(Luận văn Đại học Thương mại) A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES AND SOLUTIONS IN LISTENING COMPREHENSION OF FIRST YEAR ENGLISH MAJORS AT THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY

THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY ENGLISH FACULTY ------ GRADUATION PAPER A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES AND SOLUTIONS IN LISTENING COMPREHENSION OF FIRST YEAR ENGLISH MAJORS AT THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY S

THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY ENGLISH FACULTY - -

GRADUATION PAPER

A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES AND SOLUTIONS IN LISTENING COMPREHENSION OF FIRST YEAR ENGLISH MAJORS AT THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY

Supervisor : Nguyen Thi Thuy Chung Student : Nguyen Thi My Hanh Class : K54N2

Student’number : 18D170061

Hanoi, 2021

ABSTRACT

Although listening is one of the important skills when it comes to learn a foreign language, it seems to be a difficult task for students The study is aimed at finding out the difficulties in English listening comprehension of first-year major English students at Thuongmai University and giving some effective solutions to deal with this reality For the objective, 100 students were invited to participate in this study

They were asked to do a survey questionnaire which have to identify the obstacles

The results of the study revealed that the major listening comprehension problems encountered by students at Thuongmai University such as insufficient vocabularies, fast speed of the speaker, lack of concentration, different accent of speaker, noises, long spoken text, limited contextual knowledge From the results, the researcher proposed some suggestions to help students solve these problems and enhance their listening comprehension skill The results of this study may also be useful for those who are interested in this field

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

During the four years of studying at the Thuong Mai University, I have received the enthusiastic guidance of teachers, until now, I have learnt a lot of valuable knowledge I would like to express my sincere thanks to the teachers of Thuongmai University, especially the teachers of the English department during my study at the university Thank you to the teachers in the department for your dedication and commitment with the spirit and responsibility, not only imparting knowledge, experience, and skills to me but also guiding me to strive

With deep gratitude, I would love to send my gratitude to Mrs Nguyen Thi Thuy Chung - my supervisor for her valuable and constructive suggestions as well as her patient guidance, enthusiastic encouragement, and unfailing support to the completion of this study

Furthermore, I would also like to thank those first-year English majored students at Thuongmai University who have enthusiastically participated in this study Their participation has been crucial to the completion of the research

Due to the lack of time and the limits of personal knowledge, my graduation report may not avoid certain mistakes Therefore, I hope that I can receive personal opinions or any comments from teachers in order to improve the dissertation as well

as broaden my horizons

Ha Noi, April 15 th 2022 Student

Nguyen Thi My Hanh

LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS

Chart 5: Students’ assessment about the level of the difficulties of English listening comprehension skill

Chart 6 Students’ attitude toward the English listening self-studying Chart 7 The time students spend listening English at home

TABLE OF CONTENT

ABSTRACT ii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii

LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS iv

CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY 1

1.1.Rationale of the study 1

1.2 Previous studies 2

1.3 Aims of the study 4

1.4 Research questions 4

1.5 Scope of the study 4

1.6 Research Methodology 5

1.7 Organization of the study 5

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 7

2.1 Overview of listening comprehension 7

2.1.1 Definition of listening comprehension 7

2.1.2 The significance of listening comprehension skill 8

2.1.3 Types of listening comprehension 9

2.2 Factors making listening comprehension difficult for English learners 10

2.2.1 Factors relating to listeners 10

2.2.2 Factors relating to listening materials 12

2.2.3 Factors relating to physical setting 14

2.3 Ways to improve English listening comprehension skill 15

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH FINDINGS 18

3.1 The participants of the study 18

3.2 Data collection instruments 18

3.3 Data analysis 18

3.3.1 Students’ background information 19

3.3.2 Students’ attitude toward learning English listening comprehension skill 20

3.3.3 First-year English majored students’ difficulties in English listening 25

3.3.4 Activities to improve English listening comprehension 30

CHAPTER 4: RECOMMENDATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 33

4.1 Recommendations for improving English listening comprehension 33

4.1.1 Recommendations for listeners 33

4.1.2 Recommendation for teachers 34

4.2 Limitation of the study 35

4.3 Suggestions for further studies 35

CONCLUSION 36

REFERENCES 37

APPENDIX 39

CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY

The first chapter includes an overview of the research topic The first problem mentioned is the reason for studying the topic as well as previous research and the aims of the study Chapter 1 also points out the research questions and scope of the study Moreover, this is the chapter outlining the research methodology used in the study process Finally, summarizing the parts of the organization of the study

1.1 Rationale of the study

In the trend of globalization and increasing technological development, English

is spoken as a second language in the most countries in the world, it is also considered

an indispensable support tool in human communication and business activities As a result, learning English is becoming more essential than ever In Vietnam, English is compulsory subject in schools and universities

Among four skills of English, listening is considered to be the most challenging because of the complex process to identify and to understand what the speaker said

As a researcher, I would like to present the dissertation titled: “A study on difficulties

and solutions in English listening comprehension of first-year English majors at Thuongmai University” for some reasons

The first reason is that learning listening will allow us to greatly improve the

ability to communicate People need to hear different forms of English regularly and consistently if they want to communicate properly and meaningfully Listening ability is the critical component in achieving understandable language input Without understand inputs at the right level, any kind of learning simply cannot occur

Moreover, in learning a language, listening skills not only help many students broaden their horizons but also advance them to improve other language skills such

as speaking and writing

Secondly, listening English comprehension is difficult since English is not our first language Plus, most of high school education focus on the preparation for the University entrance exam which tests reading and writing directly; listening wasn’t paid attention

From my observation after studying for nearly 4 years at Thuongmai University, most of first-year students majoring in English still face with numerous of obstacles

in English listening comprehension Because of that, it is necessary to find out the problems as well as propose some solutions to help English majored freshmen at Faculty of English overcome those difficulties

Next, Hamouda (2013) found in his research titled “An Investigation of Listening Comprehension Problems Encountered by Saudi students in the EL Listening Classroom The study was a mixed-methods approach utilizing a questionnaire and an interview The research was carried out with the participation of

60 first-year students majoring in English language and translation at Qassim University Their ages range from 20-22 years old He revealed that listening comprehension seems to be the weakest skill The finding showed that students at Qassim University encounter various kinds of listening problems in learning comprehension such as problems relating to speech delivery including the speed of speech, the bad quality of recordings, or the different accents of the speakers and to listeners such as a lack of concentration, anxiety, and insufficient vocabulary

Another study was investigated by Alrawashdeh and Al-Zayed (2017) in their research of the difficulties encountered by teachers of English in listening comprehension teaching Quantitative and qualitative data were collected by means

of questionnaire for teachers and informal interviews The teachers pointed three major problems, namely the learning environment, the availability of source and teaching aids, and the teachers’ proficiency hindered them from teaching English

listening comprehension effectively

Besides, the thesis submitted by Fouad Abdalhamid named “Listening comprehension strategies of Arabic speaking ESL learners” The listening test and listening strategy which used questionnaire data was run through multiple statistical tests, including factor analysis, multiple regression, and t-tests, to identify the strategies used by the research participants and explain the relationship between strategy use and listening comprehension The results indicated that cognitive strategies are the most powerful predictor of listening comprehension, followed by socio-affective strategies, whereas metacognitive strategies were the predictor that accounted the least for listening comprehension

In Vietnam, many studies related to difficulties in learning English listening skills have been conducted First, Nguyen Luong Ha Lien collaborated with Nguyen Thi Thanh Ha, who are English lecturers in English Faculty at Quy Nhon University contributed a study named “Methods of improving listening skills for English non-majored students” This study focused on the difficulties in listening comprehension which non-English majored students faced with, then providing some recommendation for improvement They carried out a survey by using a questionnaire

of 400 randomly selected freshmen from Quy Nhon University Descriptive statistics, factor analyses, and multiple regression analysis were used to analyze the data The resulted revealed that lack of vocabulary, background knowledge, long listening texts, unfamiliar topics are the main problems for learners to understand the listening contexts Proposal solutions may help students to overcome those obstacles such as increase vocabulary knowledge, exposure to multiple fields in listening topics and various accents

The study titled: “Insights into Listening Comprehension Problems” (2019) was conducted by Thao Quoc Tran and Tham My Duong The research was conducted at

a high school in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam with the participation of 368 students in eleven grade who answered a questionnaire and 8 EFL teachers who took part in semi-structured interviews The collected quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics The result agreed with Anderson (1995) and Goh (2000) that listening comprehension problems which listeners often cope with are

three phases of perception, parsing, and utilization In particular, the students encountered phonological and lexical problems (i.e high speech rates and challenging vocabulary), semantic and syntactic problems (i.e long utterances), and discoursal problems (i.e implied meanings, unfamiliar topics, and organization of ideas) They also propose some suggestions for students to facilitate English listening comprehension, for example, equip with note-taking skills, activate one’s background knowledge, and guess meanings from the context, etc

1.3 Aims of the study

This study attempts to explore a broad view and in-depth knowledge about the understanding of how freshmen at English faculty at TMU cope with listening difficulties

Firstly, the study identify the students’ perception to the importance of studying listening comprehension

Secondly, most students find it difficult to learn listening so I would like to investigate the most common difficulties in learning listening comprehension skills perceived by first-year English majors at TMU, then identifying the causes of the problems

Finally, based on the major findings, the study would provide some possible solutions for students to minimize the difficulties and enhance effectiveness in listening comprehension

1.4 Research questions

The study aims to answer the following research questions:

1 What problems do freshmen of English Faculty at Thuongmai University face with when listening to English?

2 What are the solutions for students to overcome these listening comprehension problems?

1.5 Scope of the study

The scope of this study focuses on the freshmen of English Faculty at Thuongmai University to investigate common difficulties that they usually encounter then give some solutions to overcome difficulties and to improve listening

comprehension ability Because of the limitation of time and knowledge, this study cannot cover the whole issue of listening comprehension The population of this research was 100 students randomly selected in four classes of English Faculty I sent the survey questionnaires through social media platform to fill up the survey which

is created by Google Form

1.6 Research Methodology

The study is conducted using the quantitative method (survey questionnaires)

Questionnaires are more convenient and take less time The questionnaire is given to first-year students of English Faculty with the hope to find out their attitudes towards their listening skill and their difficulties in English listening comprehension After gathering all the results of questionnaire with answers, the method of analyzing data

is applied to find out the difficulties and their causes and then suggest reasonable and effective solutions to the problems

In terms of data obtained from the questionnaires, the data will be collected and analyzed using the Microsoft Excel software After that, the data will be illustrated through charts and tables for a clear description of the findings, which helps to confirm the results from survey questionnaires

1.7 Organization of the study

The study on difficulties of first-year students in listening comprehension at English Faculty at Thuongmai University consists of four chapters

Chapter 1: Overview of the study

The first chapter is the introduction which begins with the background of the study, statement of the problem, the objective of the study

Chapter 2: Literature review

The researcher presents a review of related theories, concepts, and literature

Chapter 3: Research findings

This chapter presents the data and information obtained from survey questionnaires The results will also be discussed and analyzed

Chapter 4: Recommendations and suggestions

In this chapter, discussion and some suggested solutions are mentioned to

improve English listening comprehension and conclusion In addition, it gives

summary and limitation of the study as well as suggestion for further study

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter reviewed the related literature to listening comprehension including overview of listening comprehension; the difficulties encountered by students to several factors: the listener, the speaker, and the physical setting where students listen and ways to enhance English listening comprehension

2.1 Overview of listening comprehension

2.1.1 Definition of listening comprehension

Several researchers and scholars provided various definitions of listening comprehension Here are a number of the definitions:

Gilakjani and Ahmadi (2011) stated that listening comprehension is theoretically viewed as a dynamic process where people focus on chosen parts of aural input, structure meaning of passage, and connect to what they hear with established knowledge In addition, Richard and Schmid (2002) clarified that

“listening comprehension refers to the way of understanding speech in native or foreign language”

Vandergrift (1997) defined listening comprehension as a complicated interactive process in which listeners must focus on all elements such as sounds, intonation, linguistic structures, and social structural contexts Also, he emphasized that listening comprehension is an active process where learners must distinguish the learners may interpret and respond immediately when they listen to messages Holden (2004) viewed listening comprehension as a complicated activity that needs mental exertion to ensure understanding Furthermore, the author argued that listeners have

to listen passively and then produce what they have comprehended In this regard, Rost (2002) claimed that listening comprehension is regarded as a complex, interactive process in which listeners are involved in a dynamic construction of meaning Listeners understand the oral input from sound discrimination, prior knowledge of vocabulary, grammatical structures, stress and intonation, as well as other use linguistic, paralinguistic, or even non-linguistic clues in contextual utterance

Moreover, Nadig (2013) said that listening comprehension as the various

processes of understanding and making sense of spoken language These involve knowing speech sounds, comprehending the meaning of individual words, and understanding the syntax of sentences

From the above-mentioned definitions, it can be concluded that listening comprehension is a complex, unconscious and unobserved mental operation, and it will develop naturally within the process of language learning Thus, successful listeners have a crucial part to play in the process by activating various types of knowledge and by applying what they know to what they hear and trying to understand what the speaker means

2.1.2 The significance of listening comprehension skill

Listening comprehension is an important receptive skill and a useful preparation for listening in real life Scott and Ytreberg (1994) expressed that the first skill that children achieve is listening, mainly if they have not learnt to read yet

In real life, people tend to listen more than speak, read, or write Mendelson (1994) also affirmed that “of the total time spent on communicating, listening takes up 40-50%, speaking 25-30%, reading 11-16%, and writing about 9%” We listen at anytime, anywhere For example, at home we listen to the news, films, or other people At school, students listen to the lecturers

Besides, as we have already known, the aim of language is to communicate a specific message Being able to comprehend the spoken words is highly demanded

to make an effective communication In the oral communication, people speak the language to express their ideas or intention and listen to the speakers’ utterances to know what is delivered to them, so that they can make good interaction Therefore, listening comprehension is significant in running verbal communication The interaction will not be effective without understanding In this regard, Underwood (1989) agreed that the communicating process will break down when the listeners fail to understand what the speakers say

Furthermore, Nunan (2003) added that listening is assuming greater and greater important in foreign language classroom Rost (1994) and Ziane (2011) claimed that listening comprehension is very important because it is a process through which we get input and without its comprehension learning does not

happen If learners have a good listening ability in English language, it would be very easy for them to listen to the radio, to study, or communicate with foreigners then they will have a good chance to approach the broad knowledge in the outside world Plus, listening is the basic step to get the input in learning a language In particularly, in listening class, the students are often required to listen to dialogue, conversation and speech from recordings This is intended to expose the students to comprehensible input as a result it helps the students to pronounce exactly and recognize the spoken form of words Precisely, without receiving the necessary language input at the right level, the learning process will be difficult

2.1.3 Types of listening comprehension

Day and Park (2005) highlighted six different types of comprehension:

• Literal comprehension: This refers to the understanding of the “surface meaning of the text” For example, questions that guide the student to notice information explicitly stated in the recording, such as a date, a name, or any other piece of explicit information

• Reorganizing: This type of question helps students go beyond the identification of isolated words or phrases, by requiring the hearer to make connections among propositions

• Inference: This type of comprehension goes beyond literal understanding It involves students “combining their literal understanding of the text with their own knowledge and intuitions” Researchers have usually classified inferences into two different types: local and global (Graesser, Wiemer-Hastings, &

Wiemer-Hastings, 2001) Local inferences refer to the process carried out at sentence level while global inferences are used to explain the process of creating mental representations related to overarching ideas about general themes or morals, among other intentions underlying the text

• Prediction: Although one might associate this with pre-listening questions used to activate schemata to ease the listening comprehension process, this particular type of prediction alludes to questions asked after listening to the audio For instance, it might involve the students in a creative process in which

they are supposed to imagine what could happen next in the story based on what they have heard

• Evaluation: This type of comprehension points to the students’ cognitive capacity of assessing how useful the text is based on criteria usually established by the teacher For example, how representative the aural text is of

a particular genre or how relevant the information provided in a talk was

• Personal response: This stage involves a creative response from the students that moves them to interact with the text and get involved with it especially in terms of the topic

2.2 Factors making listening comprehension difficult for English learners

There have been a significant number of research papers that have been conducted in different countries related to the factors affecting listening comprehension

2.2.1 Factors relating to listeners

a The inability to concentrate

Obviously, concentration is needed in listening comprehension Otherwise, we cannot understand what the speaker says in our first language, let alone foreign one

Students have to pay attention while they listen because in limited time, they should grasp new information (Hamouda, 2013, p 129) When students fail to concentrate, they will miss certain information which will affect their understanding of whole information Concentration is very important to listen effectively because even smallest pause may cause listeners lose their concentration Each person's capacity to concentrate on listening is different As a result, students should enhance their own concentration

b Insufficient vocabulary

Another big influencing factor affecting comprehension of students during listening is insufficient vocabulary Students will face a problem understanding words unfamiliar to their ears when spoken text is talking about an unfamiliar topic or belonged to another special major For instance, vocabularies in accounting and financial are different from the ones of political and if the students lack specialized

words of what they are listening, they will have difficulties in acquiring information

Plus, many English words have multiple meanings, and some words in each area have each own meaning so the learners who do not have the block of words may feel confused When students have a limitation on vocabularies, once they listen to the text, they may encounter unknown word In that case, they tend to stop listening to think about the meaning of that word, which means they may neglect and miss the next part of speech According to Azmi Bingol, Celik, Yidliz, and Tugrul Mart (2014), when listening to the texts containing known words, it would be very easy for students to understand This also can motivate them and positively impact their listening comprehension ability That’s why in listening comprehension, having broad vocabulary knowledge is an advantage

to identify the linguistic part that corresponds to the word to understand the meaning (Hasan, 2000; Vandergrift, 2007; Walker, 2014) According to Yildiz and Albay (2015), the knowledge of grammar helps learners comprehend easily Grammatical knowledge helps listeners to easily grasp information and determine the intention of the speaker If students have poor grammar, when they exposure to sentence with length and complex grammar structure, they will get into trouble in understanding the information they get then affecting to choose the right answer behind

d Limited contextual knowledge

Underwood (1989) found out in his study that students lacking background information and contextual knowledge were a hindrance for listening comprehension

Students may understand the meaning of the speech superficially; however, unless they are familiar with the context, the learners can face a significant difficulty in comprehending the full meaning of the speech Koichi (2002) supported what Underwood said He also gave an example to illustrate his idea: “ he stated that non-

native speakers might not understand the cashiers in American supermarkets when they ask them about what type of bags they would like to have their purchases in in fact, no-natives could know the meaning of bag, but it might be difficult for them to realize its meaning in this context, maybe because they have such things in their cultures.” In listening comprehension, conversation is easier when students can understand the topic of the listening documents Therefore, limited contextual knowledge is a big difficulty for students in listening comprehension

e Ineffective listening strategy

Vietnamese students in high school are not equipped with appropriate strategies

to develop their listening comprehension independently (Do, 2007; Nguyen & Tran, 2015) Learners sometimes forgot to apply listening strategies while they are engaged

in listening or others fail to comprehension even after applying strategies It has been further stated that effective use of appropriate listening strategies facilitates understanding listening texts especially in the early stages of learning a language It

is proved that good language learners typically employ their cognitive strategies, whereas less proficient listeners tend to work at a word level and try to translate what they hear into their first language without relating it to their personal knowledge (Berne, 2004)

2.2.2 Factors relating to listening materials

a The length of spoken text

Long-spoken text is one of factors of preventing listening comprehension Many students find it more difficult to listen to a long-spoken text than a short one It can

be obvious that students will have difficulty in keeping all the information in their minds when they listen to a long text Henning (1990) also stated that longer passages may be more likely to interrupt comprehension due to the limit of listeners’ working memory storage capacity In addition, the longer a passage is, the more information listeners can miss after being in trouble with information they do not understand For instance, after listening a long passage and doing the test, students can be wrong or miss the information because the content in their mind is usually not well organized

At some extent, short listening text makes listening comprehension easy for learners

and reduces their fatigue

b Unfamiliar topics

When listening to texts, it is easy to encounter unfamiliar words such as jargon and idioms The students who do not know the meaning and the difference between jargon and idioms will have a problem Their listening practice is too limited because they only learn to listen to the laboratory Therefore, it becomes their problem pertinent to unfamiliar vocabulary The unfamiliar topics are also students' difficulties

in their listening skills Actually, students rarely talk about economy or political topics so that they do not know any of the words related to economy or politics It means that the students construct their understanding based on their experience This problem may affect them because of their lack of reading However, when students listen to texts which contain known words or topics, it would be quite easy because they know the meaning of words and can understand the content of the document

This can be a good motivation and positively impact students' listening skills

c Accent of speaker

Another barrier in listening comprehension pertained to listening materials is speaker accent In general, even if the listeners have an excellent listening skill, they are still challenged when speakers have different and local accent Research about the effect of accent on listening comprehension provides strong evidence that comprehension will decrease and effort for understanding will increase with the unfamiliarity of the speaker’s accent Goh (1999) mentioned in his research that 66%

of learners mentioned a speaker’s accent as one of the most significant factors that affect listener comprehension Unfamiliar accents both native and non-native can cause serious problems in listening comprehension and familiarity with an accent helps learners’ listening comprehension For example, students often get accustomed

to American or British accents since they were often taught at schools or universities, that’s why if they hear unfamiliar accent such as Australian or Indian accent, they will have difficulties in listening This will certainly interrupt the whole listening comprehension process

d Speed of speaker

Many scholars found out that the speed of speaker was one factor that hindered listening comprehension Brown (1989) reach a conclusion that faster rate of speech affected negatively on comprehension Faster speech is often less clear than slower speech, although speech rate and auditory clarity are distinct properties The speed of delivery caused difficulties to listeners because if native speakers talk too fast, students will be in serious trouble They cannot receive all messages therefore they

do not have information to remember and data to do the test This is the biggest problem with listening comprehension because “listeners cannot control the speed of speech” This can create critical problems with listening comprehension

2.2.3 Factors relating to physical setting

a Noises around

Not only the difficulties come from the listener or speaker, but also come from the environment surrounding the students Watson and Smeltzer (1984) and Yayang (1994) pointed out that other listening comprehension barriers were noises whether those noises that originated from the surrounding environment or the ones that emerged from the listening equipment Examples of these noises are phone ringing,

a knock on the door, background noises, rainy days They commented that those sounds disturbed learners’ comprehension and took their mind off the content of the listening passage Likewise, Hasan (2000) stated that it was difficult for students to concentrate while listening if there were distractions Of course, any break in their attention could distract them and impair their listening comprehension

b Poor-quality recorded materials

The problem also comes from the poor quality of the tapes or disks The quality

of sound system can impact the comprehending of learners’ listening (Azmi Bingol, Celik, Yidliz, & Tugrul Mart, 2014) In some classes, teachers use low-quality recorded materials For example, the audio may be recorded while there are noises around or the cassette is used for such a long time, so the quality has degraded Poor-quality equipment can also cause unclear noises, which might make it difficult for the listener to understand

2.3 Ways to improve English listening comprehension skill

Surely, it is difficult to expect the students to learn to listen better when they are exposed to so many problems So, there are some ways that are beneficial to students

to tackle their listening comprehension problems They are as follows

• Manipulate strategies

There is a need to apply strategies in order to facilitate their listening skill as Brown (2006, p.6) showed that “strategies are clearly a way to ease the burden of listening.” Following cognitive strategies is an effective way to grasp information when listening Theoretically, cognitive strategies are perceptions that listeners use

to solve listening-tasks, involving analyzing and transforming information or input they receive (Ellis, 1997) It is acknowledged that cognitive strategies play an integral part in improving learners’ knowledge and their understanding of linguistic system, helping students to develop the thinking skills To use this strategy, while listening they ought to guess the main ideas; analyze language structures in the listening texts and translate English into Vietnamese in their minds to facilitate their understanding

It should be noted that the more the listeners manipulate cognitive strategies, the more they are able to comprehend the listening texts Besides, another strategy that students can apply is compensation strategies facilitate learners to use the new language for either comprehension listening despite limitations in knowledge (Oxford, 1990)

They can use to make guesses by using linguistic clue such as word order or by using situation context like speaker’s tone of voice when they encounter unfamiliar words

This strategy makes up for missing knowledge when they do not hear something clearly Briefly, students can try to apply these strategies to improve their listening

comprehension

• Expand vocabulary

Since limitation on vocabulary becomes a great obstacle to the students in listening comprehension, it is necessary for them to equip with vocabularies in various topics As being mentioned before that sometimes students may listen to unfamiliar topic that why, the more English vocabulary they have, the more understanding they get Nowadays, students can choose various sources to expand

their new words thanks to the development of information technology For example, they can listen to songs, podcast, TV shows, or movies When they encounter an unknown word, they can take a screenshot then continue listening, after listening to music or watching movies, etc they can look up those words through dictionary That way is so effective and convenient, kind of learning through play

• Improve pronunciation

Speakers’ pronunciation is also a problem for the students in comprehending listening material When learning vocabulary, they need to expose and get familiar with precise pronunciation of native speakers By doing that the students’

pronunciation capacity is much more improved, which will help students find listening to native speakers effective and efficient Many scholars supposed that students’ accurate pronunciation is of great help for them in listening acquisition

• Exposure to different accents

Students might have trouble understanding some English accents the first few times you listen to them It’s normal But the only way for them is keep on practicing listening skills with audio from various accent such as American accent; Australian accent; British accent etc Every time they look up a new word in dictionaries like oxford or Cambridge, they should hear how American, or Britain speaker pronounce that word to get accustomed to their pronunciation in the text They also can find different sources on internet such as BBC; CNN; Australia plus, YouTube to listen

They can choose short videos to practice listening, replay it until they can understand what the speaker is saying Students had better alternate practice for example, today they listen British accent then the next day, they switch to American accent Various accents make life more fun and being able to understand English speakers from all around the world is simply amazing, that’s why keep listening to see the

accomplishment

• Practice every day

It can be admitted that practice makes perfect No one can understand what native speakers say after one night when English isn’t their first language Therefore, students have to practice listening every single day no matter how many hours they

spend or which methods they use as long as they try to listen to English Tons of apps

on mobile phone were developed with the aim of helping students learn English since English is popular all over the world Learning to listen to English at school or university is not enough, therefore self-studying at home is required and it will lay a foundation for them to improve listening comprehension To practice listening effectively, they can either listen actively or passively Simply open YouTube, choose

a favorite topic in English and listen is also a good way to train their ears, at first many students may struggle to keep up with the speaker, turn on captions or a transcript can support listeners Just keep practicing, they will understand what the native speaker says Good listening also helps students a lot in both speaking and communication skills, therefore, they should spend time mastering it

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH FINDINGS

This chapter gives the full analysis of data collected through questionnaires on the difficulties in English listening comprehension of first-year English majored students at Thuongmai University It shows an attempt to answer 2 research questions posed at the beginning of the study It consists of participants, data collection instrument as well as data analysis

3.1 The participants of the study

With the aim of completing the research, it was undertaken with the participation of 100 random first-year students of English Faculty at Thuongmai University Their age is from 18-19 The respondents are K57 when they are in the second semester of academic year 2021 – 2022 at Thuongmai University The participants were made to assure that their personal information would be kept confidential The obtained data would be used only for the sake of the research

3.2 Data collection instruments

The instrument utilized in this research was a structured questionnaire created through Google Form, then it was sent to 100 randomly English majored freshmen from groups on Facebook or Messenger The questionnaire is used to get information about the perception of students about the role of listening comprehension skills as well as the difficulties the students face when studying listening at Thuongmai University The questionnaire was designed after a review of literature about the factors making difficulties in listening comprehension

The questionnaire is created for students, which is easy to summarize and analyze the collected data The survey questionnaire is divided into 4 parts Firstly, it

is student’s background Next is students’ attitude about English listening comprehension After that, they choose their difficulties in English listening comprehension The last part seeks for activities for improving English listening comprehension skill

3.3 Data analysis

After gathering the opinions of those students The researcher conducts summation and data analysis Statistical analysis is carried out to generate specific