How to grab them by the e.a.r ?+ – improving students’ motivation in listening classes

TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC SƯ PHẠM TP HỒ CHÍ MINH 
TẠP CHÍ KHOA HỌC 
HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION
JOURNAL OF SCIENCE
ISSN: 
1859-3100 
KHOA HỌC GIÁO DỤC 
Tập 16, Số 8 (2019): 203-215 
EDUCATION SCIENCE
Vol. 16, No. 8 (2019): 203-215
 Email: tapchikhoahoc@hcmue.edu.vn; Website:  
203 
Research Article 
HOW TO GRAB THEM BY THE E.A.R?+ 
– IMPROVING STUDENTS’ MOTIVATION IN LISTENING CLASSES 
Nguyen Le Bao Ngoc, Tran Doan Thu* 
Ho Chi Minh City International University 
* Corresponding author: Nguyen Le Bao Ngoc – Email: nlbngoc@hcmiu.edu.vn 
Received: April 08, 2019; Revised: June 25, 2019; Accepted: July 11, 2019 
ABSTRACT 
In mixed-level English classes, the differences in students’ proficiency pose huge challenges 
for teachers. Surveys at intensive listening classes at International University show that over 40% 
of the students require multiple times of listening. Meanwhile, the rest find 1 or 2 times sufficient 
and thus feel demotivated with every repetition of the listening passage. To increase students’ 
motivation for the third time of listening, we propose a strategy called E.A.R: Extension and 
Rewards. 130 students participate in this mixed-method research. The research shows E.A.R has 
positive results and can also be applied in other skill classes. 
Keywords: extension, listening, motivation, rewards, tiered activities. 
Enhancing students’ motivation is our main focus in this research. We do believe that 
teachers play a vital role in strengthening their students’ motivation. Moreover, we cannot 
ignore the fact that teachers are also responsible when the highly motivated students begin 
to feel bored in the class. “Whatever level of motivation your students bring to the 
classroom will be transformed, for better or worse, by what happens in that classroom.” 
(David, 1993, p. 193) 
1. Motivation 
Before further discussion in this aspect, it is necessary to define motivation. 
Motivation is defined as “the reason why somebody does something or behaves in a 
particular way” (Oxford dictionary). In other words, motivation is the driving force that 
enables people to continue and achieve their goals in whatever they choose to do. That a 6-
year-old boy manages to wake up early in the morning to go to school despite his laziness 
Cite this article as: Nguyen Le Bao Ngoc, & Tran Doan Thu (2019). How to grab them by the E.A.R? – 
Improving students’ motivation in listening classes. Ho Chi Minh City University of Education Journal of 
Science, 16(8), 203-215. 
Tạp chí Khoa học Trường ĐHSP TPHCM Tập 16, Số 8 (2019): 203-215 
204 
requires some certain amount of motivation. This can be because of his mother’s promise 
to give him an ice-cream cone as a reward. This can also be due to his own willingness to 
go to school for knowledge. These different reasons give rise to the classification of two 
types of motivation: extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. 
1.1. Extrinsic motivation 
Extrinsic motivation comes from outside factors such as the feelings and attitudes of 
family, friends and society. Some certain rewards or punishment can also affect a person’s 
desire to do something. In the context of education, extrinsic motivation is the motivation 
that students have from outside the classroom. (Harmer, 2017). An example of this is a 
high school male student manages to study hard and pass the university entrance exam to 
receive an expensive gift – a new motorbike – from his parents. 
1.2. Intrinsic motivation 
Intrinsic motivation has been the centre of study by social and educational 
psychologists for half a century (Tohidi & Jabbari, 2011). Intrinsic motivation comes 
mainly from inside a person’s own will, when the driving force for performing an activity 
is mainly because of happiness and enjoyment. At schools, intrinsic motivation can be 
triggered mainly by what the teacher does in the classroom. More specifically, it is the 
teaching method, classroom activities, and students’ self-awareness of success and failure 
that can generate intrinsic motivation (Hammer, 2017). 
2. Literature review 
While it is difficult to find ways for increasing students’ extrinsic and intrinsic 
motivation, it is even more challenging to sustain it during the course. There are a variety 
of reasons for students to lose motivation. One of those factors is mixed-level classrooms. 
In mixed-level classrooms, students come from different age groups, family backgrounds 
and most importantly, different academic levels. To solve this problem, numerous research 
studies have been done. Maddalena proposed using high level students to work as teaching 
assistants (TAs) in a mixed-level class (Maddalena, 2002). The result is that the majority of 
students felt highly motivated and agreed that the TAs play a valuable role in assisting the 
low-level students in the class. In 2015, a group of researchers proposed that scaffolding 
could be of great help in multilevel classrooms. In construction, scaffolding refers to the 
metal structures which are set up against the building to help builders reach to high places. 
Likewise, in education, scaffolding describes support that teachers make and adjust 
according to students’ needs (Pol et al., 2015). The result is positive but its tremendous 
limitation is time constraint for both teachers and students involved. 
Despite numerous ways of dealing with mixed-level classes, the most widely used 
method is differentiating instructions in the classroom or tiered activities. The first research 
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that came up with this term is Tomlinson (1999). She proposed the first ideas of 
differentiating instruction to tailor students’ specific needs. 
In 2001, Heacox wrote a book with templates and ideas drawn from Bloom’s 
taxonomy and Gardner’s multiple intelligences to suggest different ways to tier activities. 
Tiered activities mean designing different materials for students in different groups of 
levels. This method of teaching ensures that teachers can meet the needs of all students and 
thus increase and maintain students’ motivation. Richard & Omdal conducted a research 
with 7 control classrooms receiving the same instructions and 7 treatment classrooms 
receiving three levels of tiered instructions. They witnessed a clear difference in the 
achievement of the low-level students who did not receive special treatment and those who 
received tiered instruction (2007). 
3. Aim and purpose of research 
While tiered instructions yield positive results, there is a lingering problem that must 
be considered: students are divided into groups based on their level differences, which 
results in discrimination. For students in low-level groups, they may feel intimidated and 
inferior. On the other hand, students in high-level groups may find the other groups a 
sizable hindrance in the lesson development. This can greatly affect students’ motivation. 
Furthermore, the students in each group may have no motivation to change their class 
status. They may simply accept their position in their labelled groups or feel satisfied with 
the instructions designed specifically for their levels. Realizing this problem, we propose a 
method that can aim at dealing with mixed-level classes but at the same time creating less 
discrimination among students: Extension and Rewards (E.A.R). 
This research aims at using E.A.R to deal with students from different level groups. 
The research questions for this study are: 
(1) Will students feel more motivated both intrinsically and extrinsically? 
(2) Will this method benefit both the low-level students and high-level students in 
class? 
(3) Is the problem of discrimination solved by using E.A.R? 
We also expect that this method, with less discrimination in the classroom, will enable the 
low-level students to try harder and harness their skills rather than accept that they are only 
in the low-level group. The high-level students will also benefit from the extension 
activities and feel happier during the course. 
4. Definition, Procedures, and Materials 
4.1. Definition 
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4.1.1. Extension 
Extension is an activity on the same materials designed for students who complete 
their required tasks: (1) well ahead of the allotted time (for Reading) or (2) before reaching 
the maximum allowed attempts (for Listening). 
4.1.1. Rewards 
Rewards are bonus marks given to encourage students who accomplish the extension 
activities successfully. 
4.2. Procedures 
The actual process of handling extension activities in the classroom can be broken 
down into the following steps: 
4.2.1. Without rewards (Weeks 3-6) 
Teacher (T) conducts warm-up activities + introduces the topic of the lesson  
teaches new vocabulary  delivers the extension activities and explains the tasks in the 
textbook  requires students to listen and finish the tasks in the textbook before moving 
on to the extension activities  play the audio file 3 times  corrects the textbook 
activities and the extension activities. 
4.2.2. With rewards (Weeks 7 - 8) 
The process above is kept the same, but this time, teacher gives bonuses to students 
who have correct answers for both the extension activities and the exercises in the 
textbook. 
After the midterm, both procedures are repeated, with four more weeks without 
rewards and the last two weeks with rewards. 
4.3. Materials 
In International University, the textbooks for IE1 listening classes are Northstar 1: 
Listening and Speaking (3rd edition) and Northstar 2: Listening and Speaking (4th edition). 
The extension activities are designed with the same listening script as in the 
textbooks. This guarantees that students will listen to the same audio file for both the 
textbook’s tasks and the extra tasks. The students who finish the tasks in the books will 
move on to the extra materials while those of lower level should continue to listen to the 
tape and complete the textbook exercises. Below is one example taken from listening 1, 
unit 6, Northstar 1: Listening and Speaking (3rd edition), pages 139-140 (Figure 1). 
Tạp chí Khoa học Trường ĐHSP TPHCM Nguyen Le Bao Ngoc et al. 
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. 
Figure 1. Listening 1, Unit 6, Northstar 1 
This task only checks for detail comprehension. It is worth mentioning that the 
listening is preceded by a short reading passage which provides a background story for the 
lesson, which makes it quite easy to predict the correct answer for all the questions in the 
book. Thus, more than half of the students need only two times to finish the two tasks (see 
Figure 3). Still, a high percentage of students require three times or more than three times 
of listening. In the third time of listening, we encourage students who already finish the 
two tasks in this unit to move on to the extra tasks in the handout. Below is an example 
extension activity for Unit 6 mentioned above (Figure 2). 
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Figure 2. Sample extension activity for Listening 1, Unit 6, Northstar 1 
We call this practice: the Extension. Students will listen to the same audio for 
listening 1 in the book, but they have an extra task to do. This task is more demanding in 
the way that students must synthesize all the information to complete the summary. 
5. Research method 
5.1. Participants 
This research population is 130 first-year students from IE1 Listening classes at 
International University. The timescale for this research is from September 16th to 
December 30th, 2018. 
The students are placed in IE1 levels based on their scores in the placement test. 
(TOEFL iBT-oriented test). The maximum score is 120. Those who score 0-35 will be put 
into level IE1. This leads to a considerable gap in their English proficiency. 
UNIT 6: RISK AND CHALLENGE 
Listening 1: 
Listen to two sports reporters talking about Diana Nyad on the radio. Complete the 
summary using ONE WORD AND/OR A NUMBER for each blank. 
Two sports reporters are talking about Diana Nyad. They are doing it from a (1) _______ in a 
place between Cuba and Key West. The reason is Diana is making effort for the 4th time to swim 
from Cuba to Florida. She has been swimming for (2) _______ hours and the weather is not very 
good. The wind makes Diana swim much longer to get to Florida. Also, jellyfish bites all over her 
body. She is swimming slowly and her body is (3) _______. Normally, a swimmer would give up 
after being bitten by jellyfish. But Diana is not giving up. From Diana’s point of view, long 
distance swimming is the “(4) _______ sport in the world”. It is also a boring sport since she has 
to move her body the same way again and again during such a long time. In order to do that, Diana 
has to(5) _______ not only her body but also her mind. In fact, she does a kind of meditation. 
While swimming, she counts from 1 to 1000 in 4 different languages: English, French, Spanish 
and German. She also sings. Diana also says that long distance swimming “is not a young person’s 
game”. Diana has no fear even when there are (6) _______ in this ocean. This is also amazing that 
she is now 62 but she still wants to set a new long-distance swimming (7) _______ for the 4th 
time. She wants to show people, especially the old people, that it’s never too late to have a (8) 
_______. 
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5.2. Data collection 
The data is collected via questionnaires which are delivered in the beginning, middle 
and final stages of the course (at weeks 3, 8, and 14, respectively.) Written feedback is also 
carried out at the end of the course. 
The questionnaires are written in English, but there is explanation accompanying the 
distribution. This is to ensure that all the students can interpret the questions in the same 
way. There is also an online version of the questionnaire (Monkey Survey). The 
questionnaires are all anonymous. 
6. Results 
The return rates for the questionnaires are 78%, 98%, and 65%, in that same order. 
The first half of Questionnaire 2 is a repetition of Questionnaire 1, and the first half of 
Questionnaire 3 replicates the later half of Questionnaire 2. The purpose is to check the 
consistency of students’ opinions. Although the response rates differ quite greatly, it is 
clear that the distribution of their answer choices follow the same pattern throughout. 
Below are Figures 3-8 which compare the results of each question between the two 
questionnaires. 
Figure 3. How many times of listening do you need for each practice? 
It is clear to see that for both questionnaires, the majority of students (51.9 % for 
Questionnaire 1 and 61.4% for Questionnaire 2) state that they need an average of two 
times of listening. The second largest group is those who need three times of listening 
(28.4% and 28.3%). 
4
53
29
16
7
78
36
6
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
1 time 2 times 3 times >3 times
Questionnaire 1
Questionnaire 2
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Figure 4. How do you judge the level of difficulty of the listening tasks in Northstar 1? 
The distribution of students’ answer choices follows the same pattern in both 
questionnaires, which suggests that the materials in the textbook are not very challenging 
to the majority of students. 
Figure 5. How do you feel when you have to listen to the passage for the third time? 
For the three largest groups, the patterns are the same for both questionnaires. The 
patterns are reversed for “disappointed” and “excited”, but the difference is too small (1) to 
take any real notice. 
Figure 6. How do you feel when the teacher designs extra activities for the third listening time? 
2
25
68
6
14
35
75
10
3
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
Very easy Quite easy Average Quite difficult Very difficult
Questionnaire 1
Questionnaire 2
4
18
67
10
33
37
70
13
4
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
Disappointed Bored Neutral Interested Excited
Questionnaire 1
Questionnaire 2
2
10
50
45
20
0 2
16
41
26
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
Disappointed Bored Neutral Interested Excited
Questionnaire 2
Questionnaire 3
Poly. (Questionnaire
2)
Poly. (Questionnaire
3)
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Questionnaire 2 shows that the most common type of feelings for the extension 
activities is “neutral” (39%). However, the general impression of the students is heavily on 
the positive side - “interested” and “excited” (51%), more than 5 times of the negative side. 
Meanwhile, questionnaire 3 reveals that there is a great shift towards the positive 
side. To be specific, “neutral” comes down to third position, falling from 39% to 18.8%. 
That discrepancy of 21% shifts to “interested” and “excited”. 
Figure 7. How do you feel about the bonus marks given for the extra activities? 
The general trends in both Questionnaires are nearly the same, with the majority of 
students feel “interested” and “excited” (74,7% for Questionnaire 1 and 89.3% for 
Questionnaire 3). This again shows high unity in their answers. 
Figure 8. How do you feel about this listening class (with extra activities and bonus marks?) 
2 3
27
49 46
9
35
41
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
Disappointed Bored Neutral Interested Excited
Questionnaire 2 Questionnaire 3
Poly. (Questionnaire 2) Poly. (Questionnaire 3)
0 1
22
57
47
0 0
9
39 37
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
Disappointed Bored Neutral Interested Excited
Questionnaire 2 Questionnaire 3
Poly. (Questionnaire 2) Poly. (Questionnaire 3)
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The answers for this question in both questionnaires show great consistency with 
similar rising patterns. 
For the written feedback, students are required to describe their feelings. Various 
expressions are used to depict their feelings, but the answers can be classified into 5 
groups. The majority of the participants (83.5%) claim that they have an enjoyable 
experience in their listening classes, using terms such as “excited”, “interested”, “happy”, 
“wonderful”, “fun”, “attracted”, “great”, “satisfying”, etc., and thus can be categorized into 
the group “Happy”. Three of them feel the classes are “alright” or “OK”. The same number 
of students are not quite sure of their feelings, because they state that sometimes “I feel 
bored”, but other times “I am happy.” One student gives a negative answer to this question, 
attributing the reason to the lack of chances for him/her to earn bonus points because 
he/she is not as good at listening as other students who are quicker in submitting the 
answers to the teacher. Seven students choose not to give an answer. 
Table 1. Results of question 5 of questionnaire 3 
Question 5: What can be done to make this listening class more exciting? 
No answer 37 
More bonus marks 11 
More music or films/ videos 11 
More games 9 
More extra activities 8 
No change 7 
More discussion 2 
Change textbook 2 
More homework 1 
More discussion 1 
More teamwork 1 
More tips for listening practice 1 
More role plays 1 
More students chosen for bonus marks 1 
7. Discussion 
As can be seen from Figure 5, most students did not feel very motivated when they 
had to listen to the passage in the textbook for the third time. However, reducing the 
number of listening time to two times was not an option, because the number of students 
who needed three times of listening or more still account for a large part. Therefore, 
extension activities and rewards came in as a solution to this problem. 
There is