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THE TOPIC: “THE USE OF PICTURES TO IMPROVE MY GRADE 10 STUDENTS’ LISTENING COMPREHENSION” I THE PROBLEM Background Located in the centre of Bac Giang City, Bac Giang province – about 70 km from Hanoi, Ngo Si Lien High School is the school where I have been teaching for years The school was founded in 1946 when the Vietnam War was at the highest point Experiencing a lot of difficulties, it has always achieved significant success because the school has a staff of 92 teachers and servicemen who are very well-qualified and committed in the job The school is equipped with very good facilities such as 23-computer rooms for teaching IT, a multifunction gym and a large library with a great variety of books, and it has 36 classes with about 1600 students some of whom are specialized in major classes The school is a good reputation and a reliable address for parents and children in the area because of the achievement it obtains every year 100% of the students pass the annual national final exam and around 60-70% of them go to universities or colleges with very high scores Moreover, the school is always in the top-3 schools in the province for its good results in provincial contests for excellent students Nowadays, English undoubtedly plays an important role in Vietnamese society, and everyone seems to be eager to master English However, the truth is so surprising Most of the students are reluctant to study English because it is a compulsory subject in school Therefore, they are afraid of learning English Only few of the students who are in the major classes find it necessary and interesting to master English, but the thing they are interested in is grammar only As a result, they are rather weak at the skills, especially listening -1- Rationale I have been teaching at high school in for 12 years and of course I always try my best to teach English effectively However, I have encountered a lot of difficulties due to the level of the students, and we haven’t found any effective solution yet, which makes me think a lot I’m now in charge of teaching English in grade 10 During my teaching time, I have found that my students have many difficulties in listening as I have mentioned above No matter how effective listening activities themselves can be, teachers and students are still facing obstacles in the lesson Because: Compared to Reading comprehension, Listening comprehension is considered more difficult for learners in foreign language setting (Gramham 2006) because there are more factors such as the rate of speech, speaker’s accent or the cultural content of the talk that listeners can’t control According to the syllabus of English subject, there are only three English periods per week for each grade; students don’t have enough time to practice listening There are 16 Units in the textbook of each grade and each Unit is divided into periods but there is only one Listening period for every Unit The condition for learning English and communicating with native speakers is not good enough and we have to make teaching aids for listening lesson ourselves That’s also a big problem because not all teaching aids we made are effective tools Besides above objective reasons, students themselves are not interested in listening In other words, I can say that most of my students are afraid of listening because there is no doubt that the speed of getting information is faster through listening than reading Also, the biggest problem facing my students is that their vocabularies are too poor, and their pronunciation is not standardized Therefore, my students are not able to listen to the tapes well As a result, they are gradually bored with listening lessons The problem to be solved now is crucial to improve students’ listening -2- Therefore, I’m much concerned about visual aids that can help improve my grade 10 students’ listening comprehension, especially pictures may be the most effective aid and available everywhere Research Questions A To what extent does the use of pictures help improve my grade 10 students’ listening comprehension? B How the students feel about the use of pictures in improving students’ listening comprehension? Definition of the terms 4.1 Pictures Picture - A visual representation or image painted, drawn, photographed, or otherwise rendered on a flat surface (The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language) 4.2 Comprehension As defined in The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, comprehension is the act or fact of grasping the meaning, nature, or importance of; understanding In my opinion, comprehension is the understanding of what is being communicated 4.3 Listening comprehension (LC) About the definition of LC, there are some different ideals, for example, “Listening comprehension is an active and conscious process in which the listener constructs meaning by using cues from contextual information and existing knowledge, while relying upon multiple strategic resources to fulfill the task requirement” (O’Malley, J M & Chamot, A U., 1989, p 420) -3- So, I think the use of pictures to improve my grade 10 students’ listening comprehension is to improve the students’ ability to follow, process, and understand spoken language with the help of pictures Literature review It is said that pictures play an important role in language teaching Listening skill can be taught with the help of pictures because they are an effective resource There have been a lot of research and studies done by scholars and researchers on the use of pictures to help improve students’ listening comprehension According to Mueller, (1980), who studied the effect of visuals on the listening process, the use of visuals providing contextual cues to a listening passage is effective in enhancing learner comprehension of it The descriptions can simply be series of different pictures; students have to identify which picture is being talked about, or rearrange some disorder pictures in a correct order as they listen Similar exercises can be done with odd pictures cut out of color magazines A number of such pictures are stuck upon the board and the teacher improvises a story that somehow brings some of them in The teacher can help students by indicating which picture he/she is referring to as he/she can leave them to work out the sequence for themselves In his article, Alex Case, (2009), stated that students' listening comprehension can be developed with the help of pictures in various ways He introduced 100 activities that can be designed to improve the students' listening comprehension in a listening class Before listening to the tape, the teacher provides his/her students with a picture and ask them write as many sentences as they can to describe the things in the picture and then listen to tape to see how many of the sentences they hear are similar to one of the sentences they wrote, for example In a journal on using pictures in listening class, Zhang, (2000), said that the advantage of using pictures is that it is easy to prepare, easy to organize, interesting, meaningful and authentic Images of reality in the unnatural world of the language classroom can be brought by pictures Moreover, the help of pictures is very useful in developing students' listening comprehension, particularly “directed listening” They both provide a general background and context and help to -4- guide the students' listening This idea can be described as selecting the correct pictures from the provided ones after listening to the tapes, or listen to the description of maps or diagrams and students have to draw the pictures they hear It can be seen that the role of the use of pictures in improving students’ listening skill is quite effective Therefore, I would like to implement the strategies in my classroom II METHODOLOGY Research design This table below illustrates the research design adapted in this study RESEARCH QUESTIONS RESEARCH SUBJECTS INSTRUMENTS To what extent does the use of TOOLS OF ANALYSIS - Teacher’s lesson - Grade 10 (class - Frequency count pictures help improve students’ plans 10 A1) - Percentage listening comprehension? - pre-test - Age 16 - Description in field - post- tests -English - Student Intermediate the use of pictures in improving questionnaire -Ngo listening comprehension? - Teacher’s diary High School How the students feel about ability: notes Si Lien - Sample size: 41 -5- Independent and Dependent Variables The use of pictures Students’ listening comprehension Independent definition Independent definition Teacher uses pictures (drawings, paintings, photos, cartoons ) to improve listening comprehension to students -6- Students’ improvement in listening comprehension This is measured by a pre-test and post-tests Constant Variables Data collection procedures The same This flow chart describes my data collection procedures Students Teacher Topics Pre-Intermediate grade 10 students Tests Test duration Amount of time Pre-test Use of pictures Post-test Use of pictures Post-test Compare the results of the Pre-test and Post-tests Students’ questionnaire -7- 3.1 Selection of the subjects: The study is carried out to see whether the use of pictures helps to improve my grade 10 students’ listening comprehension by comparing the students' progress before and after using pictures in listening classes I want my data to be accurate and reliable, so the subjects I decide to select are my own grade 10 students in class 10A1 with the total number of 41 at Ngo Si Lien high school They are students in grade 10 – the beginning of the 3-year vital education for them before going to universities or colleges and their level is pre-intermediate, so their listening ability is quite limited Therefore, I would like to help them improve their listening ability by the use of pictures so that they will be able to listen to English really well in the upper level of education 3.2 Lesson plans: Because my selected subjects are my own grade 10 students, I will select some listening lessons to design the lesson plans so that the use of pictures can be easily applied basing on the “TIENG ANH 10” published by MOET I want to illustrate this idea by some following examples For re-arranging activity: I take this activity from: - Unit - TA 10 - Unit – TA 10 A DAY IN THE LIFE OF AN EXCURSION - First, I ask my students to work in groups to study the given pictures (drawings) carefully and then try to guess the correct order that they think it can be (Note: It’s not important whether their predictions are correct or not) - Then, I call some groups to give out their ideas, but I have not corrected them yet Just to see if there is any difference among them - Now, I provide the students with the listening tape and ask them to number the pictures in the order they are described in the listening text as they listen to the tape - Finally, I will give out the correct order -8- For picking out items: There are two units in the course book for me to apply this activity Unit – TA 10: TECHNOLOGY - First, I will provide my students with a picture (photos) of a full set of computer - Second, I give them a situation and ask them to work in groups to get familiar with the parts of the computer set Situation: - An old man is talking about his experience of learning how to use a computer Now, listen to him about using his new computer and try to pick out the parts of the computer set that have just been mentioned in the listening text - After listening to the man, discuss in groups and listen to the tape again to give out the final answer Unit 13 – TA 10 FILMS AND CINEMA Reason: Because in this unit, the listening tape is in the form of a dialogue, it will be rather difficult for students to distinguish who is saying at times As a result, it seems to be impossible that students can complete Task Therefore, I decide to design pictures describing different activities, only of which are mentioned in Task I think that with the help of the pictures, students can follow the listening and focus on the needed information more easily and effectively Procedure: - First, I show the pictures on the board and ask the students to study the carefully to insure that they understand the content of the - Second, I play the tape once and try to pick out the picture containing the example in Task so that students will know how and what to - Now is the time for me to ask my students to listen and find out what Huong and Lan are going to together - After listening to the tape, I ask the students to work in groups, discuss and listen to the tape again to give out the final answer -9- For spotting the differences in pictures (opposite spotting the similarity): The activity is chosen from Unit – TA 10 THE STORY OF MY VILLAGE - First, I ask my students to look at the provided pictures (paintings) about the differences between the past and present of a village and then discuss the differences described in the pictures in groups - Then, List down as many differences as possible - Next, listen to the tape twice and spot out the differences in the two pictures that are just listed in the listening text I personally think that these procedures will help me observe the students’ progress 3.3 The tests: Three tests will be designed for the students: one pre-test (without the use of pictures) and two post ones (with the use of pictures) The tests remain the same before and after the use of pictures The tests are designed basing on the listening sub-skill: Identify the main facts and details, relate cause and effect, identify sequence of events, predicting outcomes, and inferring meaning from the contextual clues First of all, the pre-test is given to the students without the help of pictures as a placement test After the test, the result is recorded in the teacher’s diary After a month of teaching with the use of pictures (4 lessons), I will deliver the first post test – Achievement test - to the students Then, the first comparison is made basing on the result of the first post test Again, after another month, the students’ listening ability will be tested by the second post test – Achievement test When I have finished marking the second post test, the final comparison must be created to show if the use of pictures helps improve my students’ listening comprehension - 10 - 3.4 Student questionnaires: I think this method, typically provide the access to a reality to investigate my research questions because using questionnaires with selected questions given to students is the best way to have their answers about their feeling about the use of pictures, about the tasks that I often give them or ask them to I will collect data through this method for week The number of closed questions and opened-ended questions written in handouts will be given to my 41 selected grade 10 students The questions should be focus on their feeling about the use of pictures 3.5 Teacher's diaries: The purpose of teacher’s diary is to summarize the situation and any changes of the class during the time of doing action research in order that after finishing the action research I can find out what achievement can be made and what needs to be done more about the situation by comparing the result of the three tests Finally, I can have more effective strategies to make my teaching of listening better and better Data analysis: As I have mentioned in Research design, I decide to use students’ questionnaires which is useful because it can be used to present information in a way that allow me to understand the information in a table form and teacher’s diary as research instruments to collect data for my action research Hence, I will start analyzing the obtained raw data by the use of frequency, percentage and critical discourse analysis of teacher’s diary after collecting the data When the data have already been analyzed, I can conclude about the use of pictures in helping my grade 10 students improve their listening comprehension - 11 - REFERENCES 1) Action Research Materials – Dr Hannah Pillay and Dr Tan Su Hwi – Language specialists at SEAMEO Relc Singapore 2) Listening Materials – Dr Jennifer Tan - Language specialist at SEAMEO Relc Singapore 3) Language Testing Materials – Dr Chan Yue Weng - Language specialist at SEAMEO Relc Singapore 4) The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company, 2009 5) Gramham, S 2006 “Listening Comprehension : The learner’s Perspective.” System 34: 165-82 6) O’Malley, J M & Chamot, A U., 1989 Listening Comprehension Strategies in Second Language Acquisition Applied Linguistics, 10 (4): 418-437 7) Alex Case, (2009) “100 Ways to Improve your TOEIC Listening”- Articles UsingEnglish_com.mht 8) GA Mueller (1980) “Visual contextual cuea and Listening comprehension: An experiment ”, The Modern Language Journal 64 335- 40 9) Zhang, J (2000) “Warm-up Exercises in Listening Classes” The Internet TESL Journal - 12 - Appendixes Questionnaire Do you like listening comprehension with the use of pictures? Why? Why not? To what extent does the use of pictures help you improve your listening comprehension? Explain Do you think that when listening with the use of pictures, you become more active and confident? Give your example Does the use of pictures help you and your friends become more co-operative? Why? Why not? How you feel about the use of pictures in helping you improve your listening comprehension? -The end - - 13 -