INTRODUCTION 1. RATIONALE OF THE STUDY It can not be denied that English is the international medium in the fields of science, technology, culture ,education , economy and so on . It is also considered a means to promote mutual understanding and cooperation between Vietnam and other countries . It is widely seen as the key language toll in the integrating process in the world . With the rapid development and expansion of informational technologies , there needs to be a common language for people of all countries to exchange information with each other and it is English that is used as a means of international communication. Therefore, there has been an explosion in the need of teaching and learning English all over the world. In Vietnam in recent years the number of people who wish to know and master English has become more and more increasing, especially since Vietnam adopted an open-door policy , teaching and learning English have been paid much attention to. English has been part of the general education . It becomes a compulsory subject at high schools in most towns and cities through out the country. Moreover , each city or province there is a specializing school for gifted students at several subjects such as maths , literature , physics, chemistry and foreign languages especially English. Among these schools is the Foreign Language Specializing School, College of Foreign Languages, Vietnam National University. However, the teaching and learning process in FLSS seems to still focus too much on grammar, structures and vocabularies. Our students are very good at doing exercises of written forms, these forms of exercises mostly concern grammar , reading or writing comprehension. The consequence is that students have much difficulty in listening. Listening skill seems to be the most difficult to our students. We all know that in order to learn a foreign language successfully, students should be helped to develop four skills : listening , speaking , reading and writing. These four skills are closely interrelated to one another and they all necessary. Of the four skills, listening is regarded as a prerequisite to understand what is being said and to pick up the general idea of what is being discussed. In our professional and personal life there will be situations where we will hear and have to absorb a lot of details, facts and figures and then extract some points from them. In our private life we may wish to listen to talks in English about subjects we are interested in and wish to consolidate what we have learnt in order to progress to other and more difficult areas. Thus , it is possible to give students the chance to practise what they have learnt in the way listening to spoken English. To listen successfully to spoken English language need be able to work out what speakers mean when they use particular words in particular ways on particular occasion and not to simply understand the words themselves. As I am one of the teachers of English of this school. I would like to do something with the hope of improving listening skill for our students and as a result, the thesis title goes as : “Techniques for improving listening skills of gifted students of Foreign Language Specializing School, College of Foreign Languages, Hanoi National University.” 2. AIMS OF THE STUDY The purpose of this study is to investigate the difficulties in listening which the students at FLSS encounter so that some effective techniques can be given to help them improve this skill. These are the specific aims : - investigating the students’ attitudes at FLSS towards listening - finding out the difficulties encountered by the students - suggesting techniques with the hope of helping the students improve the ability of listening 3. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY This study may provide insights into the process of learning listening comprehension skill for the students. It may play a crucial role in enhancing listening skill to the students at FLSS, CFL, HNU. 4. SCOPE OF THE STUDY Though the study focuses on techniques to improve listening skill for gifted students at FLSS, CFL, HNU, due to the limitation of page numbers of the minor thesis, the researcher can only conduct a survey on the students of 10th and 11th form to identify listening problems experienced by the students, after that suggest some techniques to help them better in learning listening. 5. METHOD OF THE STUDY In order to achieve the aims mentioned above, quantitative method is used and the following tasks have to be done: - doing a survey on the learning listening to English from 200 students of 10th and 11th form at FLSS ( except for students of 12th form as there are no listening lessons for 12th form students ) - collecting data for the analysis - assessing the difficulties - evaluating the best techniques that are most suitable 6. DESIGN OF THE SDTUDY This minor thesis consists of three parts: Part one, “INTRODUCTION”, presents the rationale, the aims , the method, subject and design of the study. It expresses the reason why the author decided to choose this study and the methods for the fulfillment of the study. Part two, “DEVELOPMENT”, is divided into three chapters : - Chapter one presents the concepts relevant to the research topic such as different point of views of listening comprehension skill, the importance, classification of listening, difficulties in learning listening and three stages of listening session . - Chapter two deals with analyses on general learning situation at FLSS, learning requirements, teachers and teaching methods, materials as well as material assessments. Also in this chapter there is a focus on data collection, findings and discussion. - Chapter three emphasizes the implication of the study in which certain techniques for improving listening skills to the students at FLSS are suggested. Part three, “CONCLUSION”, summarizes the key issues in the study, points out the limitations and provides some suggestions for the further study Luận văn chia làm 3 chương,dài 47 trang
