CONDUCTING A LISTENING FACILITATION IN A CLASS OF THIRD YEAR STUDENTS, FAST-TRACK PROGRAM, FELTE, ULIS, VNU: DIFFICULTIES AND SOLUTIONS =

Abstract

In the recent years, the traditional teacher-centered language classroom which limited the students’ interaction and communication was replaced by learner-centered approach. Under the light of communicative language teaching and learning, this new method which included a variety of new activities such as debate, forum, presentation and especially facilitation in all the four language skills was widely applied in the university teaching program in Vietnam. In order to help the students as well as the teachers to understand more about facilitation and its adaptation, this case study on a class of third year fast-track students from Faculty of English Language Teacher Education, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, illustrated the difficulties that the students encountered in conducting a listening facilitation. Also, through three observations of the activity as well as the results from the questionnaires to 22 participants of this study, the researcher designed the semi-interview questions for three students and the current listening teacher of the class to search for more explanation on the difficulties and suggested solutions to overcome those problems. The most frequently meet difficulty in preparation steps was choosing suitable materials, writing the transcript of the recordings and designing exercises that relevant to the students’ levels. The possible solutions to those problems were to narrow down the theme, practice listening and look for references from standard books. Meanwhile, in the implementation process, the time limit and questions from classmates were a great pressure to the facilitators. Moreover, some facilitators were still nervous during the facilitation and gave unclear instructions to the students. In parallel, strictly taking control of time and class management as well as carefully preparation for the anticipated problems in checking exercises sections was mentioned. Besides, the not-fully-awareness of giving unclear instructions of the students provided some pedagogical implications for the teacher in guiding them to carry out facilitation. Besides, this paper would also serve as a source of information for the next generations of FT students in conducting a listening facilitation in class.