Abstract R & D Background Purpose & Design Action Plan Findings & Analysis Implications Remarks
> Purpose & Design
I. Topic of the project
  Developing listening skills at KS3
   
II. Purpose of the project
 
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 To identify students’ needs in listening to English using a range of data types
 
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 To adopt appropriate strategies at the pre-, while-, and post-stages of listening to improve students’ listening skills
 
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 To support students through the use of appropriate resources
   
III. Strategies used
 
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 Doing needs analysis: Listening is less directly observed and less noticeable in both its development and its everyday use (Rost, 1994).  The teachers of this school believed that data can promote teaching and learning and help them set appropriate learning and teaching objectives (Kirkup et al, 2005).  Therefore, they tried to use various tools at the beginning of the school year to diagnose students’ needs more accurately.  Here are the data types selected and their specific focus(es):

 
Tool
Focus
• HKDSE Paper 3 analysis
• To know more about the assessment requirements of the senior secondary level and identify the gaps of student learning
• TSA data analysis
• Pre-listening test
• To identify the listening sub-skills students are weak in
• Listening diary
• To find out about students’ learning habits
• Teachers’ observations
• To identify students’ strengths and weaknesses in listening
• To identify the gaps in the school-based curriculum

  After analysing the data, the teachers identified areas for improvement and put forward possible solutions as follows:
 
Area for improvement
Possible solution
• Exposure
 
- Students fail to understand spoken texts because they do not have enough opportunities for listening to English and they are not familiar with different accents.
• Provide more opportunities for listening in the formal and informal curricula
• Have students listen to speakers of different backgrounds and with different accents because with more exposure and practice students can learn to hear differences in accent (Rost, 1994).
• Listening sub-skills
 
- making connections between ideas with the help of discourse markers
 
- recognising emotions and identifying attitudes of speakers based on stress and intonation
• Design task-based units of work incorporating the sub-skills as “explicit practice to improve listening skills would be advisable and beneficial” (Anderson & Lynch, 1988)
• Provide input on related language, vocabulary and background knowledge in the units to “warm the learners up” (Rost, 1994)
• Teach intonation and stress to help students understand speakers’ emotions and attitudes
• Completing open-cloze questions:
 
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Students fail to record information while listening because they are weak in spelling and cannot jot down information fast enough.  Their lack of knowledge of and exposure to a range of topics, text types and question types also hinder them from understanding spoken language.  Due to these inadequacies, the open-cloze questions which appear in the HKDSE pose a particular challenge to them.
• Teach letter-sound relationship to improve spelling
• Teach note-taking skills to lengthen students’ memory span (Rost, 1994)
• Introduce more question types apart from MC questions, more topics and more text types as “an effective programme to develop listening skills” provides a wide range of listening situations and tasks (Anderson & Lynch, 1988)
• Habits of listening:
 
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Students have no idea what they can do at the pre-, while-, and
post-listening stages
 
- Students never reflect on their own learning
• Introduce explicit strategies at the three stages of listening (Saricoban, 1999)
• Support students to keep up a good habit of completing learning logs after listening and making continuous reflections so that students “can sense their own improvement” (Rost, 1994)

IV. Design of the Project
The project was launched in September 2011.  Various tools were used to identify students’ needs and inform the school-based curriculum design.  The task-based framework was used to design units of work which were based on textbooks, skills books or tailormade materials.  There was strategic use of resources to maximise student learning in both the formal and informal curricula.

V. Assessment
 
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 Listening diaries
 
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 Pre-test and post-test
 
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 Student interview

 

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