A study on difficulties in listening skills faced by second year english major students at thuongmai university and some suggested solutions

ABSTRACT Currently, with the development of international trade, the integration of foreign companies or multinational corporations is increasing The need for foreign languages, especially English, ha[.]

THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY ENGLISH DEPARTMENT

Currently, with the development of international trade, the integration offoreign companies or multinational corporations is increasing The need for foreignlanguages, especially English, has also become more urgent than ever English isconsidered a compulsory and basic language for students to approach businessesand grasp job opportunities in reality We cannot deny the role of English forstudents in particular and working people in general However, learning Englishnow requires not only basic communication with foreigners but also the ability toread, listen and understand well when approaching a professional workingenvironment

Listening skill is one of the most necessary skills to communicate in real lifeand it is also very important in learning a foreign language It is well known thathearing a message is more than just listening, so the listener must understand themessage and respond properly

Especially for students of the English Department, Thuongmai University,listening skill is a compulsory subject and plays a very important role in thecurriculum as well as equipping students with skills In the program, studentsmajoring in Business English will have to practice some other subjects such asTranslating Practice and Advanced Interpreting that require students to have goodlistening skills However, in the learning process, students often achieve the desiredresults due to the lack of knowledge and skills, especially for those who are new tothis subject

Most of these students face some difficulty when they learn English listeningskills The problems that students face can come from various causes such as poorvocabulary, knowledge, understanding, etc In order to identify certain difficultieswhen listening to English, the author conducted a study of the difficulties in Englishlistening skills of second-year students of the English Department, ThuongmaiUniversity The purpose of the study is to find out the difficulties in students’English listening skills and propose some solutions to improve students' listeningskills

Secondly, I would like to show my special thanks to my teachers of theEnglish Faculty at Thuongmai University for their teaching In my four-years ofstudy at Thuongmai University, the college board, principal and teachers have giventhe best conditions and facilities to us to finish our college curriculum.

Besides, I would also like to thank the second - year students of the EnglishFaculty at Thuongmai University for taking the time to answer my survey questions.With their enthusiastic help, I was able to collect valuable data to complete mysurvey With their enthusiastic assistance, I have collected valuable data to complete

my survey Additionally, I also give my appreciation to all the authors of the books,reliable data sources and other materials listed in the reference part which havegiven me helpful consultancy to develop my graduation paper

Due to limited implementation time and knowledge, I look forward toreceiving comments and suggestions in order to perfect the graduation paper.Sincere thanks!

Hanoi, November 15, 2022 Student

Tran Thi Ngoc Anh

TABLE OF CONTENT

ABSTRACT I ACKNOWLEDGEMENT II LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS V LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS VI

CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY 1

1.1 Rationale 1

1.2 Previous studies 2

1.2.1 Studies abroad 2

1.2.2 Studies in Vietnam 3

1.3 Aims of the study 4

1.4 Research Subjects 5

1.5 Research question 5

1.6 Scope of the study 5

1.7 Research methodology 5

1.8 Organization of the study 6

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 7

2.1 Overview of English listening skills 7

2.1.1 Definitions of English listening skill 7

2.1.2 Types of listening skills 8

2.1.3 The importance of listening skills 10

2.2 Factors making listening difficult for English learners 11

2.2.1 Factors relating to listeners 12

2.2.2 Factors relating to the speakers 13

2.2.3 Factors relating to the listening text 15

2.2.4 Factors relating to physical setting 16

2.3 Ways to improve English listening skill 17

2.4 Summary 19

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH FINDINGS 20

3.1 The participants of the study 20

3.2 Data collection instruments 20

3.3.1 Students’ background information 22

3.3.2 The attitude of second year English major students toward learning English listening skill 24

3.3.3 Difficulties in English listening of second year English major students at Thuongmai University 26

3.3.4 Suggestions to improve English listening skill for second year English major students at Thuongmai University 32

CHAPTER 4: RECOMMENDATION AND SUGGESTIONS 34

4.1 Recommendations for improve English listening skill 34

4.1.1 Recommendations for students 34

4.1.2 Recommendation for teachers 34

4.2 Limitation of the study 35

4.3 Suggestion for further study 36

CONCLUSION 37

REFERENCE 38

APPENDIX 1 40

APPENDIX 2 45

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

N

International Studies

LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS

LIST OF CHARTS

Chart 3 1 Students’ English learning experience 23

Chart 3 2 The most difficult skill in learning English 24

Chart 3 3 The importance of lítening skill 25

Chart 3 4 Student’s assessment of the skill needed improvement the most 25

Chart 3 5 Assess how often students listen to English 26

Chart 3 6 Difficulties in Listening skill 27

Chart 3 7 The teacher’s activities to help students improve listening skill 33

LIST OF TABLES Table 3 1 General Background of the Respondents 22

Table 3 2 Factors relating to listeners 28

Table 3 3 Factors relating to the listening text 29

Table 3 4 Factors relating to speakers 30

Table 3 5 Factors relating to physical setting 31

Table 3 6 Suggested activities to improve speaking skills 32

CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY

1.1 Rationale

In the context of current globalization, between countries all over the world,there is exchange, integration and strong development in all fields: economy,culture, politics, society, etc With the trend of international economic integration,English is known as the main global language to communicate in all jobs Manycompanies have expanded to cooperate with businesses abroad This opportunitylies inevitably in your hands at a higher rate when you have good communicationskills in which listening and speaking are two main skills However; listening seems

to be the most important skill since if we do not understand what foreigners say, wemight not be able to communicate with them Moreover, listening skill is a vitalmeans of providing input information for learners as well as a vital component forthe whole process of learning language And teaching listening skills in theclassroom helps students make the transition from classroom English to real-lifeEnglish more easily and effectively

In addition, learning listening skills is the most difficult part of learning aforeign language Listening, like reading, is a receptive skill but it is often the mostdaunting for students When reading, a reader usually has more opportunities torefer back to the text to clarify understanding, which a listener cannot do in mostlistening contexts such as TV programs, meetings, discussions, lectures orconversations

Although listening skills are important and difficult in learning English, thestatus of teaching and learning listening skills has been ignored and received littleattention It can be seen that the Vietnamese education system focuses more oncoaching exams with much attention to grammar, reading and vocabulary.Therefore, listening is included in course books in many educational levels;however, it somehow is neglected by the teachers during the lessons As a result,many Vietnamese students, even those who score well in grammatical tests, cannotcommunicate effectively with foreigners in daily conversations In addition, inVietnam rural students are not exposed to the English language beyond what they

learn in classes Students’ fundamental means of listening to English come from theteacher’s voice Moreover, the quality of the tapes and listening devices is not good.But it is difficult for students to listen because of the low standard sound For thosereasons, most of the students in rural and mountainous areas suffer a terrible shockwhen learning to listen in the university.

After studying in the English Faculty at Thuongmai University, for nearly fouryears, I realize that the second-year students of English major still have to cope withmany difficulties in their listening skill When deciding the topic, namely “A study

on difficulties in listening skills faced by second year English major students atThuongmai University and some suggested solutions.” I hope it would bring a grain

of aspiration and motivation for improving listening skills as well as supportingfurther studies

1.2 Previous studies

Realizing the importance of English in everyday life, many students haveinvested their time and finances to learn English Learning another language is noteasy so many students sometimes have difficulties and make mistakes in thelistening process To find out and overcome the difficulties, there are many studiescarried out Some studies are also conducted by experienced students with databasesthat clearly demonstrate through field surveys Regarding the topic of mygraduation report, there are several previous studies that I have consulted for mythesis

1.2.1 Studies abroad

The first study was conducted by Hamouda, Arafat (2012) with the topic

“Listening Comprehension Problems - Voices from the Classroom” Its purpose is

to investigate the intricacies of learning skills related to first-year English majors atQuassim University The study results were compiled by questionnaires andinterviews, in which the main problems are bad pronunciation and speed, lack ofnew words, distinctive accents from speakers, as well as psychological feelings andbad listening materials After discovering the difficulties in learning listening,teachers have more in-depth strategies to improve and develop students’ skills Of

course, proposals are made to elicit meaningful and plausible solutions for teachers

in addressing problems with regard to listening comprehension of their students

Second, the study “Analyzing Students’ Difficulties toward Listening

Comprehension” was conducted by Darti and Andi Asmawati, 2017 It was

completed at State Islamic University of Alauddin Makassar with enthusiasticsupport from 37 students of the English Education Department of Tarbiyah andTeacher Training department in the academic year of 2016-2017 That was donewith a descriptive method to analyze and find out ways of handling those matters.Besides, observation, questionnaire and interviews are methods used to collect data.The results of the study show that strong listening is an indispensable skill and iscapable of paralleling speaking skills The difficulties are mentioned mainly indepth, including factors related to learners, materials as well as physical settings.Moreover, the researcher has also proposed some reasonable solutions to overcomethe difficulties for both students and teachers because the combination of the twoparties will achieve the best results

The last impressive study was conducted by Dhea Mutiara Pertiwi (2020)

called “The difficulties of listening for English language learners” Although it is a

short thesis, it provides some basic knowledge on the subject At first, theresearcher looked at several important definitions of listening and listeningcomprehension He said the importance of listening, helping students with anoverview of listening In addition, the author analyzes a number of reasons whylistening comprehension is difficult, including anxiety, different accents, limitedtime, as well as much more effort than natives learning that language Finally, theresearcher proposed possible solutions to improve listening skills for learners whencoordinating with the above problems

1.2.2 Studies in Vietnam

The research of Le Thi Thu Huyen (2010) uncovered the reasons for listeninganxiety which first-year English major students experienced at Hong DucUniversity The instruments used in this research are a survey questionnaire forstudents and an online interview with them The sources of listening anxiety foundout from the findings of the study are associated with listening text, speaker, listener

and listening environment She suggested that students should be provided withdiversified and suitable listening texts, background knowledge and listeningstrategies Moreover, it is suggested that teachers should increase students’retention of information, build up an enjoyable atmosphere and motivate theirstudents From her recommendation for further research, it is advisable that morestudy should be conducted to explore the effects of listening anxiety on students’listening proficiency.

The thesis “A minor study on main difficulties in learning listening skillsperceived by first-year students of Faculty of English language teacher education,ULIS, VNU” (2013) by Nguyen Thi Thu Thao analyzed the troubles related tolistening comprehension This study indicated obviously the factors affectinglistening skills as well as suggested useful solutions in line with tremendoussubjects comprising both learners and teachers Interviews and questionnaires areused to collect data

All these studies are valuable documents to help the researcher complete thisstudy From the above studies, the researcher wishes to find out the difficulties thatsecond-year English students at Thuongmai University face when using English-listening skills The study has many similarities with those studies The difference isonly very small and it is suitable for second-year English majors at ThuongmaiUniversity The researcher will use some information from previous studies todevelop this study in the best way

1.3 Aims of the study

This research paper is made with two purposes: First, most students havedifficulties learning listening skills, so I wanted to find out the general difficultiesthat students have to face when learning English listening skills Secondly, due todifficulties, many students are not interested in learning and practicing this listeningskill in class and at home The research offers some possible solutions to thosedifficulties These suggestions aim to help students keep up with the speed of anormal conversation in real life to be able to improve their English proficiency.Furthermore, these solutions can also help teachers to motivate their students in theclassroom to listen

1.4 Research Subjects

The subject of research in this study was the common difficulties that year students in the English Faculty at TMU face in listening skills Moreover, thestudy also provided solutions for the students to improve their listening skills

1.6 Scope of the study

This research is obviously aimed to study the difficulties of English listeningskills of second-year major students at the English Faculty at ThuongmaiUniversity, who are asked to participate by answering the questions about theproblems of English listening skills In fact, there are lots of various difficultiesrelated to listening skills, so the researcher randomly selected only 85 English majorsophomores for the survey This study is divided into three scopes as follows:

The scope of the data is focused on the study of the problems and difficulties

of English listening skills of the students of Thuongmai University and suggestsolutions for improvement

The scope of respondents is 85 second-year majors students in the EnglishFaculty at Thuongmai University

The scope of time started from September 25, 2022 to November 25, 2022

1.7 Research methodology

To achieve the above objectives, a combined qualitative-quantitative datacollection method was used The quantitative method is a survey method based on aquestionnaire and the subjects are 85 second-year students (K57) majoring inEnglish at Thuongmai University This method is applicable because the data will

be quite easy and clear to analyze Besides, the questionnaire will help theresearcher to collect feedback quickly and accurately The qualitative method is an

interview with the students that give more information All methods are done onlinethrough Google forms and link submissions to students.

1.8 Organization of the study

The research includes four main parts:

Chapter 1 Overview of the study

The researcher provides a general overview of the study, starting with therationale, the previous studies related to the present research, and the aims of thestudy Next, the research question, the scope of the study, and the researchmethodology are mentioned The organization of the study comes in the end

Chapter 2 Theoretical background knowledge

This is the main part and lays the foundation for the study This chapterpresents all the necessary theoretical background of the research that the researcherreviews and discusses some previous relevant theories and studies This chapterprovides various definitions of different authors, theories that are relevant to thestudy: listening skills, characteristics, factors making listening difficult for Englishlearners, activities to improve listening skills and finally summary

Chapter 3 Research findings

This chapter shows the participants of the study and data collectioninstruments and analyzes the results of the study Chapter three provides an in-depthanalysis of collected data to find the difficulties that first-year English majorsstudents get

Chapter 4 Recommendations and suggestions

In this chapter, the researcher gives some helpful suggestions to teachers andstudents to help them develop and improve the appropriate methods for teachingand learning speaking skills, some limitations of the study as well as suggestions forfurther study

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Overview of English listening skills

2.1.1 Definitions of English listening skill

Nowadays, listening skills are becoming more and more interesting It isconsidered one of the most important skills for acquiring both a native language and

a second or foreign language In the eyes of many English researchers and learners,listening is a complex and positive mental process involving cognition, attention,cognition, and memory To date, there have been several definitions of hearing bydifferent linguists such as Howatt and Dakin (1974), Pearson (1983), Richard(1983), O’Malley and Chamot (1990), Rost (1994), Ma Lihua (2002), Brown(2001), Scott Shelton (2008) and among others

According to Howatt and Dakin (1974), listening is the ability to identify andunderstand what others are saying This involves understanding a speaker’s accent

or pronunciation, the speaker’s grammar and vocabulary and comprehension ofmeaning

Pearson (1983) stated “Listening involves the simultaneous organization andcombination of skills in Phonology, Syntax, Semantics, and knowledge of the textstructure, all of which seem to be controlled by the cognitive process Thus it can besaid that though not fully realized, the listening skill is essential in acquiringlanguage proficiency”

According to Richard (1983), O’Malley and Chamot (1990), listening is anactivity and a complex process in which listeners focus on aspects selected forlistening From the listening sound, they find the meaning of information andcombine what they hear with their knowledge

Rost (1994) insisted on the fact that students must deploy all these sub skills torealize a successful process when he stated: “Successful listening involves anintegration of these component skills In this sense, listening is a coordination of thecomponent skills, not the individual skills themselves This integration of theseskills constitutes a person’s listening ability”

According to Brown (2001), “listening is not merely the process ofunidirectional receiving of audible symbols” He supposed that one aspect oflistening comprehension which is “the psychomotor process of receiving soundwaves through the ear and transmitting nerve impulses to the brain”.

Ma Lihua (2002), stated that listening comprehension is a complexpsychological process of the listener understanding the language by sense ofhearing It is an interactive process of language knowledge and psychologicalactivities However, this process is not simply decoding the message; it alsoinvolves the association of the decoding process or the message with itsreconstruction as meaning

Scott Shelton (2008) thinks that listening effectively is a demanding andinvolved process One must be able to deal with different accents or pronunciation,unfamiliar lexical items and syntactic structures, competing background noise, andalso make a conscious effort to not switch off or become distracted while listening.All of this must be achieved and dealt with more or less simultaneously in order toidentify and understand the meaning in any given message

In conclusion, listening is a process of identifying and understanding what thespeakers say, which includes understanding a speaker’s pronunciation, grammar andvocabulary All definitions are given with a view to clarifying the nature of thelistening skill which is necessary in the process of acquiring a native language or aforeign one

2.1.2 Types of listening skills

Wolvin and Coakly (1988, 1993) introduced a categorization of listening.They identified 5 types of listening:

● Discriminative Listening

Discriminative listening develops through childhood and into adulthood As

we grow older and develop and gain more life experience, our ability to distinguishbetween different sounds is improved Not only can we recognize different voices,but we also develop the ability to recognize subtle differences in the way thatsounds are made – this is fundamental to ultimately understanding what thesesounds mean Differences include many subtleties, recognizing foreign languages,

distinguishing between regional accents and clues to the emotions and feelings ofthe speaker.

Being able to distinguish the subtleties of sound made by somebody who ishappy or sad, angry or stressed, for example, ultimately adds value to what isactually being said and, of course, does aid comprehension When discriminativelistening skills are combined with visual stimuli, the resulting ability to ‘listen’ tobody-language enables us to begin to understand the speaker more fully – forexample recognizing somebody is sad despite what they are saying or how they aresaying it

● Comprehensive Listening

Comprehensive listening involves understanding the message or messages thatare being communicated The writers consider this as the basis for the next threetypes of listening In order to be able use comprehensive listening and thereforegain understanding the listener first needs appropriate vocabulary and languageskills Using overly complicated language or technical jargon, therefore, can be abarrier to comprehensive listening Depending on many factors, (both individualand social) students can end up understanding the same message in different,different ways Most of the work in teaching listening in the classroom has tohappen here in facilitating the students to develop their comprehension skills

● Therapeutic Listening

Therapeutic listening is one kind of listening where the listener’s role is to be asympathetic listener without much verbal response In this kind of listening thelistener allows somebody to talk through a problem This kind of listening is veryimportant in building good interpersonal relations

Counselors, therapists and some other professionals use therapeutic listening

to understand and ultimately help their clients This type of listening does notinvolve making judgements or offering advice but gently encouraging the speaker toexplain and elaborate on their feelings and emotions Skills such as clarification andreflection are often used to help avoid misunderstandings

● Critical listening

Critical listening entails listening with the goal of analyzing or evaluating amessage based on verbally presented information and information that can beinferred from the context The critical listener evaluated a message and decidedwhether to accept, reject or withhold the judgment to gather more information.Listeners need to be able to judge the credibility of the speaker and their message

As well as distinguishing different appeals to persuasion and false logic, as aconstant consumer of messages (known as fallacies) When listening to a persuasivespeech in class or dealing with any persuasive media messages that listeners receive

on a regular basis, critical listening skills come in handy

● Appreciative Listening.

The final one is appreciative listening which focuses on enjoying what onelistens Here, some students raised the point that when they listen to English music,even if they don’t understand, they still enjoy it Then we reflected on the practice

of listening to songs in the language lab Generally those students listen to the songsonce and try to make out the lyrics before listening a second time with the lyrics.Then they recalled that they appreciated the song better during the second time andwere able to see the relation between how one would enjoy something that she/he isable to make sense of

2.1.3 The importance of listening skills

Listening skills play an important role in life It is defined as “skills which canprovide you with a better perspective on life, skills which can allow you to maintain

a higher awareness of both yourself and the world around you.” It is one of the mostimportant ways for human beings to feel life and live In real life, people often hearmore than speak, read and write A study by Wilt (1950), found that people listen45% of the time they spend communicating, speak 30% of communication time,read 16% and 9% is writing We listen anytime and anywhere For example, when

we are at home, we watch movies, listen to music, the news and communicate withpeople At school, students get to hear lecturers teaching, and so on Listening

provides the foundation of all aspects of language and cognitive development It isclear that listening is a skill that is really needed in our lives.

Listening is important in social communication and academic success.Needless to say, listening effectively is the sufficient condition for the students totake part in oral communication The communicating process will break down whenthe listeners fail to understand what the speakers say (Underwood, 1989) Inaddition, being able to listen to English well, students have the opportunity to haveaccess to an extensive source of knowledge of the outside world

Listening provides the right conditions for language acquisition and facilitatesthe emergence of other language skills (Krashen, 1989) According to Nord (1980,p.17), listening is the way of learning the language “It gives the learner informationfrom which to build up the knowledge necessary for using the language When thisknowledge is built up, the learner can begin to speak The listening-only period is atime of observation and learning, which provides the basis for the other languageskills” (Nation, 1990, p.12) To be more specific, listening helps the students topronounce correctly and recognize the spoken form of words.When learning a newword, students have to listen to it several times before identifying it Precisely,without receiving the necessary language input at the right level, the learningprocess cannot take place

Most learners will spend more time listening to the foreign language Failing

to understand spoken language, people may miss important information presented tothem or respond in a funny way So training in listening is really necessary It helpsstudents make the transition from classroom English to real-life English more easilyand effectively

2.2 Factors making listening difficult for English learners

The difficulties of learning to listen to English as discussed in previousstudies It is taken for granted that people can listen in their mother tongue withlittle or no effort However, learning to listen in a second language is more difficultbecause it not only requires the listener’s abilities but is also influenced by factorsrelated to speakers, listening texts and physical settings

2.2.1 Factors relating to listeners

● Lack of background knowledge

In the literature, authors often note the importance of shared knowledgebetween the speaker and listener (Churchland, 1999) Shared knowledge isimportant because listeners are pragmatic by nature and, whenever possible, willsituate themselves in terms of the topic, the setting, the event, the speaker, and thepurpose for listening (Rost, 2005; Lantoff, 1999) Vandergrift (2007) noted thatlisteners will use prior knowledge (including topic, genre, culture, and otherschemas in long term memory) to build a conceptual framework against which theyinterpret what they hear Context, non-verbal information, world knowledge,cultural information, and common sense are all used to build this framework

Lack of socio-cultural, factual, and contextual knowledge of the targetlanguage can pose an obstacle to comprehension because language is used toexpress its culture (Anderson & Lynch, 1988) Knowledge of the world is used tohelp understand the messages based on some key words To put it in another way,the more knowledge you have, the easier you can catch the point If the studentslisten to an unfamiliar topic, they will panic and be confused; consequently, theymay fail to listen

 Incorrect pronunciation:

Pronunciation plays a critical role for learners who want to master bothlistening and speaking Moreover, if learners are good at pronouncing words, theywill be proficient in listening Pronunciation is significant as it is a section ofsuccessful oral production or communicative competence (Hismanoglu, 2006) Infact, listening skills are very important in foreign language communication;however, pronunciation is also a meaningful element of listening For starters, themost important listening skill is discriminating in English pronunciation Moreover,

if the pronunciation is not fine, it can easily lead to misunderstandings Besides,learners cannot recognize familiar words due to mispronunciation If the listenerslearn to pronounce the sound correctly himself, it will be much easier for him tohear them correctly when being said by someone else (Ur, 1984) The listeners need

to acquire the crucial skill of identifying the main information Therefore,

mispronunciation will be difficult to communicate with others When students learnhow to pronounce an English word, their mother tongue sometimes effects theirpronunciation.

It is obvious that good pronunciation contributes significantly to listeningskill It could help students to recognize and write down the correct form of words.Forming a habit of checking the vocabulary is one of the ways to improvepronunciation Gilakjani (2012) provides empirical evidence that learners with goodEnglish pronunciation are likely to be understood even if they make errors in otherareas, whereas learners with bad pronunciation will not even if their grammar isperfect

● Psychological anxiety when listening

Listener anxiety can have a profound effect on comprehension abilities Whenlisteners are concerned that the message is too complex or that they will not be able

to understand it, their ability to concentrate falters, and comprehension declines; this

is true even in the native language Listeners are more anxious when in a newsituation, listening to new information, trying to sort conflicting information,listening to seemingly illogical passages (Clark, 1989; Priess & Wheeless, 1989;Wheeless, 1975), or when they think their performance reflects their abilities orintelligence (Hussey, Teubner-Rhodes, Dougherty, & Novick, 2010) IndeedHussey et al (2010) found that anxiety had a direct impact on listeners’ abilities toresolve ambiguities in their native language in real time Factors related to thetesting conditions, such as the ability to take notes, may decrease anxiety duringlistening comprehension (Chang & Read, 2008)

2.2.2 Factors relating to the speakers

● The speed of the speakers

The speed of the speakers also hinders the learners in their effort of learningEnglish Speed of speaking is words per minute (Blau, 1990; Brindley and Slatyer,2002; Griffiths, 1990, 1992; Jacobs et al., 1988; Zhao, 1997) Think about twospeakers - one fast, one slow - talking with the same spoken passage The speakerwith the faster speech takes less time, conveying the information more quickly, thanthe slower speaker Now with the same amount of time, these speakers speak

passages with different lengths; the faster speaker produces more speech, conveyingmore of the passage, than the slower speaker Results of several studies suggest thatspeech rate can negatively affect second language comprehension Faster speech isoften less clear than slower speech, although speech rate and auditory clarity aredistinct properties Although Griffiths (1990, 1992) described the listeners as lowerintermediate learners, more recent evidence suggests that speech rate also influenceslistening comprehension among relatively advanced second language users Theresearch provides evidence that speech rate can negatively affect second languagelistening comprehension In reality, second language listeners move from passage topassage and encounter different speakers and different content Because listenersare more likely to perceive speech as fast when other features challengecomprehension, speech rate must be considered in conjunction with other aspects ofthe listener, passage, and environment.

Speed can make listening passages difficult If the speakers speak too fast,students may have serious problems understanding words In this situation, listenersare not able to control the speed of speakers and this can create critical problemswith listening comprehension

● The accents

Many foreign language learners are surprised and dismayed when listening tosomeone else but not their teachers because they are used to their teacher's accents.Moreover, understanding the spoken form of language requires the adaptation of theidiosyncrasies of a particular speaker (Underwood, 1989) Ikeno and Hansen (cited

in Bloomfield et al., 2010) find that unfamiliar accents lead to lower accuracy.Accent speech has been found to affect both the extent to which listenerssuccessfully realize a speaker’s message and the effort involved as listeners identifyparticular words in the message (Floccia et al., 2009) To some extent, in academiccourses, the students are quite familiar with the native speakers like American orEnglish; however, in reality, they can listen to the speakers from non-native Englishspeaking countries as well Consequently, they cannot catch the words or conveythe messages of the conversations and the broken down communication is theoutcome

2.2.3 Factors relating to the listening text

● Unfamiliar Vocabulary

According to Azmi Bingol, Celik, Yidliz, and Tugrul Mart (2014), when thelistening texts contain known words it would be very easy for students tounderstand them If students know the meaning of words this can arouse theirinterest and motivation and can have a positive impact on the students’ listeningcomprehension ability A lot of words have more than one meaning and if they arenot used appropriately in their appropriate contexts students will get confused

 Syntactic complexity

To measure the complexity of a passage, we depend on elements of structure

of the phrases and sentences Factors may be related are sentence structure,negatives, dependent clauses, and referential There is a question regularly asked:

“Should I simplify these sentence structures to make the passage easier tounderstand?” There is a mixture between researched papers, so there is not enoughreliable answer for this question, whether a sentence with a complex syntax isharder to comprehend than a similar sentence with an easier one According to Blau(1990), the effect of sentence structure on listening comprehension is notconsiderable, especially with high English ability students and in spite ofsimplifying the syntactic structure of a passage, the efficiency of second languagelistening is not improved Otherwise, Nissan et al (1996) implied that a sentencegoing with just two or more negatives, the difficulty of that sentence is rising andthe listeners apparently face more hardness

 Length of listening text

Azmi Bingol, Celik, Yidliz, and Tugrul Mart (2014) stated that the level ofstudents can have a significant role when they listen to long parts and keep allinformation in their mind It is very difficult for lower level students to listen morethan three minutes long and complete the listening tasks Short listening passagesmake easy listening comprehension for learners and reduce their tiredness

Thompson and Rubin (1996) reported that students complained aboutsegments longer than 2.5 minutes as being too long for them to maintainconcentration However, Thompson and Rubin found that passage length interacted

with other qualities of the passage: longer dramatic segments were better toleratedthan longer news reports, suggesting that number of speakers, structure of thepassage, or topic may interact with length.

 Complex texts

In some cases, the organization of the text is rather complex Cervantes andGainer (1992) found that listeners hearing a syntactically simplified version of alecture scored significantly higher on a recall test than did listeners hearing a morecomplex version of the lecture Therefore, if the students do not have the ability todraw a clear outline of this text, they also fail to catch the information effectively

2.2.4 Factors relating to physical setting

 The class atmosphere

Sometimes the inconvenience of classrooms affects students’ listeningcomprehension In the large classrooms, students who are sitting on the back rowsmay not hear the recording like students sit in front Students who prefer to staynext to the windows are also affected by the noise that comes from outside As ateacher we have to take into account all these conditions in a body The size of theclassroom also makes it difficult for teachers to manage the whole class in groupactivity or to get feedback from students The temperature of the classroom can beconsidered a factor in listening comprehension difficulties The class that does nothave an air conditioner or heater may be too hot in summer or too cold in winter

 The quality of tapes and listening devices

The quality of the sound system also affects understanding of listening Lowquality of recorded material could be caused by noises, or unclear pronunciations.Based on the study conducted by Hamouda (2013) stated that the majority of thestudents thought the difficulties they encountered in listening comprehension weredue to the bad recording quality/poor- quality tapes or disks For example, it ispossible that the cassette was recorded while there was noise around, or that thecassette was used for a long time so the quality was worn out Unclear soundsresulting from poor-quality equipment could also interfere with the listener’scomprehension

 The noises

Noise is another environmental barrier to comprehension When listening, thelisteners often have to cope with the amount of noise Noise, including bothbackground noises on the recording and environmental noises, can distract listenersfrom the content of the audio The poor preparation of the lab means studentscannot concentrate on listening to the recording material.

2.3 Ways to improve English listening skill

 Regularly practice listening

To listen to English well, you need a process of practice and hard study,determination, effort and perseverance While listening, an experienced listeneralways has more advantages than less experienced listeners because in the process

of practicing, they have developed some skills Therefore, to improve listeningskills, foreign language learners should actively practice in a reasonable andmethodical way By regularly practicing and being exposed to materials that vary

from easy to difficult, over time, learners will develop listening skills.

 Improve vocabulary

If you want to listen to English well, you have to remember a lot ofvocabulary It is, therefore, necessary for teachers to equip students with certainkeywords needed for listening comprehension since lack of vocabulary becomes agreat obstacle to them in listening comprehension, which is also realized byUnderwood (1989) and Higgin (1995) However, it is better to activate students'vocabulary by asking them to guess the meaning of words used in the listeningcontext before explaining the meaning to them, since whenever students are able torelate what they have already known to what they are supposed to listen for, theyare likely to listen better or more effectively

 Adapting and improving listening materials

According to Le Thi Huong Giang and Le Thi Huong Thao, teachers couldintroduce and orient some suitable learning materials for students to self-study.According to author Mai Lan Anh (2017), when choosing materials to serveextended listening for students, teachers should pay attention to whether thedifficulty of the listening passages is suitable to the students’ level or not Can theyeasily grasp the information of the listening? The teacher should then introduce the

listening material to the students before they listen Teachers also need to payattention to the speaking speed to choose the appropriate listening lesson Forexample, for students who are just learning English or at a basic level, teachersshould choose listening lessons with slow speaking speed and listening lessons withfaster speaking speed for students at advanced listening comprehension levels Inaddition, teachers should apply some tricks to make the input materials easier tounderstand, such as using subtitles in the target language or the source language foraudio lessons with images For listening lessons with only audio, it is recommended

to choose simple content including basic words and grammatical structures

 Improving pronunciation

Darti and Andi Asmawati (2017) found that incorrect pronunciation hindered

at least many students from listening comprehension, so teachers needed to helpstudents expose themselves and get familiar with precise pronunciation of nativespeakers By doing that the students’ pronunciation capacity is much moreimproved, which will help students find listening to native speakers effective andefficient Many teachers suppose that students’ accurate pronunciation is of greathelp for them in listening acquisition They also believe that one of the ultimateresults of listening acquisition is to train students to produce accurate pronunciation

 Practicing listening in a variety of context

“Practicing listening in a variety of context such as lecturing, radio news,watching videos or film, listening some music, TV plays, announcements, everydayconversation and dialogues, some monologues, and interviews helps learner toreduce their anxious when they get listening class or test and reinforce a good habit

of listening in themselves.” (Dhea Mutiara Pertiwi, 2020) This kind of practice canhelp the learners to be familiar with the accents of different native speakers

In addition to the ways mentioned above, some previous researchers havediscussed ways of helping learners improve their listening comprehension Brown(1994) proposed a methodology that combined developing the learners'phonological code and helping them use contexts to make predictions Buck (1995)proposed using pre-communicative and communicative activities, following apedagogical framework by Littlewood (1981) This includes helping learners

develop the ability to speak quickly naturally and to use effective listeningstrategies Field (1998) proposed an approach that took into consideration learners'listening problems and suggested a series of exercises for practicing listening subskills in short micro-listening exercises.

2.4 Summary

This chapter examines the prior literature related to listening difficulties With

a description of a huge amount of academic study, the researcher hopes that she hasgained enough relevant knowledge for her own study However, it can be seen thatmost literature is written in the context of foreign countries that somehow is notappropriate for Vietnamese students Therefore, with the own observation anddetailed explanation presented in the following chapters, the researcher hopes tocompensate for the above limitation