VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY – HO CHI MINH CITY
UNIVERSITY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES & HUMANITIES
FACULTY OF ENGLISH LINGUISTICS & LITERATURE

A SURVEY OF TEACHING ENGLISH LISTENING
SKILL TO THE TENTH GRADERS
AT TAN KE HIGH SCHOOL – BEN TRE PROVINCE

Submitted to
the Faculty of English Linguistics & Literature
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for
the degree of Master of Arts in TESOL

By
NGUYỄN THÀNH NGHĨA

Supervised by
LÊ HOÀNG DŨNG, Ph.D.

HO CHI MINH CITY, FEBRUARY 2012


CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

I certify my authorship of the thesis submitted today entitled:

A SURVEY OF TEACHING ENGLISH LISTENING SKILL TO THE TENTH
GRADERS AT TAN KE HIGH SCHOOL – BEN TRE PROVINCE

in terms of the statement of requirements for
Theses in Master’s Programs

issued by the High Degree Committee

Ho Chi Minh City, February 2012

NGUYỄN THÀNH NGHĨA

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RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS

I hereby state that I, NGUYỄN THÀNH NGHĨA, being the candidate for the
degree of Master of TESOL at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities,
accept the requirements of the school for the retention and use of Master’s Theses
deposited in the library.

In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my thesis deposited
in the library should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in
accordance with the normal conditions established by the library for care, loan or
reproduction of theses.

Ho Chi Minh City, February 2012

NGUYỄN THÀNH NGHĨA

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First of all, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my thesis

supervisor, Dr. Lê Hoàng Dũng, who read my manuscript with great care and
devotion, gave me thoughtful comments, and provided me with valuable support in
the preparation and completion of this thesis. Without his encouragement and
constant guidance, I could not have finished this thesis.
My thanks also go to the authors for the ideas quoted in the thesis. Their
books are a great source for me to produce my M.A. thesis.
I am also grateful to Mr. Huỳnh Phong Nhuận, my dear classmate and also
my helpful monitor, who gave me useful ideas without which it would be hard for
me to find out the right way to develop my thesis.
I owe my thanks to all teachers and learners who were willing to respond to
my questionnaires, especially to the teachers who offered favorable conditions for
my data collection.
Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Lê Thị Mỹ Lệ, for her love, support,
and encouragement during the time I attended the course and did the thesis.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY ..........................................................................II
RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS ............................................................. III
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...................................................................................... IV
TABLE OF CONTENTS .......................................................................................... V
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS................................................................................... IX
LIST OF TABLES .................................................................................................... X
LIST OF FIGURES .................................................................................................. XI
ABSTRACT............................................................................................................ XII
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ............................................................................... 1
1.1 Rationale of the study ................................................................................... 1
1.2 Purpose of the study ..................................................................................... 4

1.3 Research questions ....................................................................................... 5
1.4 Significance of the study .............................................................................. 5
1.5 Limitation of the study ................................................................................. 5
1.6 Overview of the thesis .................................................................................. 6
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW .................................................................... 7
2.1 Understanding spoken English ..................................................................... 7
2.1.1 Listening skills in English learning ...................................................... 7
2.1.2 Importance of listening skill ................................................................. 8
2.1.3 Process models of listening .................................................................. 9
2.1.3.1 Bottom-up processing .................................................................. 9
2.1.3.2 Top-down processing ................................................................... 9
2.1.3.3 Interactive processing ................................................................ 10
2.1.4 A skills-based model of listening-centered communication ................ 10
2.2 Teachers’ role in developing listening tasks................................................ 12
2.3 Effective teaching of listening .................................................................... 13
2.4 Stages in teaching listening comprehension ................................................ 15
2.4.1 Pre-listening stage .............................................................................. 15
2.4.2 While-listening stage.......................................................................... 16

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2.4.3 Post-listening stage ............................................................................ 18
2.5 Some hypothetical problems in EFL listening............................................. 20
2.5.1 Listening problems that emerge from the pre-listening stage .............. 20
2.5.1.1 Background knowledge of culture and context........................... 20
2.5.1.2 Listeners’ limited word stock ..................................................... 21
2.5.1.3 Lack of visual support................................................................ 21
2.5.2 Listening problems that emerge from the while-listening stage .......... 22
2.5.2.1 Pronunciation ............................................................................. 22

2.5.2.2 Speech rate ................................................................................ 23
2.5.2.3 Accent ....................................................................................... 24
2.5.2.4 Listening in the passive position ................................................ 24
2.5.2.5 Failure to concentrate................................................................. 25
2.5.3 Listening problems that emerge from the post-listening stage ............ 25
2.5.3.1 Memory ..................................................................................... 25
2.5.3.2 Shyness to present the listening ideas in front of the class .......... 26
2.5.3.3 Receiving feedback.................................................................... 26
2.5.3.4 Combining listening with other skills......................................... 27
2.5.3.5 Fatigue ....................................................................................... 27
2.6 Strategies of listening comprehension......................................................... 28
2.7 Previous researches concerning to listening and listening teaching ............. 30
2.8 Summary .................................................................................................... 32
CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY ............................................................................ 36
3.1 Research design .......................................................................................... 36
3.2 Subjects of the study................................................................................... 36
3.2.1 Students ............................................................................................. 36
3.2.2 Teachers............................................................................................. 37
3.3 Data collection instruments ........................................................................ 37
3.3.1 Questionnaires ................................................................................... 38
3.3.1.1 Questionnaire for teachers ......................................................... 38
3.3.1.2 Questionnaire for students ......................................................... 38
3.3.2 Classroom observation ....................................................................... 39

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3.4 Data collection procedure ........................................................................... 39
3.5 Summary .................................................................................................... 42
CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS ............................................... 43

4.1 Data analysis .............................................................................................. 43
4.1.1 Preparation of teaching listening comprehension ................................ 43
4.1.2 Teaching practices in a listening session ............................................ 47
4.1.2.1 Teaching practices at the pre-listening stage .............................. 47
4.1.2.2 Teaching practices at the while-listening stage........................... 51
4.1.2.3 Teaching practices at the post-listening stage ............................. 54
4.1.3 Difficulties in listening to English ...................................................... 58
4.1.3.1 Difficulties at the pre-listening stage .......................................... 58
4.1.3.2 Difficulties at the while-listening stage ...................................... 60
4.1.3.3 Difficulties at the post-listening stage ........................................ 61
4.2 Discussion of results................................................................................... 63
4.3 Summary of findings .................................................................................. 65
CHAPTER 5: SUGGESTIONS AND CONCLUSIONS .......................................... 67
5.1 Suggestions ................................................................................................ 67
5.1.1 Suggestions to the administrators at TKHS ........................................ 67
5.1.1.1 Updates on knowledge of language teaching methodology
and necessary equipment should be provided adequately........... 67
5.1.1.2 In-service training in pedagogical procedures related to the
listening skills should be organized ........................................... 68
5.1.1.3 Listening should be officially made one of the assessment
criteria in English tests and exams. ............................................ 68
5.1.2 Suggestions to the students at TKHS. ................................................. 69
5.1.2.1 Students should have proper attitudes towards learning
listening comprehension at TKHS. ............................................ 69
5.1.2.2 Students should have right ways to learn and practice
listening skill. ............................................................................ 70
5.1.3 Suggestions to the teachers at TKHS. ................................................. 70
5.1.3.1 Teachers should improve teaching method of listening skill. ..... 70

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5.1.3.2 Teachers should alter their attitudes towards teaching
listening comprehension in a positive way. ................................ 71
5.1.3.3 Teachers should help students change their attitudes towards
English listening learning at TKHS. .......................................... 71
5.1.3.4 Teachers should really teach listening skills rather than test
them. ......................................................................................... 71
5.1.3.5 Teachers should spend a little time explaining the nature and
processes of listening to their learners and guiding them how
to listen to English. .................................................................... 72
5.1.3.6 Some listening exercises need to be adjusted to suit students’
ability. ....................................................................................... 73
5.1.3.7 Teachers should teach English listening strategies to their
students ..................................................................................... 74
5.1.3.7.1 Pre-listening strategies .................................................... 74
5.1.3.7.2 Finding out main ideas .................................................... 75
5.1.3.7.3 Identifying the relationships of ideas ............................... 75
5.1.3.7.4 Determining word stress that is critical for successful
communication .............................................................. 76
5.1.3.7.5 Note-taking ..................................................................... 76
5.1.4 Summary of suggestions .................................................................... 77
5.2 Conclusion and recommendation for further research ................................. 79
5.2.1 Conclusion ......................................................................................... 79
5.2.2 Recommendation for further research................................................. 80
References ....................................................................................................... 82
Appendix 1 QUESTIONNAIRE TO TEACHER RESPONDENTS ................. 89
Appendix 2 QUESTIONNAIRE TO STUDENT RESPONDENTS ................. 92
Appendix 3 PHIẾU KHẢO SÁT (Dành cho học sinh) ..................................... 95
Appendix 4 OBSERVATION CHECKLIST .................................................... 98

Appendix 5 Frequency of the observed actual teaching practices of listening . 100
Appendix 6 Summary of the observed practices in five levels of frequency ... 101

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

BA

Bachelor of Arts

EFL

English as a Foreign Language

ELT

English Language Teaching

MA

Master of Arts

TESOL

Teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages

TKHS


Tan Ke High School

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LIST OF TABLES
Table 2.1: Summary of some listening teaching activities and expected output to
students................................................................................................ 33
Table 2.2: Summary of some common hypothetical difficulties in teaching English
listening skill ....................................................................................... 35
Table 4.1: Teachers' response to preparation of teaching listening comprehension 44
Table 4.2: Students' response to learning the listening lessons ............................... 46
Table 4.3: Teachers' and students' responses concerning the teaching practices at the
pre-listening stage ................................................................................ 48
Table 4.4: Teacher's and students' responses regarding the teaching practices at the
while-listening stage ............................................................................ 52
Table 4.5: Teacher's and students' responses about the teaching practices at the
post-listening stage .............................................................................. 55
Table 4.6: Summary of findings from listening teaching activities ........................ 66
Table 5.1: Summary of some suggestions about listening teaching activities ......... 78

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LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 2.1: The HURIER listening model (Brownell, 2010: 145) .......................... 11
Figure 3.1: Summary of research procedure .......................................................... 41
Figure 4.1: Teachers' and students’ responses to difficulties at the pre-listening
stage ...................................................................................................59
Figure 4.2: Teachers' and students’ responses to difficulties at the while-listening

stage ...................................................................................................60
Figure 4.3: Teachers' and students’ responses to difficulties at the post-listening
stage ...................................................................................................61

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ABSTRACT
Although listening comprehension is generally recognized as one of the most
important skills in learning English, it has been one of the most neglected fields to
senior high school students, which leads to a worrying result – learners’ failure in
conversational exchanges with native speakers of English after seven years of
learning English. In this study, an attempt was made to investigate the classroom
listening comprehension teaching practices of Grade 10 teachers in relation to a
new textbook and the students’ difficulties.
The required data for the study were collected using questionnaires and
classroom observations. All eight English teachers at Tan Ke High School
(abbreviated to TKHS) were requested to complete the questionnaire. To crosscheck the information given by the teachers, a similar questionnaire was
administered to 120 students. Among the eight teacher subjects, four teachers
teaching the tenth grade were observed (four times each) to see how the listening
lessons were actually happening.
After the data were gathered, descriptive analysis such as frequency and
percentage was used to analyze the participants’ responses and classroom
observation. The analysis revealed that there has been a gap between the teaching
practices implemented by the teachers and the pedagogical procedures favored by
the course designers for teaching the listening sections of the new textbook. Though
the teachers said that they have been using the communicative approach, the
students’ responses and the classroom observation results indicated a mismatch
between what actually happened in the listening classes and what has been
proposed in teaching the skill. Accordingly, lack of in-service training on how the

new textbook should be implemented and the introduction of the new textbooks,
essential equipment for presenting the listening lessons, and motivation and
commitment on the part of the teachers appear to be the major causes for the
teachers’ failure to execute the suggested teaching approach and procedures.

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Finally, it has been recommended that in order to develop teachers’
awareness of the communicative language teaching approach, officials at the
Ministry of Education and Training, school administrators, and the teachers
themselves should take responsibilities to organize practice-based in-service
development programs and to assess learners’ listening competence. Besides that,
the students should also pay much attention to learning listening skills and realize
its importance so that they are self-aware of practicing listening every day with the
proper listening strategies. Moreover, the listening materials should be adjusted for
improving the students’ needs and ability. Also, school libraries and audiovisual
centers should be better equipped with current reference materials on language
teaching methodology and equipment that are useful for teaching listening
comprehension.

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
The thesis has carried out a survey of teaching and learning listening
comprehension at Tan Ke High School and is intended primarily for the teachers
and students here. This introduction chapter presents the rationale for choosing the
topic, the aims of the thesis, the research questions, and a discussion on the
significance of the study.

1.1 Rationale of the study
Since the academic year 2006-2007, the Vietnamese Ministry of Education
and Training has released a new textbook1 for the study of foreign languages in
senior high schools. One of the primary aims of the new curriculum discussed in
teaching English language with a communicative purpose in Vietnam is to require
teachers to attend to speaking and listening skills in lessons (Teacher’s Book, Grade
10, 2007, 3-4) and to place greater emphasis on the communicative ability attained
by the learners. As a result, effective listening becomes one of the determinants of
the students’ success or failure.
However, when the researcher of the study has clearly observed the problem
at TKHS, he finds out that the tenth graders’ abilities to listen to and understand
English seem to be inadequate. Some learners frequently feel bored and lack
concentration in their listening learning, but they cannot know how to improve the
difficult situation. A manifestation of the problem is that there are often students
absent from class, and even for those who come to class: Some of them are
frequently absent-minded, and some even doze off in class. The students, as
explained by them, have found the listening class both boring and difficult to
absorb knowledge. Moreover, many satisfactorily unanswered questions such as “I
don’t know how to improve my listening skills. Can you help me?”; “I can get

1

Ministry of Education and Training. (2009). Tiếng Anh 10. Edudcation Publishing
House.

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better at speaking, reading, and writing but cannot enhance listening. How to learn
the skill better?” and “How can I listen to the native speakers effectively?” are

regularly arisen from the learners. Also, many students appear to be strange about
listening to key information. The students have difficulty in improving listening
skills.
Some other students are not equipped enough general knowledge of the
listening work. They are familiar with listening freely without thinking of a topic
and without activating background knowledge. Indeed, instead of paying much
attention to the helpful factors besides a language to compensate for the lack of
linguistic understanding, the learners just only wait to get information hastily from
listening texts, and they seem to ignore the questions which are issued in the
preparation process of listening. However, it is the exercise information framework
that assists them to predict effectively what they must face at the while-listening
stage. Moreover, when listening to English, the students often claim that they
cannot keep up with speakers’ speed and frequently miss the next part because of
desperately trying to get the meaning of every word spoken. Besides that, the
learners, at the post-listening stage, often try to complete the answers, but not find
the reasons why they have just failed to listen to the message, and why their
answers are not suitable for a certain case. They do not know that in different
contexts, the same words, phrases, or sentences can produce different meanings.
Therefore, it appears that the students’ listening ability does not develop to the
extent they are able to productively extract relevant information from spoken
lessons.
The students have not also been provoked for listening motivation. The
serious problem worth concerning about is why a listening text is considered like a
reading one and why the listening skill is not evaluated in the final graduation
exams of grade 12 to positively motivate the students to learn, while the skill is
thought not easy to Vietnamese learners of English in general and to high school
students in particular. Therefore, from the recognition of the above-mentioned
problems, the inspiration for the study arises.

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The students’ poor listening abilities are likely to lead to the assumption that
the innovations in the syllabuses and teaching materials do not influence the
necessary methodological changes into the listening teaching practices in class. To
cope with the aims of the new syllabus, teachers are expected to move in the
direction of adoption of the communicative language teaching approach (Teacher’s
Book, Grade 10, 2007: 7). Normally, behind innovations in syllabuses and teaching
materials, there is an underlying desire for change in the teaching practices (Hall &
Hewings, 2001: 4). Unluckily, most of the teachers in Tan Ke High School have
been accustomed to the traditional grammar-translation method that focuses on
vocabulary and grammar, and they have not paid much attention to communicative
skills, particularly listening comprehension. Thus, it is worth investigating the
current practice of teaching English listening in class.
There has also been a claim that Vietnamese English teachers focus on the
structure of the language and tend to implement the traditional methods instead of
adapting the new approaches and procedures for teaching English (Nguyễn Thị
Nguyệt Ánh, 2009: 9), and they pay no attention to listening skills. The teachers
think that teaching English is simply teaching English grammar to students, and
learning English means learning grammar and vocabulary of that language. The
reason for their viewpoint is that if students are not learning English grammar, they
almost do not learn English at all. They cannot communicate in English without
grasping knowledge of grammar. This problem results in the fact that the teachers
only concentrate on teaching grammar to their students, leading to the unsuccessful
results in communication, which is the ultimate goal of teaching and learning
English or any foreign language. However, to enhance learners’ communicative
competence, it is necessary for them to mainly focus on not only the grammar and
vocabulary but also skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing (Nguyễn Huy
Cẩn, 2008: 82), in which listening is, according to Mishra (2011: 56), “one of the
most important skills that play a vital role in the process of communication.”

Some teachers, though recognizing the important role of listening, still do
not care about improving the skill to their students because, as explained by them,

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there are so many other things about English that are much more essential and
central to teach than listening comprehension. This means that listening is more or
less ignored. Nevertheless, the skill needs to be considered a critical means of
language learning to allow learners to understand the speech they hear and take part
in any form of spoken communication successfully (Rost, 2001: 7).
In addition, as known by the researcher, local studies were conducted in the
area of listening, but up to now they have not been carried out to investigate the
actual teaching practices of listening in light of the listening materials and the
pedagogical procedures incorporated in the new communicatively oriented
textbooks. Thus, such a study can be worthwhile to find out if the innovations bring
the intended changes in the actual teaching practices for the attainment of the stated
instructional objectives. In other words, a classroom research like this will be
helpful to investigate whether the planned language-teaching program has been put
into practice.
1.2 Purpose of the study
This study, therefore, attempts to investigate the actual teaching practices of
listening in Grade 10 in relation to the introduction of the new textbook. The thesis
tries to explore whether Grade 10 English teachers apply the teaching materials and
the procedures prescribed for teaching listening comprehension. It aims at:
(1) Understanding the current practice of teaching listening comprehension
to the tenth graders at Tan Ke High School;
(2) Finding out difficulties the students are facing;
(3) Suggesting some possible ways of teaching and learning listening skill.
It is hoped that the study will increase administrators’ and teachers’

consciousness of the importance and effectiveness of teaching listening skill,
leading to adjusting the listening teaching activities of the current English
curriculum as planned by the Vietnamese Ministry of Education and Training in
2015 with the objective: reforming the English teaching for effective
communication. Also, presented in the thesis are some practical listening teaching

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and learning strategies, which are relevant to Tan Ke High School teachers and
students.
1.3 Research questions
To achieve the overall objectives stated above, the thesis is going to answer
the following questions:
1. What is the current practice of teaching English listening skill to the tenth
graders at Tan Ke High School?
2. What problems prevent the students from listening to English
successfully?
3. What can be some possible ways to overcome the problems?
1.4 Significance of the study
The research tends to solve the current listening problems that many high
schools in Vietnam have encountered. The thesis also helps the non-native English
learners to reduce problems when learning listening comprehension. Moreover, a
learner can only be regarded as good if they listen to natural English of native
speakers successfully enough to infer the proper meaning. In other words, listening
comprehension is an essential language skill as well as a prerequisite for oral
proficiency so that the students can improve their communicative ability. Harmer
(2007: 133) has ever said: “It is worth remembering that successful spoken
communication depends not just on our ability to speak, but also on the
effectiveness of the way we listen”. The survey, therefore, into the subject of how

to teach and learn listening comprehension to high school learners is a matter of
great urgency. Hopefully, the difficulties to be found and their solutions to be
suggested may be regarded as a reference document to the teachers who target to
help students enhance their listening skills for communicative purposes at
Vietnamese senior high schools in general and Tan Ke High School in particular.
1.5 Limitation of the study
Factors affecting the classroom teaching practices are many, but the thesis
deals only with the immediate common problems occurring in classroom context
that prevent high school students from listening to English successfully and

5


suggests some solutions to the problems. Due to the constraints of time and the lack
of resources, the research seems to be limited to an investigation for teaching and
learning English listening of the teachers and a number of tenth graders at Tan Ke
High School. It cannot be seen as the best way to learn listening comprehension to
everybody in anywhere and at any time, but the study may be applied in similar
educational settings. It is hoped that more researches on improving learners’
listening skill will be made for better generalization and comprehensiveness.
1.6 Overview of the thesis
The research consists of five chapters. Chapter 1 talks about background to
the study, purpose of the thesis, research questions, importance for the research, and
limitation of the study. Chapter 2 mentions the viewpoint of the literature relevant
to the research. Chapter 3 presents the methodology of the study consisting of
research design, research subjects, as well as data collection instruments and
procedures. Chapter 4 analyzes data collected from the questionnaires and class
observation as well as discusses the study findings. Chapter 5 provides some
suggestions and some English listening strategies for improving teaching and
learning of listening comprehension skills.


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CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
Many famous scholars have studied a variety of different methods for
teaching listening successfully; each has their views and reasons for their own
choice. However, a common purpose among their theories is to improve the
listening comprehension. The literature review presented in this chapter will draw a
brief look into the history of teaching skills and related issues, which lays a
theoretical foundation for the study.
2.1 Understanding spoken English
2.1.1 Listening skills in English learning
There are many definitions of listening skills in language teaching books.
According to Howatt and Dakin (1974, quoted by Yagang, 1994: 189), “listening is
the ability to identify and understand what others are saying. This involves
understanding a speaker’s accent or pronunciation, his grammar and his vocabulary,
and grasping his meaning.” Similarly, listening comprehension, as defined by
Lewis (1999: 134), consists of not only recognizing words but also comprehending
the meaning of sentences in a certain special context and remembering the things
which is spoken long enough to work meaning out. Moreover, listening makes
sense of spoken language thanks to sound signals and visual input, with the
assistance of proper background knowledge and the context where listeners are
listening (Lynch & Mendelsohn, 2002: 193). It can be thought as the process of
right decoding the message and thus, it is different from hearing since listening is
done with the head, eyes, heart, and guts whereas hearing is only done with the
ears. Wilkie (2001: 71) adds further support to this definition when he says that
listening is a conscious activity which must be practiced actively and carefully for
communicating effectively.
All the views given above show that listening comprehension is a hard task,

which demands a great deal of mental analysis on the part of the listener. In order to
understand the message the speaker intends, the listener must actively contribute
skills and knowledge from both linguistic and nonlinguistic resources. These

7


include having an appropriate purpose for listening, social and cultural knowledge,
and background knowledge.
2.1.2 Importance of listening skill
Listening, as generally believed by linguists, is the most important language
factor in the four skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing in English as a
foreign language (abbreviated to EFL) learners. Rost (1994: 141-142, quoted by
Nunan, 1999: 200) claims that listening comprehension, which supplies input for
learners, is extremely crucial and necessary in the language classroom. If they do
not understand input at the relevant level, their learning cannot begin. Celce-Murcia
& Olshtain (2000: 115) make it simpler by saying that listening comprehension is
the basic skill in improving oral communicative ability.
Listening is actually related to spoken language. Students cannot make
speaking skills better unless they develop listening skills (Doff, 1988: 198; Lewis &
Hill, 1992: 38). In addition, the listeners and speakers must collaborate together to
keep up and manage a conversation (Buck, 2001: 12). Consequently, to succeed in
interaction, students must rightly understand what is said to them, and in order to
understand the spoken language, they must practice as much as possible in listening
English at normal speed.
Listening comprehension also plays an important role in acquiring
knowledge bases of language. Up to 80% percent of learners’ knowledge is
collected through listening (Hunsaker 1990, quoted by Jalongo, 1995: 13),
especially structures and vocabularies. Listeners are likely to decode what speakers
wish to convey when they use special words or phrases in special contexts, and not

simply to interpret the words themselves (Underwood, 1990: 1). Unfortunately, the
non-native students, who are not living in the countries where English is spoken as
the first language, have so few opportunities to listen to consecutively exposed
language that the students cannot develop the listening competence as effectively as
those who live there. Accordingly, teachers need to give the foreign students
chances to listen to English as much as possible (Doff, 1988: 198-199) so that the

8


students can gather a variety of valuable grammatical constructions and useful new
words in different situations and contexts.
Indeed, listening comprehension skill is too important to be ignored in any
English teaching and learning. To improve the skill considerably, it is essential for
any learners of English to master the listening process which involves both
linguistic and extra-linguistic knowledge.
2.1.3 Process models of listening
Over the past 40 years, linguists have developed many views of listening
process, but according to Wilson (2008), Flowerdew & Miller (2010), there have
primarily been three listening processes: bottom-up, top-down, and interactive,
which are applied in explaining the listening comprehension.
2.1.3.1 Bottom-up processing
The bottom-up process is applied to interpret listening from the smallest
meaningful units (phonemes) to the complete texts (Nunan, 1999: 200; Buck, 2001:
2; Wilson, 2008: 15). This approach focuses on sounds, words, intonation,
grammatical structures, and other components of spoken language to decode
information for creating ideas and concepts, and relationships between them
(Flowerdew & Miller, 2010: 167). Therefore, this process is closely associated with
the listener’s linguistic knowledge. However, bottom-up processing has its limited
points because understanding a text is an interactive process between the listener’s

prior knowledge and the text. Efficient comprehension that associates the textual
material with listener’s brain does not only base on one’s linguistic knowledge.
2.1.3.2 Top-down processing
Developed after bottom-up model, the top-down process tends to activate
students’ background which is related to listening topics, speakers, situations, or
contexts to integrate messages rather than depending on individual sounds and
words (Nunan, 1999: 201; Buck, 2001:3). The words spoken in isolation make the
listeners more confused to identify meaning than the ones used with the
surrounding context (Flowerdew & Miller, 2010: 167). However, it can be seen that
if the incoming information the listeners hear is strange to them, it cannot evoke

9


their previous knowledge, and they can only depend mainly on their linguistic
knowledge in listening comprehension. Besides, although the listeners can activate
background knowledge, they might not have the suitable understanding expected by
the speaker. Thus, only relying on top-down processing may result in the failure of
comprehension.
2.1.3.3 Interactive processing
Recent researchers have studied the third so-called interactive model which
is the combination of bottom up and top-down processing. Establishing the
integration is not only necessary but also beneficial because without understanding
individual details, students have difficulty in accessing the general picture of a
listening text; without assisting of total knowledge, they do not also go to the
details easily (Harmer, 2007b: 270). In other words, the learners decode the
information with the mutual interactive foundation of phonological, syntactic,
semantic, and pragmatic information like listening in real life (Flowerdew & Miller,
2010: 168).
In conclusion, listening comprehension is neither top-down nor bottom-up

processing separately, but an interactive and interpretive process during which
listeners use both prior social and cultural knowledge and linguistic knowledge in
understanding.
To understand the relation of linguistic and extra-linguistic knowledge in the
process model of listening, it is essential to view the following model of listening
comprehension, identified by Brownell (2010).
2.1.4 A skills-based model of listening-centered communication
The model of listening-centered communication emphasizes mainly on
‘sending’ and ‘receiving’ information when listeners decode the messages
according to their cognitive structure, schemata, interest, needs, and other
individual influences. The more the listeners understand the verbal and nonverbal
features, the more accurately they achieve listening goals or interpret their partner’s
meanings.

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Figure 2.1: The HURIER listening model (Brownell, 2010: 145)
The listening model (also called the HURIER listening model) shows the six
components of listening tasks: hearing, understanding, remembering, interpreting,
evaluating, and responding for receiving information easily at each stage (Brownell,
2010: 144-146). The phases are influenced by the factors such as cultural
orientation, past experiences, interests, attitudes, beliefs, and many other elements
in listening process. Firstly, through hearing, listeners must decide what to
concentrate on in the listening environment and process it like reading
comprehension for understanding. Next, mainly basing on the listening context, the
listeners store information at one or at some stages in listening time. In the
interpreting process, they use not only verbal cues but also nonverbal ones
including tone of voice, posture, facial expression, and contextual knowledge; they
also make a judgment about the information that they have just received to examine

the accuracy and validity by evidence, reasons, and emotional appeals. Finally, at
the response stage, the listeners always adjust the information according to both
observing the speaker’s facial expressions and interpreting his voice tone.

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Generally speaking, the listening process mainly bases on the context to grasp,
store, and respond information.
When understanding the process, which is thought complex and hard to
improve, the teachers can find a bit easier to teach the listening subject. They can
translate the unobservable listening process to the corresponding features, showing
that the listening is happening. For example, while teachers cannot observe the
process of hearing or attending, they can guide students to do the things:
concentrating on the speaker, selecting a proper physical location where
distractions are restricted, and participating in an activity to increase involvement.
In the same vein, the teachers, if not observing the process of understanding, have
ways to test listening comprehension and also to teach activities that raise the
observation such as asking questions, paraphrasing, and discriminating between
main ideas and detailed information (Brownell, 2010: 147).
To conclude, the HURIER listening model helps teachers to assist their
students to improve their listening skills like in real life, which is the final goal of
teaching and learning listening to a foreign language. Also, the model makes the
educators active and useful since they recognize that providing students with
background knowledge may upgrade students’ English comprehension.
2.2 Teachers’ role in developing listening tasks
Generally, ‘to teach’ means ‘to facilitate learning’ (Underwood, 1990: 21).
Then, the teachers’ role is to supply much useful guidance and support for their
students. They should create students the confidence of listening effectively by
helping them listen better rather than by testing their listening competence (Field,

2005: 246). This means that the teachers are expected to organize listening
activities in which different learning strategies can be used, to give opportunities
for cooperative learning to reduce learners’ anxiety, to cultivate the culture
awareness in students and to introduce some listening skills to the students (Ren,
2011: 319). The learners will become more proficient in listening to English if: (1)
they apply the strategies they use naturally in mother tongue listening rather than
trying to follow the spoken language word by word, (2) they increase their

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