A STUDY ON THE TECHNIQUES FOR IMPROVING LISTENING SKILLS TO 10TH GRADE STUDENTS AT HOA BINH ETHNIC

Chapter three: IMPLICATIONS

3.1. SUGGESTED TECHNIQUES TO IMPROVE LISTENING SKILLS TO 10TH

GRADE STUDENTS AT HEBHS

The effectiveness of the using pictures and pair work/group work has been

described and approved in the experimental listening lessons in the previous chapter. In this

chapter, the investigator with the desire to help students listen to English more effectively,

would like to suggest some more techniques, which should be employed by the teachers to

improve their students’ listening skills. Moreover, the suggested listening strategies also

can help students achieve more success in listening comprehension.

3.1.1. Giving background information

As a whole, students will take a listening session more effectively if they are given

some background information about the topic, situation or context of the listening text. The

technique is usually performed by the teacher in pre-listening stage. Because in while￾listening, students may encounter some potential problems. For example, it can be

confusing for students to distinguish the words which have similar sounding like bed and

bad, see and sea, pat and pet, knew and new, etc. The homophones and homonyms in the

language are not many but as existing in listening, they may lead students to mishear what

the speaker saying. Therefore, if the students are provided the background information as

an overall view of the listening text, they will place the context into the consideration while

listening, this will help them to understand the listening text with less confusion. Moreover,

the native speakers often speak very fast, so if students are foretold about the overall view

of the listening passage, they can guess the meaning of the sentence or predict the missing

words according to what they expect or what they think may happen. The techniques can

“bring to the forefront” (Ur, 1996, p.113). Especially, giving background information can

draw students’ attention to the listening, encourage them to work together of known lexis

and syntax which will assist students to over come obstacles created from their infrequency

and inexperience in listening practice. However, the technique employed by the teacher

should be simple, brief and realistic to students which can both draw students’ attention and

arouse their interest as well as the curiosity from the listening text. The time for giving

background information can be from two to five minutes depends on the students’ English

knowledge level and the difficulty of the listening text.

For example: Unit 10

Task 1. Listen and number the events in the order you hear

a. A campfire near a heap of leaves may easily cause a forest fire

b. In late summer, fire is the greatest danger to forests, and sometimes people are

not allowed to go into them

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