Techniques for improving listening skills of gifted students of Foreign Language Specializing School, College of Foreign Languages, Hanoi National University

istening and from which I can get students’ opinion about the effectiveness of my suggested techniques for teaching and studying listening skill. All of the students doing the survey have been learning English for 5 or 6 years, they are very good at grammar and doing exercises in writing, but it was only when they became the students of this school that they started to be taught listening skill. However, the survey will surely be reliable as the students are well-aware of their mission, and have enough knowledge of English to answer the questions given. 2.6.1.2. Instruments for data collection To have a good understanding of the issues under discussion, it is essential to refer to an important source of data collection associated with the literature review. All the questions in the survey were designed with a hope that the researcher can get the students’ opinion about listening material they are using, the teachers they are contacting with, and the methods of teaching listening they are adapting to. These questions are close to the techniques that can be worked out to improve the current teaching and learning listening skill at FLSS by means of literature comparison and by cross-checking with information obtained from the responded questionnaire. 2.6.2. Findings and discussion 2.6.2.1. Students’ attitude towards listening skill ( Question 1, 2 & 3 ) Option Question a b c d 1 82% 10% 2% 6% 2 70% 20% 0% 10% 3 25% 55% 12% 8% Table 1 As shown in the above table, most of the students of FLSS learn English in order to pass the exams (82%), only 10% of the students learn English with an aim of communicating, 2% for entertaining and 6% for studying abroad. As for the students attitude towards listening skill, a large number (70%) think that listening skill is the most difficult skill, no students consider listening as difficult as speaking , reading and writing ,a small number of them (10%) find it easy to learning listening, maybe these students used to live in the English speaking countries with their parents when they were little or perhaps they have already attended courses of learning listening Another observation from the table above is that most students see the importance and necessity of learning listening , 25% (very important), 55% (rather). They realize that it is necessary to learn listening for not only listening to the teachers’ explanation, for communicating with teachers and classmates , but also for their long term purposes : successfully communicating in English. It can be concluded that the students of FLSS are interested in learning listening skill, they would like to get some listening improvement and they have good attitudes to listening skill. 2.6.2.2. Students’ attitude towards class- listening practice ( Question 4, 5 & 6) Option Question a b c d e f g h 4 10% 20% 40% 12% 6% 4% 8% 0% 5 20% 8% 22% 12% 16% 20% 2% 6 85% 15% 0% 0% Table 2 From table two we can see that the teachers of English of FLSS have been using various types of listening texts, such as : stories (10%), conversations (20%), songs/poems(40%), descriptions (12%), news(6%), instructions(4%) and announcements(8%). It is true that apart from using the two listening books of the school, the teachers have also used listening lessons from other books which they feel suitable to their students. In some extend , it is a good way to create the students’ motivation and it is certain that the students will feel excited to listen to different topics. Table two also indicates that the students have had a lot of opportunities to cope with different kinds of listening activities in the class-room and their types of listening activities are various, the most popular forms are : true/ false (20%), answering questions (22%), identifying and correcting mistakes (20%), the smaller numbers are : following interactions (8%), gap-filling(12%), chart/form completion (16%). Clearly that the teachers at FLSS are well-aware of the importance of choosing different types of listening activities in order to make the listening lessons less boring and encourage the students to listen effectively. The data in question 6 about the times per week which the students have listening lessons at school show that most of the teachers have obeyed the school curriculum (two periods a week or once per week). The figures in table two are once a week (85%), twice a week (15%). In conclusion, the teachers and students at FLSS are willing to spend their time to improve their method of teaching and learning listening skills. They take advantages of opportunities to practise listening in class. 2.6.2.3. Students’ attitude towards home-listening practice (Question 7, 8 & 9) Option Question a b c d 7 12% 16% 18% 54% 8 42% 10% 12% 36% 9 75% 25% 0% 22% 38% 26% 14% Table 3 With the question about the time the students spend listening English at home, the rest rarely listen to English at home, the biggest number (54%) and the number of students who listen to English every-day, 2-3 times a day, once a week is nearly similar , (12%), (16%), (18%). Being asked about the question : “At home, what do you often do if you do not clearly understand the text you are listening?”, 42% of the students listen to the text once more, 10% listen sentence by sentence, the students who listen again until they understand the text are 12%, it is a big surprise that many students (36%) see the tape-script when there is something that they do not clearly understand. To compare the difficulty between record-listening and authentic listening, most of the students find it more difficult to listen to the records ( 75%) than authentic language (25%). It can be calculated from table 3 about the reason for this , the majority of the students (38%) give the reason that they can not see the face and the lip movement of the speakers and 26 % of the students have difficulty in concentrating on a listening session. 22% of them say that they can not ask the speaker to repeat what they do not catch and The others (14%) try to understand every word they hear. It can be drawn from the data above that a lot of students at FLSS are not aware of the self-study of listening at home. Only a few of them spend some time listening to it every-day, most of them have no habit of self-listening practice .Obviously, a lot of students do not have right methods to improve their listening skill , they are not able to concentrate on the process of listening , many students seem to approach listening as task primarily requiring comprehension on a word-by-word basis. The teachers ,therefore ,should give the students some guidance of practising listening at home . 2.6.2.4. Students’ attitude towards their teachers creating listening interest and motivation (Question 10, 11) Option Question a b c d 10 10% 30% 52% 8% 11 6% 32% 52% 10% Table 4 In table 4 it can be realized that most of the teachers usually create interest for their listening lessons by providing some new words and structures (52% students agree that). The smaller number (30%) say their teachers often present some information by giving guiding questions to help them think about the texts before they go ahead. Not a large number (8%) think that their teacher give them some suggestions for doing the tasks and just a few students ( 10%) suppose their teachers attempt to help their students understand the purpose of the listening text. Perhaps the teachers think that new words and structures usually remain the obstacles to their students. However, when the students are asked about their interest in the way their teachers motivate them before, while and after listening lessons, there are only 6% students say they are much interested and 32% rather interested in comparison with 52% say just little and 10% not at all. The figures show that most of the teachers try to motivate their students every listening lesson , they realize the importance of motivation for their students, but the figure shows that the ways the teachers motivate the students seem not to be effective. It can be inferred that maybe the teachers apply the traditional way of teaching listening by providing any new words and structures. This is not able to activate the students to guess the words meaning or to predict the content of the listening texts, as a result ,the students become very passive. Thus, there must be certain changes in the way the teachers create listening interest for their students. 2.6.2.5. Factors that cause difficulties in learning listening (Question 12) Option Question a b c d e f g h 12 0% 10% 4% 38% 20% 26% 0% 2% Table 5 According to the figure in table 5 the most difficult thing facing most of the students is the speaking speed of the speaker (38%). Limited vocabulary and structures cause difficulty for 26% of the students. The following is that they have problem in understanding the accent. There are only a few students (10%, 4%, 2%) saying that the factors of large classes, unfamiliar topics and the context cause them fewer difficulties in listening learning. Finally, all of the students agree that the listening equipment is quite good and the grammar causes them almost no problem. It can be drawn from the above figures that there are three main problems facing the students when they have to listen to the tapes, native speakers or their teachers. Among these keeping up with the speaking speed of the speaker is the most difficult for them. This is not surprising at all as the high school students in general and the students at FLSS in particular tend to work out the meaning of every utterance they hear in the second language, to do this they have to make sure that they can hear all the words within an utterance. They are so busy trying to work out the meaning of one part that they miss the following part, consequently , they fail to grasp the overall meaning of the listening text. That is why the teachers should choose the appropriate materials (tapes with slow speed – for example) and should speak clearly and slowly for the students to understand. Further more, a lot of the students think that their vocabularies and structures are not good enough to comprehend what they are listening to. They often try to catch everything they hear, so they feel panic when they fail to recognize a word or a structure. Therefore , the teachers should give them opportunities to guess the meaning from the relevant clues or work out the meaning from the context or co-context. Moreover the teachers should present some key words and structures and sometimes explain the meaning of the words before allowing the students to do their listening. Together with the two major problems above, another factor which is worth mentioning in learning to listen to English is strange voices and accents. Most of the students say they find it difficult to listen to radio, watch English programmers on TV. In order to help the students get used to listening to different accents, the teachers should encourage them to keep on listening and should use recorded materials in which different accents are presented. In conclusion, these are the only some of the problems among various ones the students encounter when listening. However, it is not simple to find a solution to them, it requires the teachers’ support as well as the students’ efforts. 2.6.1.6. Students’ pre-listening activities (Question 13, 14 & 15) Option Question a b c d e f 13 6% 10% 2% 82% 14 10% 8% 30% 10% 42% 0% 15 30% 50% 20% 0% Table 6 For the question number 13 about the activities the students would like their teachers to do before listening to make the listening less difficult, most of the students (82%) agree that it is necessary and effective for the teachers to present essential terms or to give the students some background information about the topic or use visual aids . When asking the students about the activities which their teachers often do before listening, it is clear to be seen from table 6 that most of the teachers allow the students to read the tasks (42%), the number of the teachers who present new words or structures is 30%. Showing pictures and giving background information are not popularly used for the teachers as there is only 10% percent for this. The result of question number 15 about the students’ interest in the way used by their teachers to create listening interest before listening task, the majority of the students like it: much (30%), rather (50%), just little (20%). From the figures shown in table 6 ,we see that most of the teachers do something to lead to while-listening stage. The teachers realize the importance of setting up the activities before listening, the fact is that all the activities given before listening are looked upon as those closely linked with while-listening activities. It is a good way to have an effective listening lesson, thus the students should be helped to focus on what they are going to hear. 2.6.1.7. Students’ while listening activities (Question 16 & 17) Option Question a b c d 16 16% 38% 46% 0% 17 6% 60% 18% 16% Table 7 When asked the question : “While you are listening, what do you often do when there are unfamiliar words or structures?”, the rest of the students (46%) say that they ask the teacher for the meaning and the number of the students who can guess the meaning is 38%, the others (16%) often ignore the new words when they are listening. Question number 17 is about the activities which the students often do in while-listening stage, 60% of the students usually take notes. The number of the students who pay attention to pronunciation, stress and intonation and who try to grasp the overall meaning is the same (18% & 16%), very few students (6%) try to hear and get every word. The work of choosing suitable activities for the students in while listening stage sounds easy but in fact, it is very difficult as each type can be suitable in this situation but it is not in the others. To some extent, it is good for the students to get used to as many types of activities as possible, but the problem is that it is hard for the teachers as the teachers can not just take out the activities from books but also have to design them in a way that every students can do. From the data above it can be seen that the students are still not good at finding out how to learn listening effectively. In fact it is unnecessary and impossible to hear and understand every word, whereas the students just need to grasp the overall meaning with some key information. Stress, rhythm and intonation are important, but there are only few of them paying attention to these, therefore , the result they get is not satisfactory. 2.6.1.8. Students’ post-listening activities (Question 18,19 & 20) Option Question a b c d 18 18% 22% 50% 10% 19 26% 40% 34% 0% 20 40% 60% 0% 0% Table 8 When discussing the question : “How much can you retain after a listening lesson?”, the result is that 60% of the students understand some of the main ideas, for all the main ideas of the listening text there are 22% of the students, 18% say they only get the theme and 10% of them can not get any of the details. Regarding the activities after the students finish listening , the students are often allowed to summarize the texts (40%), the second popular activity is working in group or in pair (34%), the following is discussing the text. About the matter of the students’ attempt to improve their listening skill, most of them say “ yes” to the question . It means that they all wish to get and widen their knowledge by learning listening. The collected data show that most of the students at FLSS have a great desire to improve their spoken language by carrying out the activities after finishing listening. The students express their preference for summarizing what they have just listened, this kinds of activity not only activates their knowledge but arouse their interest as well. Another interesting finding is that the students enjoy working in group or in pair. This is called co-operative learning. It is believed that co-operation is very necessary for communicative activities and it is effective in language learning as the students can benefit from working in small groups, it provides them opportunities to express themselves, to share experience and to exchange ideas freely and creatively. 2.7. SUMMARY From the above analysis of collected data, we can see the current situation of teaching and learning listening to English at FLSS, CFL,HNU, and this school proves itself to be a potential school in which the teachers and students are focus of the development, it is understandable that the teachers’ techniques may be partially be accessing to up-dating with modern teaching techniques . However, it can be inferred from the data that there exist a lot of difficulties in teaching and learning listening. There are some reasons for this : first, the students spend most of their time doing written work which focuses mainly on grammar and vocabulary as their first and important duty is to do well the written-form examinations to universities. Second, the students seem not to have appropriate learning method and have little experience in learning listening. The last but not least, the teachers do not spend much of their time to design successful and effective listening lessons, thus, it seems for the teachers that teaching listening comprehension is not more than testing. From the survey we need to keep in mind that there are still mismatches between the teachers and the students in the way the teachers create listening interest or motivation. Actually the teachers need to diversify the activities to activate the students and make full use of communicative approach in teaching listening in order to increase interest for the students in listening section. Also in chapter two, findings from the survey show that most of the students are active and well-aware of what they need to do every listening lesson. However, what they have done seem not efficient enough to improve their listening skill. To solve and overcome all the problems and difficulties is not easy, this is a matter of time and effort of both the teachers and students in the process of teaching and learning listening. In the next chapter I am going to suggest some possible techniques based on my knowledge, experience as well as what I have found in the survey with the hope that they would be of some help to improve the quality of teaching and learning listening skill for the teachers and the students of FLSS. CHAPTER THREE: SUGGESTED TECHNIQUES TO IMPROVE LISTENING SKILL TO STUDENTS AT FLSS 3.1. INTRODUCTION What have been discussed and analyzed in chapter two show that the students at FLSS more or less know something about listening skill and that they utilize it in dealing with the listening tasks. However, the number of the students being effective listeners is modest while the rest of the students seem to be ineffective ones. Based on the findings in the preceding chapter about the students’ employment of listening skill as well as their difficulties, this chapter will aim at giving some suggestions and some practical solutions to overcome the difficulties in order to improve the quality of teaching and learning listening. The suggestions consist of : building up listening interest and motivation for the students, training students to become efficient listeners, improving three stages of listening skill and developing the listening materials. 3.2. AROUSING STUDENTS’ MOTIVATION AND INTEREST There is no doubt that motivation and interest play an important role in doing anything. Obviously when we are highly motivated to do anything, the chance of touching success is more secure. The latest research findings suggest that there is a circular cause and effect relationship between motivation and success in second language learning, the greater motivation the students build up, the more effort they try to reach success and this is also true in learning listening. Only when the students themselves feel eager and anxious to do listening comprehension, do they actively take part in the listening lessons. This can be done by getting students to think, to discuss the topic, the content of the lesson. They are called lead-in activities. Lead-in activities are those that help involving students in the topic of the listening text. For example , if there is a listening text about “film”, one of the lead-in activities is asking students to discuss : kinds of film, actors and actresses, directors etc. If the students know something about what they are going to listen, they will definitely pay more attention to it. Varying lead-in activities is certainly a remedy for forming interest and motivation. Different activities should be given every listening lesson so that the students feel happy and eager to involve in. Teachers should avoid making students become bored by asking them to do the same activities every lesson. In short, lead-in activities are really essential and useful. It is a good way to create motivation and interest before listening, thus the students can be successful at the following stage : while-listening. 3.3. TRAINING STUDENTS TO BECOME EFICIENT LISTENERS 3.3.1. Making students aware of the nature of listening process It is the teachers who should help their students to realize the nature of listening. There are two points: first, listening is an active rather than a passive process which involves using a large number of skills and strategies at the same time, and second, there is both a top-down and a bottom-up process in listening comprehension. Listening is active as there is a great difference between what is said or what the listeners hear. This is sometimes described as an interact process. Language units include intonation, tress, words , grammar, sentences or other types which listeners use in understanding language. These units of meaning are the propositions which an utterance or speech expresses. Listeners make use of two kinds of knowledge to identify propositions: knowledge of the syntax of the target language and real world knowledge, or systemic (linguistic and schematic (non-linguistic) knowledge. Syntactic knowledge enables the students to segment the incoming discourse into chunks or constituents. Whereas , knowledge of the structure of noun phrases, verb phrases and grammatical devices enable us to segment discourse into appropriate chunks and thus identifying the propositions underlying what is actually uttered. Listening also contains bottom-up and top-down processes. Bottom-up processing is the listener’s grammatical and lexical knowledge which is used to extract the meaning of the text. Top-down process focuses on the overall meaning of a passage, and the application of schemata . Thus, central to the top-down processing is the importance of background knowledge. If a listener can not make use of background knowledge, the incoming message may be incomprehensible. Therefore , teachers need to show students how to make use of schemata properly to increase their comprehension. In general, bottom-up exercises are more useful for beginners, and top-down exercises are more necessary for intermediate and advanced students, however, both types should be used for all levels, and it is a good way to improve listening skill. 3.3.2. Promoting students to be fully aware of their purpose of listening One approach to develop listening skill is to help students to understand their purpose of listening. Gavin (1985) identifies four categories of listening , with typical corresponding purposes: transactional (learning new information); interactions (recognizing personal component of message); critical (evaluating reasoning and evidence); recreational (appreciating an event) Gavin proposes that in any listening situation students need to select an appropriate role and purpose to guide them as they listen. The role helps them to understand what their desired degree of involvement with the speaker should be. The purpose helps them select appropriate strategies for seeking specific clarification, for noting down certain details and for trying to understand the intent of the speaker. Effective listening instruction will define listening activities that place the students in different roles so that they learn expected types of responses, and do not become passive as listeners. Effective listening instructions will also help students to focus on their purpose for listening and provide a task that will check if they have achieved their listening purpose. To improve the students’ listening skill, teachers must be sure that their students are provided with a range of listening purposes such as: expressing agreement or disagreement, taking notes, making a picture or diagram according to instructions, answering questions. If the student knows in advance that he is going to have to make a certain kind of response, he is immediately provided with a purpose in listening, and he knows what sort of information to expect and how to react to it. 3.3.3. Activating students to work in different stages of listening We know that to have a successful listening lesson, students should willingly join in three stages of listening. When doing listening work in the current context of the teaching and listening English at FLSS, CFL, the teachers should bear in mind the following things to help the students develop their confidence and skills . Firstly, the teachers are required to make sure that the students clearly understand what they are expected to do before starting to listen so that they can go on the journey confidently and reach the finishing line successfully. Therefore, techniques should be varied to get the students happily involved in the first listening stage, it means that the students are to do plenty of pre-listening work of an appropriate type so that they will succeed in what ever listening tasks they are asked to do. It is clear that this stage is aimed at getting their mind around the topic of the listening passage. So to help them to be active in this stage, the teachers should: - give the students clear instructions. - warm them up with some related questions or relevant topics. - allow the students to predict what they might hear and make connections with what they already know, increasing the relevance of the information. - provide them with key concepts and vocabulary to aid their comprehension. Secondly, in the while-listening stage, the teacher should not do a lot of teaching as students will do the “while” listening tasks by themselves, in pairs or in groups. It is time for students to construct clear, accurate meaning and they interpret the speaker’s verbal message and non-verbal cues. During this process students verify and revise their predictions. One thing to keep in mind is that listening skill lesson is task-based, students make interpretations and judgments based on what they know, and assess what they need to know, thus teacher should do less up-front teaching. To activate the students in while-listening stage , the teachers should: - set up and vary listening tasks at different levels and different cases - encourage the students to work independently to comprehend the speaker’s language and ideas and the topic. - give students help whenever it is needed, but not inflicting help on those who do not need it. - encourage the students to help each other, so that the emphasis is on the successful completion of the tasks rather than on who got it “right” or “wrong”. - not treat the activities as tests to be marked and scored. - encourage students to alter their answers if they wish to, perhaps after listening for a second time. - help students know when to request clarification of what they do not understand. - encourage students’ critical reactions and personal responses to the speaker’s ideas and use of language. The last stage is post-listening, it is important for teachers to encourage students to reflect, and to clarify and extend their thinking about what they have heard by making concrete responses which may be written, spoken, visual ,or dramatic. Many of the same means used to help students extend and clarify their reading experience can be used to extend and clarify their listening experience. 3.3.4. Encouraging students to have extensive listening habit. Familiarizing the students with extensive listening is a way to encourage them to learn English. Extensive listening is the general listening to natural language for greneral ideas, not for particular details. The level of language is propriate to the students’ current ability so that the students feel like listening to get pleasure or interest. The listening passage for extensive listening can be long (stories) or short (songs, poems ,jokes). Students are, in general, not asked to do any language work when they do extensive listening. However, it helps enrich their vocabulary, strengthen their understanding of language. Nuttal (1982) states that “ The best way to improve your knowledge of a foreign language is to go and live among its speakers.” To motivate the students to have extensive listening habit , maybe the following principles should be kept in mind: - listening materials are easy to understand, with few unfamiliar items of vocabulary. -listening materials are various, with a wide range of topics. - students can choose what they actually enjoy listening. - extensive listening can be assigned as homework and their doing must be checked the following period. In short, there are various inputs which offer students with an aim of becoming proficient at using a language. Extensive listening is one of the selected approaches as it create pleasure, key factor to a successful lesson. 3.4. IMPROVING THREE STAGES OF LISTENING SKIL 3.4.1. Techniques for pre-listening When students sit in classroom and the teacher says: “Listen to this!” and then switches on the cassette recorder or begins to read aloud, the students may have no idea of what to expect. Even if the sounds and words they hear are familiar, they may still unable to understand because they lack certain kinds of knowledge necessary for them to comprehend . So , before listening , students should be “turn-in” so that they know what to expect, both in general and for particular tasks. For teachers , when planning lessons, time must be allocated for pre-listening activities and these activities should not be rushed. The techniques of offering support or instruction before listening are varied and depend on a number of factors: time, material, the ability of the class, the interest of the class, the nature and content of the listening text itself etc. The followings are some suggestive pre-listening techniques drawn from the knowledge of theories and the reality of teaching and learning listening at FLSS. 3.4.1.1. Introducing the topic This is a very common form of pre-listening activity, particularly when students are about to hear a recorded text. Teachers generally give their students some background information, begin to talk about the topic and indicate what the students should expect to hear. However, it does require preparation as teacher need to know in advance what must be included in this talk, otherwise it is easy to go off at a tangent and fail to clarify or establish significant points. The teacher’s saying about this is not too short or too long as the shortage may cause difficulties to the students understanding and the redundancy may lead to the students’ boredom and no longer want to listen by the time the actual listening text is played. On the other hand, teacher can use this time to motivate the students by making them feel that the actual listening text is real interesting , exciting or amazing. Introducing the listening topic often comes well from the teacher, who, in any case, is able to adjust the nature and level of the talk discussion to suit the students. 3.4.1.2. Giving listening tasks It is unfair to plunge students straight into the listening text, even when testing rather than teaching listening comprehension, as this makes it extremely difficult for them to use the natural listening skills of matching what they hear with what they expect to hear . So before listening , students should be ‘turn in” so that they know what to expect, both in general and for particular tasks. 3.4.1.3. Asking students to look at a list of items/thoughts This type of activity is particularly helpful for practicing newly learned vocabulary with early students (10th students). The teacher presents a list of words , phrases that he thinks it causes the students’ “blockage” in listening work , or , then asks the students to look at the list for a few minutes before listening. They can discuss or ask the teacher for the meaning of some words/ phrases or the message of some ideas/ thoughts. 3.4.1.4. Asking students to look at pictures The students are asked to have a look at or describe a picture (or pictures) and the teacher checks that the students can name the items which will feature in the listening text. This can be done by questions and answers or by general or group discussion. Actually, pre-listening “looking and describing or talking about” is an effective way of reminding students of lexis which may have been forgotten and of focusing attention on the topic to be listened to 3.4.1.5. Using visual aids Visual materials are really useful in developing listening comprehension, especially for high school students . Using visual aids really attracts students’ concentration , and it is believed that the more striking and stimulating visual aids are, the greater motivation and concentration are likely to be. Teacher can ask students to look at the picture(s), graphs, or maps and predict something relating to the content of the listening text or the students can realize the situation due to some environment clues. 3.4.2. Techniques for while-listening From the findings of the survey, there are series of things that should be done to aid students in the phase of while-listening. Teachers should select or combine different activities to assist their students as using one preferred technique all the time can not be advantageous for it is impossible to have “one dish that suits all taste.” In order to help students to do well in while-listening-stage, teachers must have listening activities which give practice in prediction, matching and interpretation. Prediction occurs at the while-listening-stage (students decide what words or ideas will follow immediately), and matching is related to prediction in that the students make a series or predictions, then match them again what is actually said. The two activities seem to go on concurrently as one part is being matched while other micro predictions are being made. At the same time, interpretation has to be carried out, as the interpretation of one part of a message can affect the prediction of what the next part will be. The fact is that most of the teacher’s work related to a listening lesson has been done in pre-listening stage. During the lesson, the teacher should exceed his role of supervising, and only give help to the students when really necessary. The teacher’s mission is to create and maintain an encouraging atmosphere in class. During the stage of while-listening, the teacher should: - be willing to help students whenever necessary. be sure that the aim of the work is to teach rather than to test. encourage the students to take note of necessary things for later use. ask students to leave out less necessary parts of the work rather than rushing. pause the tape and ask students if they can follow , understand and get the necessary information of the passage. encourage co-operation among the students by asking them to work in pairs or in groups. ask students to check their work. ask students to give feedback when every-thing is still fresh in students’ mind. play back parts of the text if there is something that is not clear. 3.4.2.1. First listening This is the continuance of the last step in pre-listening stage, and it is time for students to listen for main ideas. The teacher will play the tape for the first time while students listen to the passage and try to find out the answers for guiding questions or decide true or false for the given statements. After the first time listening , teachers should check through all the students’ answers. If their answer is inexact, the teacher should provide them with some suggestions relating to the right answer. This helps all the students to grasp the overall meaning of the listening text before continuing with the second time listening. Thereby, students will gain more confidence and find it easier to deal with other more challenging tasks. As a result, the tasks will be finished successfully. In general, this step is very important and cannot be excluded from listening process. Teachers should not ask students to go straight into listening for detailed information as it will cause difficulties for students and lower the process of listening. The further consequence is that students will be demotivated and discouraged from learning and practicing listening. 3.4.2.2. Second listening If in the first time listening, students have to grasp the overall meaning of the listening text, in the second time, they have to deal with more complicated work – listening for specific details. Before allowing students to listen for the second time, one thing the teacher should bear in mind is that students have to be given specific task, and the teacher should set the purpose for them to listen. If there is no task for students to do, the teacher can not ensure that their students will concentrate on listening. As a result, the listening work will become inefficient. Tasks for students to do in the second time are various. They can be: filling the missing word, completing form/chart, labeling, arranging items in patterns etc. More simulating are tasks supported by visual aids such as matching the descriptions with pictures, putting pictures in order and so on. The students should be given the handouts, so that all of them can know what the tasks are. Teachers should also make sure that students really understand what they are required to do, what information they need to grasp while listening to the tape by asking them to underline the requirement, the key words as well as to discuss and anticipate the answers. One thing should be noted here is that a listening lesson is not a test, but a training session. The teacher, therefore, should not ask the students to find out all the answers immediately, but give them time to reconsider. The teacher should allow students to listen again (listen for the third time), so that they can check the answers as well as finish the parts they have not done yet. It is also very useful for the students to compare their answers with each other without commenting on what or who is right or wrong before listening again. By setting up doubt and discontent among students with regard to their own answers, this can motivate more careful and closer listening in the following listening. 3.4.2.3. Third listening Giving feedback is the next essential step in while-listening stage. Whatever listening activities the teacher choose for students to carry out, giving feedback is very important, it is time for the teacher to see how well his students have done the tasks. This will help students to assess their ability, recognize their strong points and weak points and to find out the reason why they have not perform the tasks so that they will make an effort and get better results in the next listening lessons. When giving feedback, there are two points that teachers should bear in mind: - First, feedback should be given right after the students have finished their work. It is extremely difficult to provide useful feedback at a later lesson as it is generally necessary to replay the listening text in order to refer to the points which students have not been very clear. The more important thing is that much of the value of discussing why students have missed things or made errors is forgotten if the discussion is not held immediately when relevant thoughts are still fresh and uppermost in students’ mind. Second, the teacher’s feedback should be positive as it is given immediately after the students have finished their tasks, it can greatly affect them . Positive feedback, therefore, is specially important. If students performed the tasks successfully, the teacher should compliment them on their good work. It helps generate more confidence, motivation and interest. It encourages them to make greater effort in dealing with other listening tasks and overcome any difficulties. In case the students’answer is inexact, giving them such feedback as “Good, but…” . Positive feedback will save the students from being hurt and encourage them to try so that they can do better in the next time. 3.4.3. Techniques for post- listening Apart from the techniques for pre and while listening stages, techniques for post –listening is very necessary and important. The purpose is to see whether the students have understood what they have just listened, or to give the students the opportunity to expand the topic. These are the suggested techniques which I think they are suitable to the students of FLSS: 3.4.3.1. Discussion Although the students can identify the relationships between speakers while they are listening to them, it is sometimes useful, at post-listening stage, to consider what features of the listening text made the relationships clear. By discussion of these features, the students' awareness of how language is used in social settings will be improved and they will gradually appreciate how far, and in what ways, English differs from Vietnamese in this respects. In order to ask the students to do a post -listening discussion , the teacher can give the students notice by giving a question or two before listening so that they will focus on this while they are listening. 3.4.3.2. Role-play Role-play or simulation can be carried out after the students listen to a conversation or some other types of listening text that involve more than one speaker. The attraction of this activity is that it can provide the students with a selection of language appropriate to the role and the situations . Even if the situation in the listening text is different from the one to be used in role-play, the students can use relevant language functions and forms when their turn comes to speak. To do this activity, the teacher asks the students to work in pairs or groups according to the numbers of roles in the situation. After the work is finished, if there is enough time, the teacher can tell one or two pairs or groups to perform their play in front of the class. 3.4.3.3. Summary After finishing while-listening stage, students have already got the main ideas and a certain amount of the information of the listening text. So the teacher can ask students to summarize the listening text by extending notes at the while-listening stage or simply depending on memory. students can do either oral or written summary work. This activity should be done in groups so that the students who have not been very clear about the passage can have a chance to understand it . After that the teacher asks the group leader to present their summary. In short, to have an effective listening lesson, the teachers need to vary their activities to make full use of the strengths and avoid the weaknesses. 3.5. DEVELOPING LISTENING MATERIALS As shown in table 2, except for listening the texts in the two books (listening And Speaking, English 10 and 11), the students of FLSS have chances to listen to the extra listening texts which are selected by their own teachers and which are taken from different sources. It is important to have criteria for teachers to make decisions to choose recorded texts , when selecting supplementary materials, teachers should care for the following criteria: 3.5.1. Language Using listening texts of the right level will not only develop listening skills but also contribute to students’ overall language learning. Stephen Kraskhen has identified listening as a valuable source of what he calls “comprehensive input” and he maintains that students need both to acquire a language and to learn a language, so it is good for students to be faced with language which they should be capable of understanding although it is slightly above their current level of use. 3.5.2. Length The length of the listening text should be taken into consideration. There is no doubt that it is difficult for high school students to listen attentively for a too long text, whereas, teachers will not motivate students if the text is too short. If there is a text which teachers want to use but find rather too long, teachers should plan to stop the tape from time to time, and use it in more manageable sections and introduce pauses to give the students time to think. 3.5.3. Content The content of the listening text is not less important as all students need material which will involve them and make them want to listen. It is ,therefore necessary for teachers to identify appropriate material which does interest their students. Ordinarily, texts which deal with up-to-the-minute news and the very latest ideas are of consideration interest, funny stories and amusing pictures can be exploited to great effect in language teaching, but they should not be the sole type of material used , teachers should vary the topics and style to avoid making boredom to the students In conclusion, to ensure the success of the teacher in activating his students and improving their listening skill, teachers have to note the importance of finding well-recorded material of the right length, with interesting content, and with suitable level. 3.6. SUMMARY In this chapter, I have presented some suggestive techniques to improve listening skill to the students at FLSS. Listening interest and motivation are the first factors to help the teachers to improve their students’ listening skill. The second is that the teachers, with their active role, need to train their students to become efficient listeners. It is essential for the teachers to help their students be aware of the nature of listening process, promote their students to know the purpose of listening. Activating their students to work in different stages of listening, and encouraging their students to have extensive listening habits are also the techniques that can train efficient listeners. The following technique is to improve activities in three stages of a listening lesson. The teachers have to adjust the time and efforts to manage the class and make their students involve in the listening lesson. Moreover they need to vary strategies to aid the students in three phases of a listening lesson . Finally, supplementary listening materials should be carefully selected and provided, in addition, the two books: “Listening And Speaking, book 10, 11” must be made full use of. PART THREE: CONCLUSION 1. SUMMARY OF THE STUDY Being one of the teachers at FLSS,CFL,HNU, I can clearly see the current situation of teaching and learning English. Listening skill is by both the teachers and the students considered the most difficulty to achieve among the four skills. This ,therefore, drove me to conduct this study. This study is done in the hope of contributing some suggestive techniques and activities for teaching and learning listening and it is carried out with the purpose of finding the answers to the two research questions: - What are the factors that cause the difficulties to the students? - Which techniques should be applied by the teachers to help the students to overcome their difficulties in listening lessons? In order to answer these two questions, the study is based on the existing of listening skills (the work of other writers ) and the status of teaching and learning English at FLSS in general and teaching and learning listening to English in particular. By reading, analyzing and summarizing materials and books relating to the thesis in combination with doing the survey questionnaire, the solutions to the thesis questions are found. 2. LIMITATION AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDY In any research papers, limitations are unavoidable. The study presented in this minor thesis is of no exception. Firstly, the study has already dealt with the difficulties of learning listening skill of the students of 10th and 11th form, but there should be a research conducted to confirm what difficulties the teachers at FLSS have met in teaching listening skill. Secondly, the techniques and activities suggested though prove to be useful and effective, they are likely to be subjective and incomplete. There should be some more techniques and activities to help high school students in general and gifted students in particular make good advance in listening skill. Thirdly, listening is only one of the four basic skills in teaching and learning English, but up till now there has been only this study on improving listening skill for the students of FLSS. It is ,therefore, important that studies on reading, speaking and writing for better English teaching and learning at FLSS should be carried out .