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DECLARATION OF AUTHORSHIP
I am hereby to declare that, this research paper is a result of my personal investigation, and a
methodological orientation established at “Universidade Pedagógica”. All the consulted
sources are clearly cited throughout the paper as well as in the reference list. In the same way,
I declare that this research paper has never been presented to obtain any degree in this
university or any other institution.
Nampula, March 2016
The author
___________________________________________
(Omar Nordino Abdula)
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
In the first place, I thank the All-Might God to have given me courage, strength and heath to
fulfill this paper. Second, I would like to thank my parents, specially my mom Abiba, who
always told me not to give up despite the difficulties. Third, I thank my aunt Mafiel Abdula
who is my second mom. I thank her a lot for every single cent she spent during my training. I
ask God to reward her with the best of the rewards. Finally, I thank my wife, Chume Rabia,
and all the people who have given me direct or indirect support.
Furthermore, I would like to thank the following individualities: dr. Tomas Castelo, he taught
me right in my first year in this university that in life we have to set a goal to achieve; MA.
Sonia, for guidance and my dear supervisor, dr. Chifundo Angela Mtambo, for her tips, ear
pokes and time she spent listening to me. I thank you all.
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DEDICATION
I dedicate this paper to my parents, Nordino Abdula Menina & Abiba Jamal, my aunt Mafiel
Abdula, my brothers Abdul, Abdul-hamid, Altaff, Zita and Maizinha; my wife Chume Rabia
and my son Zhalkifli.
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LIST OF TABLES AND GRAPHS
Table 1: Target population
Table 2: Performance stream B1
Table3: Performance stream B2
Graph 1: Mistakes and Omission stream B1
Graph 2: Mistakes and Omission stream B2
Graph 3: Students’ feeling during English language classes
Graph 4: Students’ opinion about their teachers
Graph 8: What would you like to see improved in English language classes?
Graph 6: How often do you practice long-distance dictation?
Graph 7: What is the nature of your English language lessons?
Graph 5: How often do you practice listening activities?
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CONTENT PAGE
DECLARATION OF AUTHORSHIP .................................................................................................... ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................................... iii
DEDICATION ....................................................................................................................................... iv
LIST OF TABLES AND GRAPHS ....................................................................................................... v
ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................................... ix
CHAPTER I .......................................................................................................................................... 10
1. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................... 10
1.1. Background to the problem ............................................................................................................ 10
1.2. Statement of the problem ............................................................................................................... 11
1.3. Scope of the study .......................................................................................................................... 12
1.4. Merit of the study ........................................................................................................................... 12
1 5 P f th t d 12
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1.12. Limitations of the study ............................................................................................................... 15
1.13. The structure of the study ............................................................................................................ 15
CHAPTER II ......................................................................................................................................... 16
2. LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................................................. 16
2.1. Defining dictation .......................................................................................................................... 16
2.1.1. Long-distance dictation ............................................................................................................... 17
2.1.1.1. How is it performed? ............................................................................................................... 18
2.1.2. Reasons for using dictations in the classroom ............................................................................ 20
2.1.3. Using dictation to develop the four language skills .................................................................... 21
2.1.4. Advantages of using dictation ..................................................................................................... 22
2.1.5. Disadvantages of using dictation ................................................................................................ 23
2.2.2. The process of listening .............................................................................................................. 24
2.2.2.1. Bottom-up listening process..................................................................................................... 25
2 2 2 2 T d 2
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3.4.1. Students’ feeling in the classroom .............................................................................................. 38
3.4.2. Teacher’s behaviour in the classroom ......................................................................................... 38
3.4.4. The practice of long-distance dictation ....................................................................................... 40
3.4.5. The nature of the class ................................................................................................................ 41
3.4.6. Classroom improvements ............................................................................................................ 42
3.5. The teachers ................................................................................................................................... 42
CHAPTER IV ....................................................................................................................................... 47
4. PROPOSAL AND IMPLEMENTATION ........................................................................................ 47
4.1. Proposal.......................................................................................................................................... 47
4.1.1. The Activity ................................................................................................................................ 47
4.2. Implementation .............................................................................................................................. 48
4.2.2. Checking the results .................................................................................................................... 50
CHAPTER V ........................................................................................................................................ 51
5 RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSION 1
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ABSTRACT
The aim of this paper is to show the importance of listening in the English Language
classroom in order to get a perfect acquisition of the second language.
After my experience as a trainee teacher, I have noticed that this skill is a very important part
in relation to the acquisition of English language and I have also asked my students in order
to know their thoughts in relation to my hypothesis and they assure that this skill need to be
developed because students, during all the courses, study English language but based on the
development of reading and writing skills and sometimes, the teacher suggests doing some
listening because the majority of the student’s books include the typical listening (such as
conversations) with the corresponding exercises which are very useful to check the listening
comprehension but, they think they need to know how to be a good listener because if they
travel abroad, they are going to communicate through listening and speaking, of course, and
not reading or writing.
However, if we do not understand the message, how are we going to react? Specially, for
k li i d b li d h h i i i f h
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CHAPTER I
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1. Background to the problem
Teaching English language in Mozambique has become a daily challenge for teacher in our
schools, especially in secondary schools because of the various constrains that hump the
effective learning of this language. Therefore, methods of teaching English as foreign
language were developed in order to boost the learning process. However, some of them did
not remain in use till today because of focusing on a special skill rather than the four
language skills. However, techniques to help students developing the language competence
did not stop; nowadays we use literature to teach a specific language skill or else the four
language skills.
As we know, English has spread widely all over the world, first because of the influence of
the British Empire and, second due to the North American influence in the world. In Africa,
especially in Mozambique, English has advanced as an international language because of
t d ll t h l d l t t iti id d b i t ti l
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going to focus on listening, because we believe that by developing this skill we will
communicate with fewer problems and we will be able to grasp the message and respond it
accurately.
According to the National System of Education in Mozambique, teaching of English
Language in upper secondary level from grade 11 to 12 is regarded as teacher’s responsibility
to find out good strategies to design activities in order to help students learning language. It is
from this point that the research was based upon. The need of developing language
proficiency in the students strikes teachers of English language to hardly think about different
ways to improve the four language skills proficiency in their students. However, in this
research we selected one: listening.
So, in this research we will be portraying on promoting listening skills through Long
Distance – Dictation. We will be describing on how dictation is useful to develop listening
ability, because it involves paying attention to what is being said and later reproduce it the
way we have heard it.
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1.3. Scope of the study
This study will take place at Napipine Secondary School; it will cover day shift students of
grade 11 streams B1 and B2, and two teachers of English language. The school is located at
Napipine neighbourhood in front of Pedagogical University in Nampula city.
1.4. Merit of the study
During the teaching practice, the researcher observed that there is a lack of response by the
students. Unlike passive learners these students are active; however, they mismatch teacher’s
expectations; i.e., students fail to understand teacher’s instructions and consequently they will
give wrong responses. This situation motivated the researcher to carry out with a study in
order to find out the reason why the students cannot catch up with the teacher’s commands.
1.5. Purpose of the study
The purpose of this study is to find out the reasons behind student’s lack of understanding
teachers instructions in order to keep classroom momentum in English language classrooms,
in this specific case grade 11 classrooms. One aspect that we have to take into account is the
fact that English language is taught from grade 6 till grade 12. So, it is inadmissible to still
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How much time do teachers give the students to practice listening?
Do teachers use Long Distance-dictation in the classroom to promote listening skills?
1.8. Hypotheses
Generally, the students seem to understand the teacher’s commands but they seem to fail in
responding the commands effectively because they have some difficult in listening. So, I
believe that if long distance-dictation technique becomes more practiced in English Language
classroom the students will be able to increase their ability of listening. Regarding the critical
questions above, the researcher states the following hypotheses:
Maybe the activities used by the teachers in the classroom for listening skills are not
adequate to enable students to catch up with teacher’s commands;
Probably the teachers do not give enough time to students to practice listening in
English language classroom;
It may also be the fact that teachers do not use long distance – dictation in their
teaching to promote listening skills.
1.9. Research Methodology
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1.9.3. Sample
The sample of this study was extracted from the target population; the researcher selected
50% of 236 students, in this case 118 students made part of the sample and two grade 11
teachers. This criterion of selecting the sample is suggested by Nkapa (1997), where he
defends that selecting 50% of the target population allows the researcher to generalize the
findings of the study. The selection of the sample was done randomly. In other words, the
researcher numbered 118 papers and other 118 unnumbered, and then he placed them in a
box, after that he asked students to choose any paper; so the students who happened to choose
the numbered papers made part of the sample.
1.10. Research Instruments
Questionnaires and observation forms were the instruments used in this research. The
questionnaire was administered to both students and teachers, while the observation forms
were administered in the classroom during lessons. Also a dictation activity will be
administrated, in this case long-distance dictation.
1.10.1. Observation Form
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1.12. Limitations of the study
This research was carried out at Napipine Secondary School in the 2nd cycle, 4 days of the
first term. As we can notice the period dated for data collection was extremely very short
because the researcher had to do all his best in order to meet the plans in 4 days. On the first
day, the researcher had to present himself to the representatives of the school and soon be
directed to the teachers of English grade 11. From there he had to present his plan to them
and fix how they were going to handle the work. The following day, he worked just with the
teachers and the remaining 2 days worked with the students. So, the only constraint he found
was the exiguity of time for data collection.
1.13. The structure of the study
This research is organized in 5 chapters, whereby each chapter is composed by some
subtopics meticulously portraying its sense. So, the Chapter I , is composed with Introduction
whereby we find preliminary information of this research such as: Statement of the problem,
Scope of the study, Merit of the study, Purpose of the study, Objectives, Critical questions,
Hypotheses, Research Methodology, Research Design, Sample, Procedures, Limitations of
h d d h f h d
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CHAPTER II
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1. Defining dictation
Davis and Rinvolucri (1988:1) suggest asking ourselves some questions before trying to
define dictation:
“Who gives the dictation, and to whom? Who controls the pace of the dictation? Who
chooses or creates the text? Who corrects it? How long should the texts be? How should the
voice dictating sound? Must the listener write down everything?”
These set of questions show how challenging dictation can because it is sometimes seen like
a boring activity because of its nature. For example, it takes a lot of time during dictation and
after dictation when the teacher correction was being dictated. It becomes more challenging
when we come to Mozambican secondary schools were the number of students by class can
go up to 150 students.
However, dictation is a special activity when it comes to gathering students into groups to
it d h t i b i id b th t h It i f h f d i b t
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It means that dictation is the process of writing down what someone else has just said either
to test or the teach language in the classroom which can be monitored by the teacher or by a
student to another student.
In Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (1995:190), dictation means “being dictated to:
passage that is dictated”. In addition, Oller (1979: 39) states that: “Dictation is a task which
requires the processing of temporally constrained sequences of material in the language,
divided up the stream of speech and then refers down what is heard requires understanding
the meaning of the material”.
If we have a closer look at the definition above, we may come to a conclusion that dictation
is a kind of activity that not only challenge students’ short term memory and understanding in
spelling vocabulary but also to understand the meaning of what is said. The students are
hoped to perceive the contents of the passage and recognized all the words and sentences
being read so that they are able to put these aural codes into written symbols.
Dictation is used to evaluate most of the aspects of language simultaneously. Its main
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So, among the reasons for adding long-distance dictation to our teaching we have:2
It can easily be transferred from the ESL (English as Second Language) to the
literacy classroom where its student centered nature, and appeal to students with a
variety of learning styles means it is often very successful;
It is a time-tested activity with proven value;
It is a multi-skill activity which integrates speaking, listening, reading, and writing;
It can be a very low preparation activity. Once you are comfortable with the basic
concept, the dictations become very quick and easy to prepare;
It is cheap. You don’t need a lot of expensive resources. A pen and some pieces of
paper are enough to perform it;
It can easily be made engaging, meaningful, and relevant to the students;
Numerous variations allow the teacher to focus on different skills within the
activity;
It’s inclusive; in mixed ability classes, students can take part in the same activity at
the same time if the teacher prepares easier and harder versions of the same text.
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cycle continues until the dictation is complete. The roles can be shifted during the dictation,
so that each and every student plays both roles.
ii. The Correction Phase
Correction can be handled in a variety of ways; however, we prefer to have the students
checking the text together and trying to identify any errors or mistakes. The teacher will then
read the whole text to them at a natural speed while they check and correct. Finally, they are
given a copy of the complete text to check again.
It this activity all the four language skills are involved, however, our focus is on listening
skill. If you have noticed, listening plays one importance role in language productivity
because if the writer fails to understand the message brought by the runner , automatically,
the message gets distorted. Engaging students on developing this skill, we believe that it will
be easier for them to speak because they have already grasped the message. Again, this is the
first language skill that we should develop.
Nation & Newton (2009) provide quite an extensive list of ways of using different techniques
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2.1.2. Reasons for using dictations in the classroom
Anything we believe to be useful should have reasons for its usefulness. So, in dictation we
have those reasons why we should include this activity in our teaching process. Davis and
Rinvolucri (1988:20), mention ten good reasons to use dictation:
1. The students are active during the exercise: when using dictation students can be
the “subject” of the lesson because they can be actively engaged in decoding the
dictation, and all the students are involved at the same time;
2. The students are active after the exercise: students can correct their own work and
also help on peer correction. This practice of self and peer correction can lead
students to reflect on their writing production;
3. Dictation leads to oral communicative activities: students can comment their
opinions about what has been dictated. While the sentence or text is being dictated the
inside self-thinking that has taken place during the dictation phase leads naturally into
comparing experiences with other members of the group;
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7. Dictation will often calm groups: everyone in the class will have their attention
focus on one point – the activity proposed;
8. Dictation is safe to non-native teachers: teachers have time to prepare the language
in advance;
9. For English it is a technically useful exercise: in English sounds and letters are
sometimes different. “Decoding the sounds of this particular language and recording
them in writing is a major learning task”;
10. Dictation gives access to interesting texts: it can be either the students or the
teacher’s choice.
As we can see dictation has enormous advantages to what concerns language production and
specially the development of the for language skills. Listening, however, plays a media role
during the process of dictation because is the good grasping of the transmitted message that
the students will successfully fulfill the task.
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The reading process occurs simultaneously with the reading process; while writing students
are reading. They read to dictate and to correct their work. It means that it is an automatic
process.
3. Speaking skills
While the students are correcting their work in pairs or groups, they are using the language
proposed during the dictation activity. Students can also dictate parts of the texts and in some
activities be free to ask questions to solve doubts. Harmer (1991:119) asserts that “teachers
frequently complain that their students have nothing to say”. However, the teacher can start a
speaking activity with a sentence dictated in which students have to complete something, and
then he or she has something to work with, because “little dictations can get the process
moving...” (Harmer, 1991:119). Students think consciously about what is being dictated.
4. Writing skills
Students need to pay attention to spelling and accuracy while they are writing what is being
dictated. In a jigsaw activity for example, while reconstructing a text, they have to pay closer
i h d h i Th i h h i i i b l d
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If the students do well, dictation is motivating;
Dictation involves the whole class, no matter how large it is;
During and after the dictation, all the students are active and also correction can be
done by the students themselves;
Dictation can be prepared for mixed ability groups;
Dictation can be prepared for any level;
The students, as well as the teacher, can get instant feedback (if the exercise is
corrected immediately);
The dictation passage can (and should) be completely prepared in advance (it also can
be taped);
Dictation can be administered quite effectively by an inexperienced teacher;
While dictating, the teacher can move about, giving individual attention;
Dictation exercises can pull the class together, for example, during those valuable first
minutes.
2.1.5. Disadvantages of using dictation
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It takes up a lot of time especially if the dictation is afterwards corrected word by
word;
It does not develop writing skills – students do not have to express ideas in a written
form, or find ways of constructing sentences (according to Doff’s view). The main
skill practiced is spelling.
It is considered a teacher-centred activity.
2.2 Listening
2.2.1. Defining listening
Based on Hornby (1995: 687) listening comes from a verb to listen which means to make an
effort to hear somebody or something. According to Howatt and Dakin as quoted by
Saricoban (2006), “listening is the ability to identify and understand what others are saying.
This involves understanding a speaker’s accentor pronunciation, his grammar and his
vocabulary, and grasping his meaning”.
The definitions above clearly imply that listening ability is the skill which is required to listen
ll b d hi i i bili i h bili l h d
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students to learn how to listen. There are two main views of listening bottom-up process
and top-down listening process.
2.2.2.1. Bottom-up listening process
This type of process is linear as the meaning is gained at the end of the process. Hedge (2000:
230) points out that we use our knowledge of the language and our ability to process acoustic
signals to make sense of the sounds that speech presents to us. In other words we create themessage from the individual parts e.g. from sounds to words to grammatical units to lexical
meaning. And at the same time with this process we use any clues that can help us with the
meaning.
Hedge claims that there are several clues such as the stress implied on certainmeaningful units, relationship between stressed and unstressed syllables; we also use
our lexical and syntactic knowledge to get the meaning of the words.
2.2.2. 2. Top down process
Previous background knowledge of the topic of the conversation help the listener to
l i d i h h k i lki b d hi i k l d bl hi
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2.3. Importance and difficulties of Listening in language learning
It has taken many years to give the listening skill the importance it deserves in second
language learning. According to Rivers (1966:196), “Speaking does not of itself constitute
communication unless what is said is comprehended by another person. Teaching the
comprehension of spoken speech is therefore a primary importance of the communication
aim is to be reached”.
However, Morley (1972:7) notes that “perhaps an assumption that listening is a reflex, a little
like breathing - listening seldom receives overt teaching attention in one´s native language –
has marked the importance and complexity of listening with understanding in a non-native
language”.
Contrary to what everybody thinks about second language learning, listening competence is
wider than speaking competence. This is the reason why, recently, the language teaching
profession has brought into focus on listening comprehension. According to Nunan
(2001:23), Listening is a six-staged process, consisting of Hearing, Attending,
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After following with the next stage, it is necessary to make a remark: as it has mentioned
previously, the background knowledge is important and people have to take into account
several points: general factual information, local factual information, socio-cultural
knowledge and knowledge of context. With these factors, the information will be correctly
received.
The next step, Remembering , is an important Listening process because it means that an
individual, in addition to receiving and interpreting the message, has also added it to the
mind’s storage bank, which means that the information will be remembered in our mind. But
just as our attention is selective, so too is our memory, what is remembered may be quite
different from what was originally heard or seen.
Then we have Evaluating stage; the listener evaluates the message that has been received. It
is at this point when active listeners weigh evidence, sort fact from opinion and determine the
presence or absence of bias or prejudice in a message. The effective listener makes sure that
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2.4.1. Pre-listening
Pre-listening can be done in variety of ways and occurs naturally when listening is part of an
integrated skills course and listening task is linked to a previous content-based activity. The
pre-listening includes: 1).The teacher gives background information before the students listen
to thetext.2). The students read something relevant to the topic.3). The students look at the
pictures that prepare them for tile topic.4). There is a class discussion of the topic or situation
in the upcoming-test.5). There is a question-answer session with the class of a whole.6). The
teacher gives written exercises to preview tile content.7). The students go over tile procedures
for the upcoming listening task.
2.4.2. While listening
After the students get some experiences from the previous explanation and some vocabularies
addition about the material, the teacher can teach them through some ways, as follows: 1)
The teacher asks the students to listen to an oral text. 2). The teacher reads the listening
twice. 3) The teacher asks questions about the text. 4) The students answer questions in their
answer sheets.
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Listening, as we know, is the skill of understanding spoken language. Listening is an
essential skill, present in most of the activities we carry out throughout our lives, as Lindsay
and Knight show:
We listen to a wide variety of things, for example; what someone says during a conversation,
face to face or on the telephone; announcements giving information, for example, at an airport
or railway station; the weather forecast on the radio; a play on the radio; music; someoneelse’s conversation (eavesdropping); a lecture; professional advice, for example, at the
doctor’s, in the bank; instructions, for example, on how to use a photocopier or other
machinery; directions; a taped dialogue in class (2006: 45)
Besides, Listening is a complex process due to its double psychological and social nature:
Listening is a psychological phenomenon, which takes place on a cognitive level inside
people’s heads, and a social phenomenon, which develops interactively between people and
the environment surrounding them. It considers listening as a complex process, which needs to
be understood in order to teach it, and subsequently, evaluate it before integrating it with
phonological aspects and with the skill of speaking. (Bueno, Madrid and McLaren, 2006:282).
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Looking at a list of items before listening.
2. Reading the text before listening.
3. Reading through comprehension checks, questions or completion activities.
4. Predicting/speculating - useful with high achievers.
5. Previewing new words. (Less than 10 words)
6. Using advance organizers -pictures, charts, films or comprehension questions.
7. Give a clear and definite purpose for listening each time.
(A) Listen for main ideas.
(B) Listen for details.(C) Listen and make inferences.
8. Group/pair discussion about the topic
B. While-listening activities
While-listening activities are usually designed to help learners develop the skill of eliciting
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Post-listening activities can be used to check comprehension. The comprehension check is
either related to pre-listening activities, such as predicting, or extends the topic and helps
students remember new vocabulary. The following are some suggested activities for the
post-listening phase.
1. Group/Pair discussion
2. Paired reading.
3. Summary writing.
4. Shadowing.
5. Role play.
6. Comprehension checks.
2.6. Teacher’s role during listening activities
Teachers carry a big responsibility in their classrooms; they have a huge impact on their
learners either positive or negative and it is the teacher’s responsibility to create friendly and
supportive atmosphere.
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A teacher as a tutor - is a teacher who acts as a coach and as a resource
(Harmer 1991: 242) and is able to help their students to develop ideas. Teachers as
tutors can help their students during each stage and their help is very valuable during
the while-listening stage during which they should help their students with
prediction of the missing information.
A teacher as an investigator - a teacher, who observes the activities in their
lessons and subsequently evaluates their efficiency, belongs into this group.
They keep reflective journals and evaluate the benefits of each listening activity.
A teacher as a prompter - is a teacher who encourages their students and offers
suggestions about activities that are being done by the students. They ought to
support their students during each stage so that the students can be more
successful.
A teacher as a participant - a teacher can participate as an equal in the set
activities but they must beware of leading in these activities. Their participation can
also improve the classroom atmosphere. Teachers as participants can participate in
pre and post-listening task such as discussions role-plays and so on.
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It is teacher’s duty to put into practice all these roles to ensure a successful learning.
However, it will always be a challenge to teach English language in our Mozambican schools
duo to the large number of students in the classes. It is teacher’s responsibility to always find
ways to deal with such situations.
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CHAPTER III
3. DATA PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS
3.1. Research design
As we have mentioned before, this study was qualitative and quantitative. We decided to use these
mixed methods because it was concerned with qualitative phenomenon, that is, the
phenomenon relating to the students’ listening failure in the classroom. And it wasquantitative research because it was based on the measurement of the quantity or amount of
activities that teachers use to promote speaking skills in the classroom.
In this study, we decided to do two activities: library activity and field activity. Library
activity has been discussed in chapter II. While in this chapter, we will discuss about field
activity. Arikunto says that a field research can be carried out at the hospital, school, factory,
family, society, etc. (1993: 10). Along with this statement, this was study was conducted at
Napipine Secondary School with grade 11 students of two different streams. To get the
empirical data for our study, we administered a long-distance dictation activity. They were
supposed to do the activity to show the advancement in listening. In analyzing the data, we
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3.2.1. Sample
Having determined the population, we selected a sample, which is a very important step in
conducting a research. A good sample is one that is representative of the population from
which it was selected. Therefore, the representativeness of a sample determines the validity
of the generalization of the result. In this study we selected 50% of the total population, i.e.
118 students. This method of selecting the sample is suggested by Nkapa (1997), where he
defends that selecting 50% of the target population allows the researcher to generalize the
findings of the study.
3.3. Presenting and analyzing the findings
3.3.1. Administration of long-distance dictation
We started collecting our data by administrating a long-distance dictation activity.
Afterwards, we distributed the questionnaire to the students and the teachers.
As we said before a number of 181 students were involved in the activity, and the results
produced from the observation are shown in the tables 2&3. However, it is importance to
highlight here that, the students did not change the paper they were writing on, because the
mistakes and the omissions committed make part of the study.
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Acceptable: 12 – 15 min
Good: 11-12 min
Excellent: 1-10 min
Yet, to what concerns the criteria of attributing the performance, apart from the time, it was
taken into account the number of mistakes as well as the number of omitted words. (See
graphs 1&2)
Table3: Performance stream B2
Group Performance Time
Acceptable Good Excellent
1 x 11.45
2 x 17.54
3 x 9.23
4 x 13.4
5 x 18.5
6 x 11.12
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conversation, we need first to listen and understand to what is being said by the other
interlocutor, so that, we can give the right response.
Graph 2: Mistakes and Omission stream B1
Source: The author
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3.4. Question and its interpretation
3.4.1. Students’ feeling in the classroom
The classroom is the only place where students meet and show off their abilities in language.
So, if the classroom environment is not favourable or the rapport between teacher and student
is not good, consequently, something may go out of the axis. We asked the students: how do
feel during your English language classes?
About 55% of the students said that they enjoy English language classes as shown in the
graph below. It is a good sign because we do not enjoy what we do not like. Therefore, 33%
of the students said that they feel happy during the class, however, for us, joyfulness is more
powerful that happiness. Because, joy is the state of welcoming something, meaning that,
students think they could have English classes even in a day off. Happiness is a short-period
sensation that can come and go in a matter of minutes. Anyway, in general, the students like
to be in class.
Graph 3: Students’ feeling during English language classes
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appreciated by the students. Furthermore, it is known that it is not possible to be loved or
liked by everyone; we come from different social classes and we have different opinions and
views. However, even knowing these all facts, we asked the students the following question:
What is your opinion about your English language teacher?
The students of grade 11, streams B1 and B2, believe that their teacher is a nice guy with a
percentage of 84% (as illustrated in graph 4). By nice guy, we meant someone who is open to
every student and also talks to everyone, no matter if the student is weak or not.
3.4.3. The practice of listening activities
As we mentioned in chapter II during literature discussion, listening is the first language skill
that we have to develop right before any other skill. Because for us to have a conversation we
need to hear then respond and not other way round. We believe that a good listener is a good
speaker. It takes long time to develop this skill. We have to train our ears in other to get used
to different accents and voice speed. So, if the student do not practice it in the classroom it is
obvious that they will not do themselves without a hint or a little push.
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About 71% of them said that, they never have listening activities (see graph 5). This result matches
with the hypothesis no 2: Probably the teachers do not give enough time to students to practice
listening in English language classroom. We will not have good speakers if we do not have
good listeners. So, teachers must sit down and reflect about their responsibilities; apart from
rights they also have duties.
Graph 5: How often do you practice listening activities?
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Moreover, students like a live environment whereby they can use and abuse their learning
abilities. So, using long-distance dictation to teach listening skill is one of the various
strategies we have to do so; the students may not realize that they are being training to be
excellent listeners, but after some time they will find themselves listening with no difficulties.
Furthermore, we asked the students about how often do they practice long-distance dictation,
and 50% answered seldom (as shown in graph 6). However, they justified their answers in the
following terms:
“… we do practice the normal dictation whereby teacher reads and we write down (…) but
dictation the way we have practiced today we have never practiced before”
“We remember that we have practiced this activity only once, and we didn’t finish it because
of time.”
This result shows that there is an extra work that should be done by the teachers in order to
find out ways easy and cheap ways to teach listening; and long-distance dictation is one of
those ways.
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We asked our interlocutors about the nature of their classes and their answered teacher-
centred, with a percentage of 72% (see graph 7). This nature of class where the student is a
passive subject do not explore students’ potential; so, there is a need change the nature of our
class into student-centered learning class.
Graph 7: What is the nature of your English language lessons?
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methodologies their leant during their training process. And also to find out if is there any
relationship between students’ failure in listening and the teaching methodologies used by the
teachers.
Graph 8: What would you like to see improved in English language classes?
Source: the author
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We asked this question because we believe that the experience on doing something
contributes in the way we perform our tasks. People with less experience will always have a
“gap” to be filled; however, experienced people will successfully perform the tasks in time.
The same applies to teachers with less experience who find teaching large classes as a “seven
head monster”. However, experienced teachers know how to deal with large classes.
3.5.3. Teaching a specific skill
Teaching English as foreign language is not an easy task taking into account Mozambican
reality, where the schools are not equipped with labs and other important instruments that
facilitate the learning process. However, teachers cannot cross the arms and just wait for the
government; they have to be creative. So, we asked the following question: What is/are the
skill(s) that you emphasize most in your lessons? Why? We asked this question because we
know that Communicative Language Learning (CLT) is the teaching method that emphasizes
classroom interaction. So, our respondents answer in the following terms:
“Speaking is the skill I emphasize most; because speaking is more complex than any other skill.
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focuses more on speaking skill. With this answer it is clear that listening is not given much
importance. Consequently, there is a match between the answers given by the students and
the ones given by the teachers; whereby 71% of them said that they never practice listening
skill in the class (refer to graph 5).
3.5.4. No use of long-distance dictation
To what concerns the use of long-distance dictation, we asked the following question: Do you use
long-distance dictation to improve students’ listening ability? They answered in the
following terms:
“No, I don’t. But I use dictation not to teach listening but writing.”
“I don’t use this method because it is hard when it comes for large classes... I tried once and Ifound it difficult. The school doesn’t have resources to teach listening.”
As we can see from the answers given by our interlocutors, the no use of long-distance
dictation to teach listening skill is a fact in Napipine Secondary school. Long-distance
dictation is a cheap way to teach listening. It does not require much money. The lack of
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The results that we brought here clearly show that teachers have to review their teaching
methodologies and goals they have set, and the students also have to change their minds and
give importance to English language. Speaking English fluently constitutes a huge advantage
when we come to job requirements. Apart from that it is necessary to have a plan B, because
if we fail in A we still having B to try again.
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CHAPTER IV
4. PROPOSAL AND IMPLEMENTATION
4.1. Proposal
We have mentioned in chapter I that, the major objective of this research is to promote
Listening Skills through Long distance – dictation in English Language classes. We came up
with this research because during a full trimester of teaching practice at Napipine Secondary
School, we came across with a problem that led us to realize that there was a lack of listening
skills practice in the classroom. Because most of the times there was not effective response
after teacher’s input. For example, they could speak but out of context. This phenomenon was
notable in all English classes that we had opportunity to administrate lessons. However,
teachers are still doing their task of teaching but the students still not have developed the
competence of listening.
So, we decided to carry out this study with the following research question: Why students of
Napipine Secondary School, grade 11, are not able to listen effectively in English language
classes?
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4.2. Implementation
4.2.1. Running the activity
This activity has got four main steps and they are described below. We believe that if
teachers perform it the way will just describe, we believe that he will get the results that he
expects. However, it is important to say that this is not a standard structure; it is just a
proposal on how this activity should be carried out.
Step one
The first thing to do is to find a suitable text, in this case we propose the short story titled
“The three little pigs”; it has three paragraphs and about 269 words. The second thing to do
is to find a suitable surface to place the text. We recommend placing the texts on the wall
corridor, i.e., outside the classroom, if the class is large; but we can also place on the black
board if we think that the classroom will accommodate all the students during the task.
Proposed text:
he hree Little Pigs
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The big bad wolf tried to huff and puff and blow the house down, but he
could not. He kept trying for hours but the house was very strong and the
little pigs were safe inside. He tried to enter through the chimney but the
third little pig boiled a big pot of water and kept it below the chimney.
The wolf fell into it and died. The two little pigs now felt sorry for
having been so lazy. They too built their houses with bricks and lived
happily ever after.
Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith (1989)
Step two
Here the teacher first writes the title on the board and pre-teaches some vocabularies. After
that he demands the students to sit in groups; two students by group is the recommended
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4.2.2. Checking the results
Now, how can the teacher check if the students have problem or not in speaking?
There are two ways to do it: the first is walking around the class during the activity in order
to check what they are writing; the second one is to collect their paper and compare what they
have written with the text.
However, in our research we used both ways, because we needed to have enough evidences
to prove that it is possible to teach listening through long-distance dictation.
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CHAPTER V
5. RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSION
5.1. Recommendations
The teaching of English language in Mozambique must be seen by the teachers as a long term
challenge, because we know that it is hard to show the society that English is very important
tool that everyone should possess; we do not know what will happen in the next years. So, we
ask our teachers to always find alternative ways to teach and not only wait for the
government.
A. Recommendations for the teachers
So, according to what we have seen in the field during this research, we recommend the
following:
1. Teachers have to change their mindset to what concerns the teaching of the four
language skills;
2. Teachers should not cross their arms and wait for the government to come up with
solutions to the lack of teaching and learning resources;
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Here is a tip: If you like listening to music, find one English song and try to write down its
letter. Afterwards, you compare what you have written with the original song letter. You can
find any song letter you want on the searching platform www.google.com.
C. To the Ministry of Education and Human Development
To the Ministry of Education, we recommend and advice them to rethink about what were the
objectives behind the introduction of English language in the national system of education. If
the objective was to have proficient people in English, so, you have to create conditions for
that to happen.
http://www.google.com/http://www.google.com/http://www.google.com/
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5.2. CONCLUSION
After the discussion that we brought throughout this study, as well as the investigation’s
results, we have come up with the conclusion that without listening skills, language learning
is impossible. This because there is no communication where there is no human interaction.
To interact, first, we need to listen and then respond to what we have just listened to.
Nowadays, however, despite all technological advancements in the field of education, like the
invention of language labs and some other software containing audio material, learners still
problems in listening. We believe that, the main reasons are: they spend too little time to
improve their listening skills; also the inappropriate strategies used by teachers in a
learning setting may be an important reason for their poor listening comprehension;
again we can add here the fact that teachers do not give importance to listening skill. To
acquire a high level of listening competence, students need to be exposed to a variety of
listening comprehension contexts. We believe that by knowing the context of a listening text
or conversation, the students will have access to different accents and the number of their
lexicon will increase. Listeners can use both bottom-up processers (linguistic knowledge)
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REFERENCE
1. Anderson, A. & T. Lynch (1988) Listening . Oxford: OUP.
2. Arikunto, Suharsimi. (2002) Research procedure; An approach to practice. Jakarta: Rineka
Cipta
3. Brown, S. (2006). Teaching Listening. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
4. Bueno, A, D. Madrid and N. McLaren, (eds). (2006) TEFL in Secondary Education.
Granada: Editorial Universidad de Granada.
5. Celce-Murcia, Marianne (2001). Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language.
Thomson learning.
6. Davis, P; Rinvolucri, M. (1988) Dictation, new methods, new possibilities. CUP
7. Doff, A. (1990). “Teach English. A Training Course for Teachers.” Cambridge: CUP.
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15. Morley, J. (1972) Improving aural comprehension. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press.
16. Moss & Ross-Feldman, L (2003), Second Language Acquisition in Adults: From
Research to Practice. Washington, DC
17. Nation, I.S.P, & Newton, Jonathan (2009), Teaching ESL/EFL Listening and
Speaking , New York: Routledge
18. Neville, C. (2007), “Introduction to Research and Research Methods”: USA
19. Nkapa, N. (1997), “Educational Research”: Nigeria
20. Nunan, D. (2001) Designing Tasks for the Communicative Classroom. Cambridge:
CUP.
21. Oller, J.W. (1979). Language Test at School. London: Longman.
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QUESTIONNAIRE FOR STUDENTS
Grade 11 Stream B1/B2
Dear student. Please, answer all the questions below according to the instructions.
Read carefully before giving your answer or comment.
1. What is your feeling about English Language lessons?
a. Good b. Happy c. Enjoyable d. Boring
2. What is your opinion about your English Language teacher?
a. Nice guy b. Good teacher c. Bad teacher
3. How often do you practice listening activities?
a. Never b. Sometimes c. Very few times
4. How often do you practice long-distance dictation?
a. Never b. Sometimes c. Seldom
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QUESTIONNARE FOR TEACHERS
This questionnaire is to be answered and given back to the researcher. It is merely
for study purpose.
Please, answer all the questions by choosing one option, where necessary, and give your
comment (s) where requested to.
1. Do you love your profession?
a. Yes b. No
2. How long have you being teaching English Language?
a. 3years b. 2 years c. 1 year d. More than 3years
3. What is/are the skill(s) that you emphasize most in your lessons? Why?
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OBSERVATION FORM – LISTENING – GRADE 11 - STREAM B1/B2
Teacher’s notes Group Performance Time
Acceptable Good Excellent
1
2
3
4
5
6
7