Difficulties in english listening comprehension skill at the workplace faced by fourth year english majored students at thuong mai university

THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY ENGLISH FACULTY GRADUATION PAPER Difficulties in English listening comprehension skill at the workplace faced by fourth year English majored students at Thuong Mai University Supe[.]

THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY ENGLISH FACULTY

- -GRADUATION PAPERDIFFICULTIES IN ENGLISH LISTENING COMPREHENSION SKILL

AT THE WORKPLACE FACED BY FOURTH-YEAR ENGLISH MAJORED STUDENTS AT THUONG MAI UNIVERSITY

Supervisor : Hoang Thi Thuy

Student’s number : 18D170064

HANOI - 2022

Listening is an essential part of English as a foreign language because it isthe most widely used in daily life Everybody knows that in order to listen to amessage is not as simple as hearing it, thus the listener has to understand themessage and respond in the right manner to communicate properly, meaningful, andnaturally Being aware of Vietnamese students’ poor listening comprehension skillsdespite the urgent demand of international communication, the researcher carries

out an investigation of “Difficulties in English listening comprehension skill at the

workplace faced by fourth-year English majored students at Thuong Mai University”.

The study aims at finding the problems encountered by the students inlistening comprehension Descriptive method was used to analyze and to find thesolution about the problems To fulfill the mentioned aims above, therefore, theresearcher applied the qualitative and quantitative methods to do the research Thedata collection instruments like questionnaires, interviews were used to conduct thestudy The results of the research will point out the difficulties in studying Englishlistening comprehension skills of first year English majored students at ThuongMaiUniversity Moreover, the study helps me find out the possible solutions to dealwith those problems

I would like to show my deep gratitude to many people who have beensupporting me During the process of doing this graduation paper, I have receivedmany meticulous guiding, precious ideas and timely encouragements me tocomplete my research the best

First of all, I wish to express my deepest indebted to my supervisor – HoangThi Thuy, for her serious supervision, patient guidance during my study.Furthermore, I really appreciate all her valuable help and suggestions on variousdrafts of the thesis Without her valuable advice and support, this thesis could nothave been completed on schedule

I also would like to take this opportunity to show my sincere thanks to all myteachers of the English Faculty, ThuongMai University, who have handed mebackground knowledge for four years to complete this graduation paper Besides, I

am so thankful to students at Thuong Mai University for their enthusiasticparticipation in completing my questionnaires and interviews

Last but not least, I would like to acknowledge my thanks to all the authors ofthe books, magazines, and other materials listed in the reference part for their ideas.Thank you sincerely

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS v

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES vi

CHAPTER I: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY 1

I.1 Rationale 1

1.2 Previous studies 2

1.3 Aims of the study 4

1.4 Research subject 5

1.5 Scope of the study 5

1.6 Research methodology 5

1.7 Organization of the study 6

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 8

2.1 Overview of listening comprehension skills 8

2.1.1 Definition of listening 8

2.1.2 The importance of listening skills 9

2.1.3 Methods of listening 10

2.2 Difficulties in studying the listening comprehension skills 10

2.3 Factors affecting the English listening comprehension skills 13

2.3.1 The listener 13

2.3.2 The speaker 14

2.3.3 The content of listening 14

2.3.4 The physical environment 15

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH FINDINGS 16

3.1 Participants of the study 16

3.2 Data collection instruments 17

3.2.1 The survey questionnaire 17

3.2.2 The interview 17

3.3 Procedure of data collection 18

3.3.1 The survey questionnaire 18

3.3.2 The interview 18

3.4 Data analysis 18

3.4.1 Results from the survey questionnaire 18

3.4.2 Results from the interview 28

CHAPTER 4: RECOMMENDATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 33

4.1 Summary of the study 33

4.2 Limitation of the study 33

4.3 Recommended suggestions 34

4.3.1 For students 34

4.3.2 For teachers 37

4.4 Recommendations for further studies 39

CONCLUSION 40

REFERENCES vii

APPENDIX 1: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE x

APPENDIX 2: INTERVIEW QUESTIONS xv

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

No Abbreviation English meaning Vietnamese meaning

1 EU European Union Liên minh châu Âu

2 LC Listening Comprehension Nghe Hiểu

3 EFL English as a Foreign

Language Ngoại ngữ

4 TV Television Vô tuyến, ti vi

5 UEE University Entrance Exam Kỳ thi tuyển sinh đại học

6 VOA Voice of America Đài tiếng nói Hoa Kỳ

7 HBO Home Box Office Kênh truyền hình HBO của

Mỹ

8 MAX CINEMAX Kênh truyền hình cáp thuộc

sở hữu của HBO

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

1 Chart 3.1 Distribution of student participants by gender 16

2 Table 3.1 Personal information of the students 18

3 Chart 3.2 The frequency of students in self-studying English listening

4 Table 3.2 The methods of practicing listening skills 20

5 Chart 3.3 The students’ activities before listening 21

6 Chart 3.4 The students’ activities when they cannot understand words

or phrases while listening 22

7 Table 3.3 The difficulties in studying English listening skills and the

CHAPTER I: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY

I.1 Rationale

Nowadays, English is playing a significant part in numerous areas includingmedicine, engineering, education, advanced studies, technology, banking,computing, tourism and so forth, most international transactions are being carriedout in English English has become an second important language inmany countries As a result, learning English is becoming more essential than ever

in many countries around the world and Viet Nam is not an exception, especiallywith students at colleges and universities At the age of globalization, the world oftechnology, information, English becomes very necessary for any individual whotends to follow up on the fast change in the modern world To access informationthe most quickly and accurately, English listening comprehension skill plays animportant role Furthermore, as for the students of the English Department, listeningcomprehension skill is extremely important because they expect to use it frequentlyfor their future work Sometimes, when you watch the TV, listen to the news orcommunicate with a native speaker, you only hear a few keywords, and do not fullyunderstand the content of the whole dialog This causes afraid to connect withothers, which is extremely detrimental to your work in the future So, the training atthe university is very necessary In a communication in the real life, we are able totalk sensibly when we understand what is said to us Moreover, in learning alanguage, listening comprehension is a useful means of providing students withcomprehensible information input, which is an essential component of the wholelanguage learning process However, it is still a challenge for Thuong MaiUniversity students in general, and English language students in particular Manystudents seem to lack the skills and confidence to make effective listen May belistening comprehension skill is very difficult, students do not know the effectivepractice methods lead to feeling depressed On the other hand, listening skill takeslong time, which means they need to spend a lot of time self-studying in order tobecome better, especially in listening practice more and more

Therefore, as a researcher, I would like to present the thesis title “Difficulties

in English listening comprehension skill at the workplace faced by fourth-year English majored students at Thuong Mai University’’ Hopefully, this graduation

paper will point out some difficulties in English listening comprehension skill of thefourth-year English student and the solutions to make that good better

1.2 Previous studies

No one can deny the importance of listening comprehension (LC) skills inforeign language learning because the key to acquire a language is to receivelanguage input Krashen, Terrell, Ehrman, & Herzog (1984) claim that acquisitiontakes place only when students absorb enough comprehensible input The sameclaim was supported by Rost (1994, as cited in Nunan and Miller, 1995) confirmedthat listening is vital in language classrooms because it provides input for leaners

As an input skill, listening plays a crucial role in students’ language development.Krashen (1985) argues that people acquire language by understanding the linguisticinformation they hear Thus, language acquisition is achieved mainly throughreceiving understandable input and listening ability is the critical component inachieving understandable language input Without understanding input at the rightlevel, any kind of learning simply cannot occur

Listening is a fundamental language skill, and as such it merits a criticalpriority among the four skill areas for language students As Hasan (2000) pointedout, “Difficulties in English listening comprehension skill at the workplace faced by fourth-year English majored students at Thuongmai University” (p.138) Listening,

therefore, is essential not only as a receptive skill but also to the development ofspoken language proficiency Rost (2002) also indicates that developing proficiency

in listening is the key to achieving proficiency in speaking

Listening plays an important role in communication as it is said that, of thetotal time spent on communicating, listening takes up 40-50%; speaking, 25-30%;reading, 11-16%; and writing, about 9% (Gilakjani and Ahmadi, 2011).According to Devine (1982), listening is the primary means by which incomingideas and information are taken in Gilbert (1988), on the other hand, noted thatstudents from kindergarten through high school were expected to listen 65-90

percent of the time Wolvin and Coakley (1988) concluded that, both in and out ofthe classroom, listening consumes more of daily communication time than otherforms of verbal communication Listening is central to the lives of studentsthroughout all levels of educational development (Coakley & Wolvin, 1997).Listening is the most frequently used language skill in the classroom (Ferris, 1998;Murphy, 1991; Vogely, 1998) Both instructors (Ferris & Tagg, 1996) and students(Ferris, 1998) acknowledge the importance of listening comprehension for success

in academic settings Numerous studies indicated that efficient listening skills weremore important than reading skills as a factor contributing to academic success(Coakley & Wolvin, 1997) Nevertheless, it is evident that listening is moreimportant for the lives of students since listening is used as a primary medium oflearning at all stages of education

In spite of its importance in foreign language learning, the teaching oflistening comprehension has long been ―somewhat neglected and poorly taughtaspect of English in many EFL programs (Mendelsohn, 1994, p 9) The neglect ofthe listening skill was accompanied with an ongoing debate about which of the fourlanguage skills (speaking, listening, reading, and writing) is the most crucial for thelearning and acquisition of a second language However, past research has thus farrevealed that a large proportion of the LC research findings indicates that listening

is the most important skill for language learning because it is the most widely usedlanguage skill in normal daily life (Rost 2002), and it develops faster than the threeother language skills, which in turn suggests that it can facilitate the emergence ofthe other language skills (Oxford, 1990)

EFL learners, especially university students have serious problems in Englishlistening comprehension because of the fact that universities pay more attention toEnglish grammar, reading and vocabulary Listening and speaking skills are notimportant parts of many course books or curriculum and teachers do not seem tofocus on these skills while designing their lessons Most teachers take it for grantedand believe that it will develop naturally within the process of language learning.Persulessy (1988:50) states that one of the reasons for the opinion that listening is askill that tends to be neglected is the feeling among language teachers that this skill

is automatically acquired by the learner as he learns to speak the language Inaddition to this, Nobuko Osada, 2004 reported that listening has not drawn muchattention of both teachers and learners, they are generally less aware of itsimportance In classrooms, teachers tend to test, not to teach listening Meanwhile,students seem to learn listening, not listening comprehension As a result, it remainsthe most neglected and the least understood aspect of language teaching (Glisan,1985).

As is evident from the literature review, efforts have been made by a number

of researchers to identify the difficulties experienced by second and foreignlanguage listeners and how they deal with the difficulties More empirical study,however, is needed to explore learners' own perceptions of their listeningexperience since listening cannot be observed directly and defined precisely.Learners' perceptions may offer clues to the sources of difficulties - how or whycomprehension breaks down - and the strategies learners use to overcome thechallenges

This is what the present research tries to demonstrate Taking intoconsideration the importance of the listening ability to language students and itsdimensions of difficulty, the study reported here is an attempt to identify the LCproblems as perceived by Thuong Mai students when listening to oral texts, andexplore the strategies they use in response to the problems It is also intended toaisle teachers' awareness of these problematic areas in LC so that appropriatetreatment measures can be taken Hopefully, findings from this research willprovide insights for the teaching and learning of LC skills

1.3 Aims of the study

The primary aim of the study is to find out the subjective and objectivedifficulties of the fourth-year English majored students of ThuongMai in studyingEnglish listening skills The study also aims at finding the reasons for thoseproblems and then proposing the solutions for both teachers and students inteaching and learning the listening skills The targeted subjects of this thesis aremainly students; nevertheless, all people who are interested in listening skills canconsider it as a useful reference for improving their listening skills as well

By using quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection, the study aims at:

 Finding out the difficulties that the fourth-year English majored studentsface when studying English listening skills at ThuongMai University

 Researching the factors cause those difficulties

 Providing some suggestions to help students overcome these listeningcomprehension problems

1.4 Research subject

It is extremely important and necessary for English majors to master fourEnglish skills: reading, writing, listening, and speaking Because these four skillsare all equally important in their studies, and each skill is a fascinating topic for aresearcher to investigate In fact, the fourth-year English majors at Thuong MaiUniversity's English Faculty aren't very excellent at LC As a result, the researcherchose to dig deeper into the LC skills of fourth-year English majors in order to gain

a better understanding of their challenges and then provide some solutions to helpthem improve their LC skills

1.5 Scope of the study

The research focuses on the listening comprehension skills of fourth-yearEnglish Faculty students at Thuong Mai University Because of time constraints and

a lack of reference resources, this study was unable to cover the entire topic oflistening comprehension skills It only looked into the most typical problemschildren have with listening comprehension Furthermore, the study was unable toinclude all of Thuong Mai University's students It is exclusively open to studentsmajoring in English in their fourth year

1.6 Research methodology

To fulfill the above aims, a combined quantitative and qualitative method ofdata collection has been combined The quantitative method is a questionnaire-based survey of the fourth-year English major students of the English Faculty atThuongMai University, whereas the qualitative method is a semi-structuredinterview for students to enrich the quantitative data However, all survey questionswere carried out via Google form and sent out via link for students to fill out

The first instrument that was employed in this study was a questionnaire This

majored students and was used to collect information about the difficulties thestudents encountered in listening while learning English listening skills atThuongMai University This instrument is applied because the data will berelatively easy to analyze and understand Besides, it is simpler and morecomfortable for students to complete than to talk in interviews Moreover,questionnaires will help the researcher gather feedback quickly and accuratelybecause the survey is done face-to-face and the students will also have enough time

to think and give answers

The second data-gathering instrument that was used in this study was onlineinterviews conducted by chatting or video-calling for interviewees via Facebook.The purpose of the interview was to reorganize the information obtained throughthe questionnaire It also shows how many of the difficulties identified through thequestionnaire affected the students’ learning listening skills; to take informationabout the reasons behind the learners’ difficulties; and to find out if there are anyother difficulties in listening comprehension that affect the learner’s studyinglistening skills In addition, by providing opportunities for students to report in theirown words, the researcher might gain some insights into their understanding of andattitude towards some of these difficulties The learners’ opinions can be veryvaluable to our understanding of their comprehension difficulties The researcherinterviewed 10 first-year English-major students at ThuongMai University to obtainthe analytical data

1.7 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 subjects, the scope of the study and the researchmethodology are mentioned The organization of the study comes in the end

Chapter 2, Literature review

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 They are alltypical and related to contents of the study

Chapter 3, Research findings

This chapter shows the results of the study, discussion of the results, andsummary of major findings

Chapter 4, Recommendations and suggestions

In this chapter, the researcher gives the summary of the study, somelimitations of the study as well as the recommendations for further studies

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Overview of listening comprehension skills

2.1.1 Definition of listening

Listening is as one of the most important skills in acquiring both a nativelanguage and a second or foreign language and get more and more attention to It isbeing paid more and more attention to So far, there have been a number ofdefinitions of listening by different linguists such as Howatt and Dakin (1974);Pearson (1983); Hirsch (1986); Scarcella and Oxford (1992); Bentley and Bacon(1996), Brown (2001), Gary Buck (2001), Scott Shelton (2008) Howatt and Dakin(1974) defined listening as the ability to identify and understand what others aresaying This involves understanding a speaker’s accent or pronunciation, hisgrammar and his vocabulary, and grasping his meaning Wolvin and Coakley(1982) regarded listening as: “the process of receiving, attending to and assigningmeaning to aural stimuli”

Pearson (1983) stated “Listening involves the simultaneous organizationand combination of skills in Phonology, Syntax, Semantics, and knowledge of thetext structure, all of which seem to be controlled by the cognitive process Thus itcan be said that though not fully realized, the listening skill is essential in acquiringlanguage proficiency”

Hirsch (1986) gave another definition: “Listening as an aspect of skills:involves neurological response and interpretations of sounds to understand and togive meaning by reacting, selecting meaning, remembering, attending, analyzingand including previous experience”

Bentley and Bacon (1996) stated that listening, an important part of thesecond language learning process also has been defined as an active process duringwhich the listener constructs meaning from oral input According to Brown (2001),listening is “not merely the process of unidirectional receiving of audible symbols”

He supposed that one aspect of listening comprehension skills which is “thepsychomotor process of receiving sound waves through the ear and transmittingnerve impulses to the brain” Hence, listening comprises of three elements: thesender, the message and the listener Gary Buck (2001), for example, pointed out

that “listening comprehension is an active process of constructing meaning and this

is done by applying knowledge to the incoming sound” in which “a number ofdifferent types of knowledge are involved: both linguistic knowledge and non-linguistic knowledge”

Scott Shelton (2008) thought that listening effectively is a demandingprocess 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 captured and dealt with more or less simultaneously to identifyand understand the meaning in any given message To sum up, all of the definitionsare given with a view to clarify the nature of the listening skill that is necessary inthe process of acquiring a native language or a foreign one

2.1.2 The importance of listening skills

Listening is one of the necessary life skills which are defined as “skills whichcan provide you with a better perspective on life, skills which can allow you tomaintain a higher awareness of both yourself and the world around you” It is one ofthe most vital ways that human beings feel the life and live Everyone, in the reallife, often listens more than speaks, reads or writes We listen everywhere and everytime We listen to everything and everybody For instance, at home, we listen to thenews, watch films or talk with others At school, students listen to the lecturersteaching At a meeting, the staff listens to the new plan from the director, etc.Without listening, the man becomes backward in each minute of their lives It isobvious that listening is really important in the real life

As it is mentioned in the differences between hearing and listening, hearing is

a part of five senses (hearing, smelling, tasting, touching and looking) but listening

is a choice to hear and understand it As an integrative skill, listening plays animportant role in the process of language learning or acquisition and facilitating theemergence of other language skill According to Nord (1980, p.17), listening is theway of learning the language “It gives the learner information from which to build

up the knowledge necessary for using the language When this knowledge is built

up, the learner can begin to speak The listening-only period is a time of observation

and learning, which provides the basis for the other language skills” (Nation, 1990,p.12) Most learners will spend more time listening to the foreign language thanproducing it themselves Failing to understand spoken language, people may missimportant information presented to them or respond in a funny way So training inlistening is really necessary It helps students make the transition from classroomEnglish to the real-life English more easily and effectively

2.1.3 Methods of listening

According to some authors such as Nguyen Thi Van Lam and Ngo Dinh

Phuong (2006), “there are two ways of listening in the real life They are casual

listening and focused listening, depending on the purpose of listening.”

One type of listening, casual listening, means listening without a particularpurpose When listening, we do not pay much or even any attention to theinformation unless there is something that interests us So, we hardly remember thecontent of what we heard Normally, we do this kind of listening as we listen tomusic, or listen to news on the radio and TV while doing housework, or chatting toour friends

Another type of listening is focused listening That is when we listen for aparticular purpose to seek information we need to know It happens quite popularly

in the real life We listen with much more concentration and try to get as muchinformation as possible However, we do not listen to every word We knowbeforehand what we are going to listen, thus we only grasp the most importantinformation from the speech or the lecture In classroom, learners also use this type

of listening

2.2 Difficulties in studying the listening comprehension skills

In the eyes of many leaners of English, listening is usually regarded as themost difficult skill However, they have difficulties with different aspects

According to Underwood (1989), “there are seven problems to efficient

listening comprehension”:

- First, listeners cannot control the speed of delivery He said, “Many

English language learners believe that the greatest difficulty with listening

comprehension is that the listener cannot control how quickly a speaker speaks''

(Underwood, 1989, p.16)

- Second, listeners cannot always have words repeated This is a seriousproblem in learning situations In the classroom, the decision as to whether or not toreplay a recording or a section of a recording is not in the hands of students

Teachers decide what and when to repeat listening passages; however, it is “hard

for the teacher to judge whether or not the students have understood any particular sections of what they have heard” (Underwood, 1989, p.17).

- Third, “listeners have a limited vocabulary The speaker may choose

words the listener does not know Listeners sometimes encounter an unknown word which may cause them to stop and think about the meaning of that word and thus cause them to miss the next part of the speech.” (Underwood, 1989).

- Fourth, listeners may fail to recognize the signals which indicate that thespeaker is moving from one point to another, giving an example, or repeating a

point “Discourse markers used in formal situations or lectures such as ''secondly,''

or ''then'' are comparatively evident to listeners In informal situations or spontaneous conversations, signals are vague as in pauses, gestures, increased loudness, a clear change of pitch, or different intonation patterns These signals can

be missed especially by less proficient listeners.” (Underwood, 1989).

- Fifth, listeners may lack contextual knowledge “Sharing mutual

knowledge and common content makes communication easier Even if listeners can understand the surface meaning of the text, they may have considerable difficulties

in comprehending the whole meaning of the passage unless they are familiar with the context Nonverbal clues such as facial expressions, nods, gestures, or tone of voice can also be easily misinterpreted by listeners from different cultures.”

(Underwood, 1989)

- Sixth, it can be difficult for listeners to concentrate in a foreign language.

“In listening comprehension, even the shortest break in attention can seriously impair comprehension Conversation is easier when students find the topic of the listening passage interesting; however, students sometimes feel listening is very

tiring even if they are interested because it requires an enormous amount of effort

to follow the meaning.” (Underwood, 1989)

- Seventh, students may have established certain learning habits such as a

wish to understand every word “Teachers want students to understand every word

they hear by repeating and pronouncing words carefully, by grading the language

to suit their level, by speaking slowly and so on As a result, they tend to become worried if they fail to understand a particular word or phrase and they will be discouraged by the failure It is necessary for students to tolerate vagueness and incompleteness of understanding.” (Underwood, 1989).

Goh (2000) attributes ten LC problems which listeners often face including theprocessing phases – perceptions and utilization First, in the perception stage,

leaners reported most difficult one are: “do not recognize words the know”,

“neglect the next part when thinking about meaning”, “cannot chunk streams of speech”, “miss the beginning of texts” and “concentrate too hard or unable to concentrate” Second, in the parsing stage, listeners complained of problems such as: “quickly forget what is heard”,

“unable to form a mental representation from words heard” and “do not

understand subsequent parts of input because of earlier problems Third, in the utilization stage, “understand the words but not the intended message”, “confused about the key ideas in the message” were often mentioned (Goh, 2000) These

difficulties partially reflect Uderwood’s (1989) views on second language listeningproblems

As of Lee Chang Ngee (1985) identifies some problems which listener oftenface including the speed of the speaker and the language he uses; students

“unfamiliarity with the sounds, stress, intonation and rhythm of natural spoken English, different varieties or accents, false starts, hesitation, repetitions and incomplete sentences” Besides, he also points out that boredom, fatigue or

distraction outside the classroom may affect the concentration of the listeners

Yagang (1994) attributes the difficulty of listening comprehension to foursources: the message, the speaker, the listeners and the physical setting

As a whole, there are four main factors that contribute to the difficulty oflistening comprehension: speaker factors, listener factors, the content of listeningand the physical environment.

2.3 Factors affecting the English listening comprehension skills

2.3.1 The listener

Bingol et al (2014) expressed that the level of listeners can have an impact onwhat they can hear In fact, good listeners can hear long message and keepinformation in their mind for a long time However, lower-level students will find itexhausted to collect the data from spoken messages Properly speaking, elementaryand pre-inter mediate levels of students can find it easy to understand shortmessages(Underwood, 1989) If the speaker talks too fast, listeners can haveobstacles to interpret the contents It is because listeners will find it difficult tocontrol the speed of spoken message (Underwood, 1989) Underwood (1989)states some reasons which cause individuals find it hard to understandthe content of spoken message These reasons are demonstrated as follows To startwith, listeners find it difficult to manage the speed of messages Underwood(1989) said that numerous English language listeners accepted that the mostcommon trouble with listening comprehension is that the listeners cannot managehow rapidly a speaker says

Second, listeners cannot generally have words repeated This is a seriousproblem in some circumstances In the classroom or a specific situation, listenerscannot replay the recording or ask speakers to repeat the sentences too manytimes

Third, listeners have a shortage of vocabulary The speaker may pick wordsthat listeners do not have a clue

Fourth, listeners cannot perceive the signs which demonstrate that the speakerwants to move from one point to another point In fact, signals sometimes causedifficulties for listeners to catch up with the speed of sound

Fifth, listeners lack contextual background It is obvious that mutualconversations make communication easier However, listeners may haveconsiderable difficulties when they are not familiar with the context

Last but not least, it tends to be hard for listeners to have goodconcentration in listening to foreign language It is a fact that short and longmessages cause difficulties for listeners to focus on

2.3.2 The speaker

As a fact, the speaker has an impact on what listeners hear Differentaccents and pronunciation lead to listeners’ low understanding (Underwood, 1989).Unfamiliar accents may discourage listeners to continue their listening To someextent, familiar accents such as American or English accents are quite easy forlistener to follow However, in reality, listeners sometimes find it difficult to catchthe words said by non-native English-speaking countries Besides, the speed ofspoken messages also hinders the listeners to comprehend It is obvious that most oflisteners perceived that it is too fast to follow the messages of native speakers(Brown & Yule, 1983) What is more, pauses in speech also cause problems inlistening comprehension According to Hasan (2000), pauses cause problems inperceptions and comprehension for listeners It might be said that speakers often useungrammatical structures and change minds halfway in sentences These things

are normal for speakers; however, they are big obstacles to listeners.

2.3.3 The content of listening

The first issue has to do with the duration of a spoken text The length of thelistening text was one of the main reasons why the students couldn't grasp most ofthe discourse, in addition to a lack of vocabulary and grammatical structures Thisconfirms that difficulties with listening comprehension are attributable in part to thelength of the hearing material, which bores and distracts listeners As a result, it'sreasonable to deduce that extended spoken texts obstruct learners' listeningcomprehension

The second point is to comprehend each and every word in the text As aresult, kids struggle to comprehend the meaning of each word in the sentence Thisbacks up Muhammad Naeem Butt's (2010) assertion that some foreign languagelearners try to understand every single word of entering speech, which is bothsuperfluous and impossible It's also not advisable because listeners won't be able to

see "the forest for the trees" if they're concentrating so hard on getting every singleword or phrase.

2.3.4 The physical environment

Noise is another environmental barrier to listening comprehension Interior aswell as exterior class noise is an obstacle to comprehension First, they aredistracted by the noise no matter how hard they try to focus on the task Otherwise,the noise makes a complex of sounds instead of the solo recording being played.This interrupts the students from hearing and focusing on the task

The next factor is the poo-quality tapes or disks The majority of the studentsthink the difficulties they encounter in listening comprehension are due to the badrecording quality/poor-quality tapes or disks For example, the cassette may berecorded while there are noises around or the cassette is used for such a long time sothe quality is worn out Unclear sounds resulting from poor-quality equipment canalso interfere with the listener’s comprehension Among these, keeping us with thespeaking speed of the speaker is the most difficult for them This is not surprising atall because students try to understand the meaning of everything they heard in thesecond language They were so hard to try to work out the meaning of one part thatthey missed the following one; consequently, they failed to grasp the overallmeaning of the listening text Furthermore, a lot of students were not good enough

to comprehend what they were listening to They often tried to catch everythingthey heard, so they felt panic when they failed to recognize a word or a structure.The indispensable factor is the class atmosphere Inconvenience of classroomssometimes has an effect on students’ listening In the large classrooms, studentswho are sitting on the back rows may not hear the recording as clearly as those sit infront Students who prefer to sit next to the windows also affected by the noise fromoutside The size of the classroom also makes difficult for teachers to manage all theclass in group activities or to get feedback from students The temperature of classcan be counted as a factor that makes English listening more difficult The class thatdoes not have air conditioner or heater may be too hot in summer or too cold inwinter, which distracts students’ attention Teachers have to take into account all thecondition

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH FINDINGS

This chapter deals with the collected data and analysis of the statisticsimplemented on the responses to the survey questionnaire as well as the personalinterviews of the target students in order to find out the reality of learning Englishlistening skill of the fourth-year English majored students, difficulties they havefaced and also some ways that they have used to overcome and improve theirlistening skill

3.1 Participants of the study

Aiming at the forth-year majored English students at ThuongMai University,the researcher chose about 40 students who was studying at K54N classes to carryout the research Their ages ranged from 19-21 There are two reasons for choosingfirst-year students majored English as the participants of the study Firstly, thetraining quality of majored English is of great concern to both the college andteacher at the English faculty Secondly, although they have studied English for along time at secondary and high school, their listening skill seems to be the weakestamong all the four skills Because they rarely learned LC skills The basicinformation of all participants was summarized in the following chart

13%

88%

MaleFemale

Chart 3.1 Distribution of student participants by gender

Most of them studied English for over 7 years, but their English backgroundwas relatively similar because the majority came from rural areas and under beinginfluence of curriculum of English for High school students In the past, the studentsdid not have many chances to practice English skills and thus their English levels

were limited and they had to face many difficulties in studying when enteringThuongMai University.

3.2 Data collection instruments

To fulfill the above aims, the study was carried out with quantitative andqualitative methods of data collection The instruments used in this study were: aquestionnaire, a semi-structured interview with the subjects Both of them performs

by online via social media like Facebook These instruments are described in detailbelow:

3.2.1 The survey questionnaire

The questionnaire is considered a very common instrument used to collectdata on phenomena, which are not easily observed such as attitude, motivation, self-conceptions and so on Therefore, to answer the three research questions in Chapter

1, the researcher used the instrument to investigate the students

The survey questionnaire consists of 18 questions and is divided into 4 parts.Accordingly, the first part is designed for collecting general information of students;questions in part 2 aim at finding out the reality of the students’ studying Englishlistening skills; part 3 mainly seeks for the difficulties that the students encounteredwhen studying English as well as the possible causes for these problems; and thelast one is about the solutions to improve English listening skills

3.2.2 The interview

In this study, the interview was used as the second data collection tool Inorder to obtain real results, the researcher performed an online interview with 10K54N students via video chats via Facebook During the interview, the researcherasked the students to assess their English listening level, and then interviewed themabout their experiences learning English listening skills, in order to learn moreabout the reasons for the learners' difficulties with listening comprehension, and tosee if there are any other listening difficulties that affect the learners'comprehension, as well as possible causes and solutions to listening problems Theyall agreed to assist the researcher in a relaxed manner

3.3 Procedure of data collection

The data obtained through the questionnaire and the interview were organizedand analyzed While the data obtained from the questionnaire were analyzedquantitatively and qualitatively, the data obtained from the interview were analyzedqualitatively And the results of the instruments identified the listening problemsthat affected to students at ThuongMai University

3.3.1 The survey questionnaire

The survey questionnaire was designed as Google form and sent the link forK54N students to fill out When the students completed, the researcher collectedthem Analyzing data was carried out as soon as data collection by the questionnairecommences

3.3.2 The interview

The researcher selected ten of those who had completed the surveyquestionnaire before to take part in the interview All answers were carefullyrecorded to ensure the subsequent data analysis

3.4 Data analysis

This section aims to present the statistical results and the data analyses inorder to answer the research questions addressed in the present study respectively.Firstly, the results of the fourth- year students’ perception to the importance ofstudying listening comprehension are presented and analyzed quantitatively Thesecond section provides the results and analysis of listening comprehensionproblems encountered by the subjects The third section deals with how the teachercan help his students overcome these listening comprehension problems At last,

recommendations for both teachers and students are given.

3.4.1 Results from the survey questionnaire

Due to the ongoing disease conditions, the survey was conducted online for byaccessing the link and filling out the questionnaire to the K54N students atThuongMai University and all were collected The students were asked to tick outthe best answer to some questions, and to tick more than one answer for others

 Personal information

Experiences of learning English

1-3 years 5%

4-6 years 5%

7-9 years 35%

More than 9 years 55%

Importance of listening skills

Very important 92.5%

Important 7.5 %Neutral 0%

Less important 0%

Unimportant 0%

Table 3.1 Personal information of the students

From table 3.1, it can be seen that most of K54N students learned English over

7 years According to the table, 55% of the students learned English more than 9years whereas 35% studied for 7-9 years The percentage of students who learnedEnglish for 1-3 years and for 4-6 years were at the same level about 5% It can besaid that students spent much time in studying English besides learning othercompulsory subjects in primary, secondary and high school

Besides, the above table shows that 92.5% of the students agreed Englishlistening skills were very important The rest of them supposed that the skills wereimportant Meanwhile, no students answered “Neutral”, “Less important” or

“Unimportant” Thereby, it can be affirmed that English listening skills played anextremely important role for the students

 The reality of the students’ listening skills studying

In this questionnaire, the students were asked to answer six questions related

to the reality of their listening skills learning To the question about the frequency ofstudents in self-studying English listening at home, the researcher asked theparticipants to tick out the best answer The chart below describes the response ofthe students

Never Rarely Sometimes Usually Always

Chart 3.2 The frequency of students in self-studying English listening at home

It can be seen that most of students spent time in self-studying listening athome but they did not really study hard 60% of the learners answered thatsometimes they self-studied listening at home The recorded figure for the answer

“Usually” was 20%, while the answer “Rarely” accounted for 12.5% Only 5% saidthat they always self-studied listening skills at home The number of students whoanswered “Never” was the lowest, accounted for 2.5%

How the students practice listening is shown in table 3.2

 Listen to tapes or disks of coursebook at university 27.5%

 Listen to news and speeches in English 32.5%

 Watch English TV shows, films and movies 72,5%

 Others:

- Speak with foreigners as much as possible 2,5%

Table 3.2 The methods of practicing listening skills

It can be seen from the table 3.2 that the amount of students who practicedlistening skills by listening to English songs was highest, accounted for 80% 72.5%students answered that they often practiced listening by watching English TV

shows, films and movies Meanwhile, the equivalent figures for the two answers

“Listen to news and speeches in English” and “Listen to tapes or disks ofcoursebook at university” were 32.5% and 27.5% respectively Among the 40students, one student submitted that she loved speaking with foreigners as much aspossible in order to practice listening skills In general, all of the mentionedmethods helped the students improve their listening skills if they hardly practiced.What activities are prepared before listening is shown in chart 3.3

Ask about the new words

Read the task instruction

22,5%

42,5%

7,5%

Chart 3.3 The students’ activities before listening

What students did before listening has partially impacts on theircomprehension of the listening text As mentioned in chart 3.3, 42.5% of therespondents admitted that they did nothing before listening, they just waited tolisten This action is discouraged because it makes the students in passive and it isdifficult to understand the listening texts 22.5% said that they often went throughthe questions and guessed what the topic was about before listening It is reasonablefor this first stage of listening, but reading the task instruction should be prior in anycircumstances Thanks to the task instruction, the students will know what theyhave to do and how to deal with that There were just 12.5% of the students takingthis step

According to the collected data, 50% answered that they listened and tooknotes keywords while listening for the first time Taking notes while listening helps