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.