: Results of Question 12 in the Questionnaire after the Pre-test 31 Table 14: Results of Question 13 in the Questionnaire after the Pre-test 32 Table 15: Results of Question 14 in the Questionnaire after the Pre-test 32 Table 16: Results of Question 15 in the Questionnaire after the Pre-test 33 Table 17: Paired Samples Statistics 35 Table 18: Paired Samples Correlations 35 Table 19: Paired Samples Test 36 Table 20: Students’ Evaluation of the Learning Session 38 Figures Figure 1: Action Research Model 21 Figure 2: Comparison of Students’ Performance in the Pre-test and Post-test . 34 Figure 3: Subjects’ Satisfaction with the Course 36 vi TABLE OF CONTENTS PART A. INTRODUCTION 1 1.1. Rationale 1 1.2. Aims of the Study 2 1.3. Objectives of the Research 2 1.4. Research Questions 2 1.5. Scope of the Study 3 1.6. Significance of the Study 3 1.7. Methodology 3 1.7.1. Approach 3 1.7.2. Sample 3 1.7.3. Instrumentation 4 PART B. DEVELOPMENT 6 CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 6 1.1. Theoretical Background 6 1.1.1. Definitions of Listening 6 1.1.2. Listening Comprehension 7 1.1.2.1. Characteristics of Spoken Discourse 7 1.1.2.2. Bottom-up Processing and Teaching Bottom-up Processing 8 1.1.2.3. Top-down Processing and Teaching Top-down Processing 11 1.1.2.4. Interactive Processing 13 1.1.2.4.1. A Combination of Bottom-up and Top-down Processing 13 1.1.2.4.2. Teaching Interactive Processing 15 1.1.2.5. Listening Strategies 17 1.2. Review of Previous Studies Related to the Research Area of the Thesis 18 vii 1.3. Summary 21 CHAPTER 2: METHODS 22 2.1. Research Setting 22 2.2. Subjects 22 2.3. Research types 23 2.4. Research Approaches 23 2.5. Data Collection Instruments 25 2.5.1. Pre-test and Post-test 25 2.5.2. Questionnaires 26 2.5.3. Diaries 26 2.6. Intervention: Instruction of Interactive Process in Class 27 2.6.1. Listening Materials 27 2.6.2. The Instruction in Interactive Process 27 2.7. Data Collection Procedures 28 2.8. Data Analysis 30 2.9. Summary 31 CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 32 3.1. Preliminary Investigation 32 3.1.1. Findings 32 3.1.2. Discussion 34 3.2. Evaluation 34 3.2.1. Research Question 1 34 3.2.1.1. Results from Questionnaire 1 34 3.2.1.2. Discussion 39 3.2.2. Research Question 2 40 3.2.2.1. Results from the Pre-test and Post-test 40 3.2.2.2. Results from Questionnaire after the Post-test 42 viii 3.2.2.3. Results from Diaries 45 3.2.2.4. Discussion 47 3.3. Summary 48 PART C. CONCLUSION 49 4.1 Recapitulation 49 4.2 Limitations of the Study 50 4.3. Suggestions for Further Studies 51 APPENDIX …………………………………………………………………I [...]... understanding of how to process speech That led to two kinds of processes involved in understanding spoken discourse: bottom-up and top-down processing 1.1.2.2 Bottom-up Processing and Teaching Bottom-up Processing  Bottom-up processing One of the views of listening dominating language pedagogy since the early 1980s was bottom-up processing Bottom-up process was proposed by Rumelhart and Ortony (1977)... in interactive process Then, recommendations on how to use interactive process to improve students’ listening abilities are given 1.3 Objectives of the Research The specific objectives of the research are as follows: - To investigate problems related to interactive process the students may have while learning listening - To examine and study the effects of using interactive process in teaching listening. .. together in streams of speech - Using features of stress, intonation and prominence to help identify important information 10 - Recognising cognates 1.1.2.3 Listening for specific details Recognising word-order patterns Top-down Processing and Teaching Top-down Processing  Top-down processing Top-down processing was another alternative to teach listening instead of bottom-up processing According to. .. ability  Teaching top-down processing Ur (1985) highlighted the following steps for using top-down process to teach listening: - Listening to part of a conversation and inferring the topic - Looking at the pictures, then listening to conversations about the pictures and matching them to the pictures - Listening to conversations and identifying the settings - Reading a list of key points to be covered in... disadvantages of bottom-up processing and top-down processing to augment the comprehension It was more generally accepted that both top-down and bottom-up listening processing should be combined to enhance listening comprehension 1.1.2.4.2 Teaching Interactive Processing 15 The degree to which listeners used the one process or the other would depend on their knowledge of the language, the familiarity with the topics... plenty of works conducted related to using the integration of bottom-up and top-down processing Several conclusions could be reached from these studies First, although bottom-up and top-down processing positively had different influences on students’ listening, they should be combined to get better results in teaching and learning Second, realizing the benefits of using both bottom-up and top-down processing... interactive process to improve the first-year students’ listening skills at Hanoi College of Education The research was restricted to the first-year Englishmajored students from two classes K39A, and K39B at Hanoi College of Education 1.6 Significance of the Study The study is expected to contribute to the development of teaching and learning listening skills It aims at helping students improve their listening. .. case one process did not work effectively, the other would assist listeners in order to have meaningful listening comprehension From the results of such previous studies above, it was essential to have an appropriate processing to teach and learn listening Consequently, interactive processing, an inclusion of the bottom-up and top-down processing, came into being The processing was expected to be a... the ability to apply a variety of strategies and interactive processes to make meaning, and the ability to respond to what was said in a variety of ways, depending on the purpose of the communication Listening involved listening for thoughts, feelings, and intentions To sum up, it was widely admitted that listening comprehension was not merely the process of a unidirectional receiving of audible symbols,... last step was to focus on conversation themes Rubin (1994) appreciated that listeners might emphasize the gist of the whole listening instead of the meaning of individual words Picture details and global processing details might be included 1.1.2.4 Interactive Processing 1.1.2.4.1 A Combination of Bottom-up and Top-down Processing  The need for an inclusion of the bottom-up and top-down processing During . students’ listening skills at Hanoi College of Education are improved by receiving instruction in interactive process. Then, recommendations on how to use interactive process to improve students’. Bottom-up Processing and Teaching Bottom-up Processing  Bottom-up processing One of the views of listening dominating language pedagogy since the early 1980s was bottom-up processing. Bottom-up. related to interactive process the students may have while learning listening, and (2) examine the effects of using interactive process in teaching listening to the first- year students. To achieve