A study on dificulties encountered by first year second year english majored students in learning listening comprehension skills at hong duc university

HONG DUC UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES GRADUATION THESIS A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED BY YEAR/ SECOND-YEAR ENGLISH MAJORED STUDENTS FIRST-IN LEARNFIRST-ING LISTENFIRST

HONG DUC UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

GRADUATION THESIS

A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED BY YEAR/ SECOND-YEAR ENGLISH MAJORED STUDENTS

FIRST-IN LEARNFIRST-ING LISTENFIRST-ING COMPREHENSION SKILLS AT

HONG DUC UNIVERSITY

Thanh Hoa – 2021

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

On completing this thesis, I would like to send my deepest and most sincere

of Foreign Languages, Hong Duc University, who have taught me basic knowledge for four years to complete this study In addition, I would also like to say thanks to those first-year/second-year English majored students for their enthusiastic help and support during the challenging time of conducting the research

i

ABSTRACT

Nowadays, the English language plays an important role in every field of our

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT i

TABLE OF CONTENTS ii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS iv

LISTS OF TABLES AND CHARTS v

PART I: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aims of the study 3

3 Research questions 3

4 Research methodology 3

5 Scope of the study 3

6 Organization of the study 4

PART II: CONTENT 5

Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1.1 Definitions 5

1.1.1 Listening skills 5

1.1.2 The importance of listening skill in the language learning 6

1.1.3 Listening process 9

1.2 Difficulties in English listening skill 12

1.2.1 Subjective difficulties 12

1.2.2 Objective difficulties 15

1.2.3 Causes of difficulties 17

1.3 Previous studies 19

1.3.1 In the world 19

1.3.2 In Viet Nam 22

1.4 Summary 23

Chapter 2: METHODOLODY 25

2.1 General information about Hong Duc University (HDU) and Faculty of Foreign Languages (FFL) 25

2.2 Participants 25

2.3 Research instruments 27

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2.4 Data collection and analysis 28

2.4.1 Data collection 28

2.4.2 Data analysis 28

Chapter 3: RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 29

3.1 Findings 29

3.1.1 Frist-year/ second-year English majored students’ attitudes toward English listening skills 29

3.1.2 First/second-year English majored students’ difficulties in English listening learning 33

3.1.3 Solutions to deal with difficulties of listening comprehension of first/second-year English majored students’ 38

3.2 Discussions 42

3.3 Summary 45

PART III: CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS 47

1 Conclusion 47

2 Recommendations 48

2.1 Strategies 48

2.1.1 For students 49

2.1.2 For teachers 51

2.2 Using technology 53

3 Limitation and suggestion for further studies 55

4 Summary 55

REFERENCES 56 APPENDIX

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

L2 Second language FFL Faculty of Foreign Languages FLC English Language Centre HDU Hong Duc University

CD Compact disc

EF Education First

v

LISTS OF TABLES AND CHARTS

1, Tables

Table 3.1 Student’s evaluation on different language skills

Table 3.2 Satisfaction level with listening skills

Table 3.3 Difficulties in students’ listening

Table 3.4 Solutions to deal with difficulties of listening comprehension

2, Charts

Chart 2.1 Participants survey

Chart 2.2 Period of time learning English

Chart 3.1 What do you think about listening skill?

Chart 3.2 Students’ attitude towards the importance of English listening

skill comprehension Chart 3.3 Time to practice listening skill everyday

Chart 3.4 Take notes while listening to improve comprehension and retain

vocabulary Chart 3.5 Listening materials

PART I: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

In today’s globalization movement, the influence of English cannot be rejected and overlooked because they universally use it in all parts of the world English is the official language of over 53 countries and territories, and it is the official language of the European Union We can say that English has become a global language and is like a travel ticket, a bridge to help you easily get a steady career with higher wages Especially for a developing country like Vietnam, English was taught very early, from the late 1980s, in the early 1990s when the country implemented innovative policies, and the relations with The United Stated were normalized, the movement to learn English thrived Since then, English has been introduced into the national education system in Vietnam as a compulsory subject Besides, there are many young people who are aware of its importance for reasons such as finding a high-quality job, communicating with the outside world, accessing the scientific resources that they are following So, that is also the reason many universities and colleges now teach a lot of content in English and regulate foreign language output standards (English) for graduates Therefore, teaching and learning English has been a concern of many universities and colleges nationwide In fact, Vietnam is currently in the group of countries with average English ability, ranking 41/88 according to the report on English skill of the public Education First (EF) published November 2018 The reception of the new language will make learners face many obstacles related to the four skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing But, most learners have many difficulties with listening skills As a final year student in the Faculty of Foreign Languages, I realized that listening is an important skill but difficult to practice So, my research will focus on difficulties encountered by first-year/ second-year English majors students in learning to listen

to comprehension skills at Hong Duc University Then, to find out some solutions

to help first and second year students to improve the listening skills There are many reasons for me to choose this topic for research The first reason comes from the fact that the first-year/ second-year students’ English listening skills are quite weak

in listening comprehension Most first-year/ second-year students are all too familiar with the high school curriculum They only focus on learning grammar and

vocabulary but are less interested in practicing language skills such as English listening practice Scores for listening tests at university are very low Most freshmen and sophomores are afraid of learning to listen or listen to tests Besides, according to Lewis (1993), listening is also the most important input means of learning a foreign language and increasing students’ verbal perception and supporting foreign language learning Indeed, listening is an important and difficult skill Listening is a technique that cannot be ignored when learning a foreign language Listening plays an important role in other remaining skills such as speaking, reading, and writing All skills are related to each other and used in combination in everyday life Most learners will find their listening skills difficult and choose to avoid listening to English However, as students of the FFL, first-year/ second-year students need to raise awareness of the importance of listening skills and try to overcome difficulties Unlike students of other departments, FFL students need to be aware of the relationship of listening skills with others skills, learners should not focus on a certain skill that they find easy to ignore other skills One of the other reasons is the personal experience I have had a lot of difficulties in learning and practicing listening skills In fact, in my first-year, my listening test scores were the lowest compared to the other 3 skills And that continued in the second year, I was very sad because I tried but the results still did not improve Like other students, I want to improve my listening skills so that I can use specialized English well after graduation and then have a stable job for myself Of course, to get this, learners need a lot of effort Freshmen and sophomores have a lot of time and opportunities to research and improve their skills Therefore, the researcher wants

to, through this study, find out the difficulties that first-year/ second-year are facing, and offer practical solutions for themselves I hope the results of this study bring benefits not only for me but also for the first-year/ second-year students who are weak in English listening skills Moreover, there have been many types of research

on the listening skills of HDU students, but very few people have studied specifically about difficulties in listening skills that first-year/ second-year English students have experienced Therefore, I have more motivation to be addicted to the research on this topic to help students in FFL These are the main rationales that

prompt the researcher to carry out the study of the topic “A study on difficulties

encountered by first-year/ second-year English majored students in learning listening comprehension skills at Hong Duc University”

2 Aims of the study

The research was conducted in order to find out the difficulties that the first and second year students faced when learning English listening skill at Hong Duc University (HDU) More specifically, the research further seeks to suggest solutions

to help the students overcome the difficulties in order to improve their listening effectively

3 Research questions

It is true that listening is vital in language learning in that it provides input for the learner Without understanding inputs, students can’t learn anything Listening skill is by both the teachers and the students considered the most difficult to achieve among the four skills This, therefore, drove me to conduct this study With the hope of contributing some suggestive techniques for learning listening and it is carried out with the purpose of finding the answers to the three research questions below:

1 What are the students’ attitudes towards listening learning?

2 What are the difficulties students often encounter in learning listening skills?

3 What are techniques used to improve the listening skills for the first-year/ second-year students in Foreign Language Department at Hong Duc University?

4 Research methodology

The research methodology used is the quantitative method The researcher designed a questionnaire consisting of smaller and more specific questions These questions include closed questions (questions are available with answers) The questionnaires were delivered to 100 students who were selected in the scope of the study, then the questionnaires were retrieved for results Results are transferred to specific number data and the data are clearly analyzed

5 Scope of the study

First, the scope of the study is the difficulties in learning English listening skills experienced by first-year/ second-year English majored students at HDU The

study focuses on understanding and investigating the difficulties students face Second, the researcher only concentrated on the first-year/ second-year student of HDU's English Department The research objects are limited and zoned The study

is 100 students randomly selected in 2 classes: K22, K23 The researcher will invite participants to fill up the survey questionnaire from each of these mentioned classes The thesis did not study or interview other subjects such as teachers or parents

6 Organization of the study

This minor thesis includes three parts:

question, methods, and design of the study It expresses the reason why the author decided to choose this study and methods for the fulfillment of the study

+ Chapter 1: Literature review, which is intended to give the concepts relevant to the research topic such as a different point of views of listening skills, the importance, classification, difficulties of learning listening skills and strategies

to learn Listening Comprehension And refer to the documents of previous researchers (in the world and in Vietnam) to enrich the content and find out information for the research

+ Chapter 2: Methodology and procedures introduce the participants, instruments, research process, and plan of action

+ Chapter 3: Research findings, use the results of the survey to analyze and clarify each question in detail This is very important because it helps to understand students, understand their learning situation in terms of listening comprehension skills From there, there will be discussion

well as the limited points of this study and some suggestions for further studies, will

be presented

PART II: CONTENT Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

Following the rationale and the research questions presented in the previous part, a review of the related studies in this field is introduced in this chapter This chapter, the definitions that listening skills, the importance of listening in acquiring

of a foreign language and listening process; next, the difficulties in learning English listening skills (subjective difficulties and objective difficulties) and then, find some causes to difficulties in this Finally, previous studies in the world in general and in Vietnam in particular will be carefully and clearly referenced and studied

1.1 Definitions

1.1.1 Listening skills

In language teaching, “listening skills” means listening and understanding skills or listening comprehension skills This is also the sense of listening used in this thesis, where listening tries to understand the oral messages people are conveying There are a large number of definitions of listening proposed by different scholars Chastain (1971) defined listening as the ability to understand native speakers at normal speed Bowen, Madsen, and Hilferty (1985) demonstrated that listening is understanding the oral language Students hear oral speech, divide sounds, classify them into lexical and syntactic units, and comprehend the message Listening is a process of receiving what the speaker says, making and showing meaning, negotiating meaning with the speaker and answering, and creating meaning by participation, creativity, and empathy Listening is more than simply hearing words According to Tarigan (2015) language skills have four components, namely listening skills, speaking skills, reading skills, and writing skills Each skill

is closely related to the other three skills in a variety of ways In acquiring language skills, we go through regular and related relationships between one skill and another Listen and talk we learn before entering school First, in childhood, we listen to the language used by those around us, then from the words we have gained from the listening process we learned to speak, then we learn to read and write afterward The four skills are basically a unity called chess Listening includes an active process by which students receive, construct meaning from, and respond to

spoken and or nonverbal messages (Emmert, 1994 as quoted in Gilakjani, 2011) Listening, in other words, is extremely an active process, but the activity happens in the mind Listeners guess, predict, infer, criticize and, above all, interpret (Wilson, 2009) To Howatt and Dakin (as cited in Saricoban, 1999), listening is the ability to identify and understand what others are saying This process involves understanding

a speaker’s accent or pronunciation, the speaker’s grammar and vocabulary, and comprehension of meaning Listening seems an important part of the communication process and should not be separated from the other language arts According to Purdy (1997), listening is the process of receiving, making meaning from, and answering spoken and/or nonverbal messages Rost (as cited in Vandergrift, 2011) has defined listening as a process of receiving what the speaker actually says, constructing and representing meaning, negotiating meaning with the speaker and responding, and creating meaning through involvement, imagination, and empathy To listen well, listeners must have the ability to decode the message, the ability to apply a variety of strategies and interactive processes to make meaning, and the ability to respond to what is said in a variety of ways, depending

on the purpose of the communication Jafari and Hashim (2015) emphasized that listening is a channel for comprehensible input and more than 50 percent of the time learners spend in learning a foreign language is devoted to listening

In conclusion, from all the above definitions, it is perceived that listening is not just hearing, but it is an “active and dynamic process” which contains various kinds of activities such as predicting and recognizing the messages from the speakers; identifying and retaining relevant point; remembering and making an inference based on them So, listening is a process of identifying and understanding what the speakers say, which includes understanding a speaker’s pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary

1.1.2 The importance of listening skill in the language learning

Listening has an important role both in daily life and in academic contexts, as

it is crucial for people to sustain effective communication In spite of the importance of listening in the development of communicative and cognitive skills, it did not start to take its place in the language teaching curriculum for long years However, in recent years, with the emphasis given in communication in language

teaching, listening started to take long deserved place in language programs Studies have shown that listening makes up about 45% of the time people spend communicating, followed by speaking (about 30%), reading (about 15%), and writing (about 10%) That’s right: Listening is the skill you will use the most in English, or any other language you learn “Yet, for all its importance, students (and even teachers) often fail to give listening to the attention it needs This is all the more remarkable as learners often say that listening is the most challenging of all the skills in English.” (Raphael Ahmed, British Council) The receptive skills (listening and reading) therefore make up 60% of all communication, but traditional language teaching emphasized grammar and productive skills (speaking and writing) “If you develop good listening comprehension, the other skills will come, the speaking will come, even your grammar, your accuracy All of these things will come if you have had so much exposure to the language that you understand it when

it is spoken by a native speaker.” (Steve Kauffman, polyglot and founder of LingQ) Emphasizing the importance of listening in language learning, Peterson (2001) states that “no other type of language input is easy to process as spoken language, received through listening … through listening, learners can build an awareness of the interworking of language systems at various levels and thus establish a base for more fluent productive skills” Listening has an important role not only in daily life but also in classroom settings Anderson and Lynch (2003) state that “We only become aware of what remarkable feats of listening we achieve when we are in an unfamiliar listening environment, such as listening to a language in which we have limited proficiency” Most people think that being able to write and speak in a second language means that they know the language; however, if they do not have the efficient listening skills, it is not possible to communicate effectively That is, listening is the basic skill in language learning and over 50% of the time that students spend functioning in a foreign language will be devoted to listening (Nunan, 1998) Rost (1994) explains the importance of listening in language classroom as follows:

i, Listening is vital in the language classroom because it provides input for the learner Without understanding input at the right level, any learning simply cannot begin

ii, Spoken language provides a means of interaction for the learner Because learners must interact to achieve understanding Access to speakers of the language

Moreover, listening is important in social communication, academic success and language acquisition Needless to say, listening effectively is the sufficient condition for the students to take part in oral communication The communicating process will break down when the listeners fail to understand what the speakers say (Underwood, 1989) Furthermore, being able to listen to English well, the students have a good chance to approach the broad knowledge in the outside world Noticeably, listening is the basic step to get the input in learning a language In any language classroom, listening skill plays a significant role in the development of other language skills Vandergrift (1997) claims that listening internalizes not only the rules of language skills but also facilitates the emergence of other skills To be more specific, listening helps the students to pronounce exactly and recognize the spoken form of words When learning a new word, students have to listen to it several times before identifying it It is said that listening provides the comprehensive supplier for understanding and acquiring a new language Precisely, without receiving the necessary language input at the right level, the learning process cannot take place Krashen (1985) believes that understanding linguistic information is the key to acquire language These claims are supported by Stevenson (2010) He emphasizes the significance of listening for second language (L2) learners, especially ESL learners In his study, he pinpoints that:" For learners

of English listening is vital because it is through this sense that they receive information on vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, spoken word order, as well as

the stress patterns of words, phrases and sentences In addition, added to these is the effect that different accents, voice tone and pitch can have on their comprehension

of the message."

In conclusion, listening plays such an essential role in L2 acquisition This skill is not only a tool to acquire other sources of knowledge but also provides L2 learners with the most important patterns of language Emphasizing the importance

of listening, Anderson and Lynch (2003) state that listening skills are as important

as speaking skills, because people cannot communicate face-to-face unless both types of skills are developed together Listening skills are also important for learning purposes since through listening students receive information and gain insights (Wallace, Stariha & Walberg, 2004)

1.1.3 Listening process

According to Cook (2001) emphasizes the difference between ‘decoding’ and

‘code-breaking' in the process of listening Decoding refers to processing language

to get the message whereas code-breaking refers to processing language to get the rules Cook states that “teaching involves both getting students to decode messages from language and to code breaker the language system from what is heard” And, Flowerdew and Miller (2005), advanced listening skills are the results of combining the listening process with cognitive development In that sense, in order to be effective listeners, students should use both bottom-up and top-down processing in listening That is, “students must hear some sounds (bottom-up processing), hold them in their working memory long enough (a few seconds) to connect them to each other, and then interpret what they’ve just heard before something new comes along At the same time, listeners are using their background knowledge (top-down processing) to determine meaning with respect to prior knowledge and schemata” (Brown, 2006) Anderson and Lynch (2003) state that effective listening involves a multiplicity of skills and they list four steps that make up the process of listening in face-to-face conversation:

a) The spoken signals have to be identified from the midst of surrounding sounds

b) The continuous stream of speech has to be segmented into units, which have to be recognized as known words

c) The syntax of the utterance has to be grasped and the speaker’s intended meaning has to be understood

d) We also have to apply our linguistic knowledge to formulate a correct and appropriate response to what has been said

Bottom-up processes are the processes the listener uses to assemble the message piece-by-piece from the speech stream, going from the parts to the whole Bottom-up processing involves perceiving and parsing the speech stream at increasingly larger levels beginning with auditory-phonetic, phonemic, syllabic, lexical, syntactic, semantic, propositional, pragmatic and interpretive Top-down processes involve the listener in going from the whole their prior knowledge and their content and rhetorical schemata to the parts In other words, the listener uses what they know of the context of communication to predict what the message will contain, and uses parts of the message to confirm, correct or add to this The key process here is inference Moreover, an important point that “meaning does not reside exclusively within the words” on the oral messages In this case, Brown (2007) proposed the importance of students’ prior knowledge to facilitate their listening comprehension The best way in listening works is not purely bottom-up,

or top-down Successful listeners seem to be those who can utilize both bottom-up and top-down knowledge, combining the knowledge “outside the head” and “inside the head” It means that other factors such as students’ prior knowledge, vocabulary, and grammar competency may contribute to students listening proficiency The idea that both processes should be applied in listening is supported by Wilson (2009) and Vandergrift (2011) who mention that it is known as the interactive model Listeners use both prior knowledge and linguistic knowledge to comprehend the message Besides, according to Vishwanath Bite, the process of listening occurs in five stages They are hearing, understanding, remembering, evaluating, and responding

as follow:

a) Step-1: Receiving (Hearing): Hearing it is referred to the response caused

by sound waves stimulating the sensory receptors of the ear; it is a physical response; hearing is the perception of sound waves; you must hear to listen, but you

need not listen to hear (perception necessary for listening depends on attention) Brain screens stimuli and permits only a select few to come into focus- this selective perception is known as attention, an important requirement for effective listening

b) Step-2: Understanding (Learning): Understanding this step helps to understand the symbols we have seen and heard, we must analyze the meaning of the stimuli we have perceived; symbolic stimuli are not only words but also sounds like applause and sights like blue uniform that have symbolic meanings as well; the meanings attached to these symbols are a function of our past associations and of the context in which the symbols occur For successful interpersonal communication, the listener must understand the intended meaning and the context assumed by the sender

c) Step-3: Remembering (Recalling): Remembering is an important listening process because it means that an individual has not only received and interpreted a message but has also added it to the mind's storage bank Listening to our attention

is selective, so too is our memory- what is remembered may be quite different from what was originally seen or heard

d) Step-4: Evaluating (Judging): Evaluating only active listeners participate at this stage in Listening At this point the active listener weighs evidence, sorts fact from opinion, and determines the presence or absence of bias or prejudice in a message; the effective listener makes sure that he or she doesn’t begin this activity too soon; beginning this stage of the process before a message is completed requires that we no longer hear and attend to the incoming message as a result, the listening process ceases

e) Step-5: Responding (Answering): Responding this stage requires that the receiver complete the process through verbal and/or nonverbal feedback; because the speaker has no other way to determine if a message has been received, this stage becomes the only overt means by which the sender may determine the degree of success in transmitting the message

From the explanation above about the types and processes purpose of the listening is to have social relationships with people around and we can do many things because the conversation has many functions one of which we can mingle

with everyone and the purpose of the listening performance is not necessarily to look for global or general meanings but to be able to comprehend designated information Students can improve their listening skills and gain valuable language input through a combination of extensive and intensive listening material and procedures

1.2 Difficulties in English listening skill

It is taken for granted that people can listen in the mother tongue with little or

no effort However, learning to listen in the second foreign language is more difficult because it does not only require the ability of the listeners but also is affected by the speakers, the physical factors, the content of the listening text, and the physical setting in the classroom Many English students will sooner or later find themselves in real-life situations where they need to listen to English for a range of purposes In these cases, many problems arise After consulting the literature, books, and research of many authors, the researcher found that the difficulties in listening skills were divided into 2 categories: Subjective difficulties and Objective difficulties

1.2.1 Subjective difficulties

There are many experts and authors who pointed out the difficulties in listening skills stemming from the learners themselves After referring to previous studies, the researcher has drawn some main subjective difficulties: Restricted vocabulary, poor grammar, lack of contextual knowledge and poor concentration

* Restricted vocabulary

Listening is an important skill in communication process and vocabulary also plays an indispensable role in communication Therefore, vocabulary has a close relationship with listening skill Oxford (1990) also claimed that vocabulary is “by far the most sizeable and unmanageable component in the learning of any language, whether a foreign or one's mother tongue, because of tens of thousands of different meanings" Vocabulary knowledge is often viewed as a critical tool for second language learners because a limited vocabulary in a second language impedes successful communication Underscoring the importance of vocabulary acquisition,

Schmitt (2000) emphasizes that "lexical knowledge is central to communicative competence and to the acquisition of a second language" According to Underwood (1989), listeners do not have high vocabulary knowledge Speakers may select words that listeners do not know them Listeners might face an unfamiliar word which could stop them and think about the meaning of that word for a while and miss the next part of the speech D Renukadevi showed that learners' failure or laziness to build up vocabulary gradually and this greatly reflected in their listening and kept them low spirited in acquiring the language skills According to Azmi Bingol, Celik, Yidliz, and Tugrul Mart (2014), when listening texts contain known words it would be very easy for students to them If students know the meaning of words this can arouse their interest and motivation and can have a positive impact

on the students' listening comprehension ability A lot of words have more than one meaning and if they are not used appropriately in their appropriate contexts students will get confused In their study, Naci Yildiz and Mustafa Albay (2015) affirmed that vocabulary level of learners helped them recognize the words easily which

played major role in comprehension

* Poor grammar

According to Hasan (2000), difficult grammatical structure is one of the most important factors that cause problems for learners' listening comprehension Wilkins (1972) stated that: "There is not much value in being able to produce grammatical sentences if one has not got the vocabulary that is needed to convey what one wishes to say While without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed" According to Naci Yildiz and Mustafa Albay (2015), the knowledge of grammar helps learners comprehend easily The grammatical knowledge helps listeners to easily grasp information and determine the intention of the speaker Biber (1986) cited that “Many of the devices of written language have no spoken equivalent" He also showed “linguistic differences between speaking and writing have been attributed to differing processing constraints and to differing situational characteristics" Differences in grammar in spoken and written langguage affect learners' ability to listen and read Therefore, poor grammar is one of the difficulties hindering learners in the process of listening

to foreign languages

* Lack of contextual knowledge

Vandergrift (2004) and Walker (2014) indicated that "oral passages exist in real time and should be processed rapidly and when the passage is over, only a mental representation remains" Listening needs immediate processing to access the spoken input again, making the skill more complex than reading Students' cultural background knowledge can have an important role in their listening comprehension

A general understanding of the country's culture and its history can facilitate listening processes Vandergrift (2007) and Walker (2014) also declared that

"listeners can use pragmatic knowledge to make inferences and identify speakers' implied meaning that these should be specifically considered by teachers when teaching listening comprehension" According to Seyedeh Masoumeh Ahmadi (2016), having contextual knowledge "is to activate related background knowledge and use it to predict the ideas the message may have" This knowledge used to

"anticipate the general content of the message" Skilled listening requires that listener look ahead in anticipation of what is coming Rivers (1981) said that “the understanding of spoken messages depend on comprehension of semantic meaning, moving from what one comprehends in the sound sequence with respect to the

knowledge of syntax only when the meaning is not understandable"

* Poor concentration

Learning attitudes always affect learners' results In particular, listening skills

is one of the skills that require high concentration Naci Yildiz and Mustafa Albay (2015) declared that “Motivation allows learners to concentrate on the topic, and enables them to listen to attentively Motivated learners stand a better chance of developing listening comprehension" According to D Renukadevi (2014),

“Listener's concentration power or listening stamina greatly influences their listening skills, which is not so in the case of acquiring the other language skills (reading, speaking and writing) even when they are carried for a longer period of time" Everyone's ability to concentrate on listening is different Therefore, learners with poor concentration and easily affected by external influences will find it more difficult to listen

1.2.2 Objective difficulties

* Listening material

In listening lessons, the students often practice with audio recording Therefore, they cannot guess what the speakers are saying without watching On the other hand, according to Hemei (1997, cited in Çakir, 2006), video is a rich and valuable resource; and it is well-liked by both students and teachers Obviously, the video makes meaning clearer by illustrating relationships in a way that is not possible with words, which proves a well-known saying that a picture is worth a thousand words This is in the line with Yagang (1994) and Harmer (2001) that not seeing the speaker’s gesture and facial expressions makes it more difficult for the listener to understand the speaker’s meaning According to Naci Yildiz and Mustafa Albay (2015), "The choice of listening materials holds an important place because if the message is not conveyed then the materials will not be useful" They also declared that "vocabulary and grammar level of the material influences comprehension largely" Teachers ensure that the level of material is compatible with the level of the students The phonological characteristics of listening material are even more important Learners should easily master the tension and intonation

in the material The content of the document should attract the learner's attention The concepts in the document should be easy to understand Long listening activities can make learners bored and they may not understand At the same time, poorly organized documents may not be useful for learners to develop their listening comprehension Listening to documents with many technical words will not bring any benefit to learners According to Seferoglu and Uzakgoren (2004),

some listening comprehension problems included the kind of listening materials

* Speed of delivery

Vandergrift (2004) and Walker (2014) indicated that "oral passages exist in real time and should be processed rapidly and when the passage is over, only a mental representation remains" Hasan (2000) indicated that "unfamiliar words, difficult grammatical structures, and the length of the spoken passages are the most important factors that cause problems for learners' listening comprehension" Fast delivery of language may lead to not understanding because learners may not

receive all messages Underwood (1989) stressed "the negative role of fast delivery and concludes that many English language learners believe that the greatest difficulty with listening comprehension is that the listener cannot control how

quickly a speaker speaks"

* Listening environment

When listening, the listeners often have to cope with the amount of noise Some words are maybe drowned by outside interference, such as the surrounding sounds The foreign language learners must put more effort to grasp the meaning of these noises Sometimes, they cannot get the point because of the interruption of noise Besides, redundant utterances may take the form of repetitions, false starts, rephrasings, self-corrections, elaborations, tautologies, and apparently meaningless additions such as “I mean” or “you know” (Ur, 1984) This redundancy is a natural feature of speech and may be either a help or a hindrance, depending on the students’ levels It may make it more difficult for beginners to understand what the speaker is saying; on the other hand, it may give advanced students more time to

“tune in” to the speaker’s voice and speech style D Renukadevi (2014) declared

"distraction by the physical setting or the environment in which listening is to be carried out This becomes an added challenge for an average learner and a main confront even for good listeners" The environment where listening activities are carried out facilitates comprehension In a quiet learning environment, learners focus better This will affect their understanding Language learners in better-equipped schools will develop better understanding skills In a school where

listening skills are ignored, learners will fall behind

* Accents of speakers

Munro and Derwing (1999) expressed that too much-accented speech can lead

to an important reduction of incomprehension According to Goh (1999), 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 Buck (2001) indicated that when listeners hear an unfamiliar accent such as Indian English for the first time after studying

only American English will encounter critical difficulties in listening This will certainly interrupt the whole listening comprehension process and at the same time

an unfamiliar accent makes comprehension impossible for the listeners Bloomfield (2010) told that “regional accents can impact the spoken message that is understood

by the listeners and familiar accents are easier to understand than unfamiliar accents" Buck (2001) mentioned a lot of problems in listening activities included unfamiliar accents According to Naci Yildiz and Mustafa Albay (2015), the pronunciation and accent of the speaker influenced comprehension D Renukadevi (2014) declared that "listeners problem with different pronunciation, accents as they

stick to one particular articulation"

It is not necessary and makes learners become distracted

Moreover, spoken language has a great number of redundancies They are the result of rephrasing, repetitions, elaborations and some insertions such as "As I have said" and so on At first, learners may get trouble with this They are easy to be confused However, with some training learners can take advantage of redundancies

to have more time and extra information

On the other hand, spoken language also has many reduced forms It may be phonological, morphological, syntactic or pragmatic like "you're" instead of "you are", "won't" instead of "will not", or "can't" instead of "cannot" These reductions are really significant difficulties to the learners, especially beginners when they start getting to know the full form of English language

The next characteristic of spoken language is performance variables As a result of unplanned action, spoken language consists of a lot of hesitations ("er",

"uhm"), false starts, pauses and corrections They make the listeners confused

Colloquial language is another problem that can interfere listeners in real life listening because they are familiar with standard written language In monologues and dialogues, the appearance of idioms, slang, reduced forms and shared cultural language are common

In listening, learners need to comprehend language delivered at varying rates

of speed and delivered with few pauses because they do not have opportunity to stop speaker and listen again many times

English is a stress-timed language so it is very important for learners to understand its prosodic features By stress, rhythm, and intonation, listeners can interpret more subtle messages like sarcasm, endearment, insult, solicitation, praise, etc

The last but not least, interaction is also an element that plays a large role in listening comprehension Language learners should be taught the instruction in the two-way nature of listening They have to learn to continue the process of comprehending Some rules of interaction are negotiation, clarification, attending signals, turn-taking, topic nomination, maintenance, and termination In short, it is necessary for language learners understand all of these to characteristics of spoken language in order that they get more ease in interaction in general and in listening in particular

Meanwhile, according to Hermawan (2012) that the influencing factors can

be divided into two, namely internal factors and external factors:

Internal factors that can influence the listening process are; hearing problems and physical conditions When a person suffers from hearing problems

or damage hearing devices that can inhibit the entry of waves in a certain volume, then the listening process will be disrupted Likewise, if the physical condition is less healthy then he cannot concentrate on listening to other people's conversations properly Another factor is the self-limitation to listen simultaneously all that we hear Many listeners can only listen to half of the verbal messages that other people make every day Therefore the listener does not always listen well if his attention is distorted The next factor is thinking too fast, it's hard to do listening carefully When there is free time to spare his

thoughts while others talk, usually the listener instead thinks of things that are not related to the speaker's ideas, such as personal interests, daydreaming, planning a refutation and so on The listening process is also influenced by the motivation and feelings of the listener at that time (personal interest) Listeners will listen more effectively, and consciously select what is being heard, especially when they need or want that information

In addition to internal factors include environmental factors, material factors, speakers, style and speaking techniques The subject matter can influence the listening process Listeners will be more interested in new material than material that has been known or experienced The speaker factor can also disturb the listener's attention For example, speakers who are experienced and appear calm will be more persuasive compared to speakers who are nervous Besides that the style, appearance, and technique of presenting the material can also be one of the factors that influence the listening process such as visualization and technology used

1.3 Previous studies

The topic "difficulties in learning listening comprehension skills" is always the center of many researchers' attention Before carrying out this topic, the researcher consulted and explored many documents related to the topic of difficulties in English listening skills There is a lot of information and materials related to this issue on the internet, books, newspapers, magazines, scientific papers, etc The following are some most recent studies of the topic in both the world and Vietnam All of these studies share a common purpose in discovering the difficulties learners encounter in learning listen comprehension skills and suggesting solutions

1.3.1 In the world

In this part, the researcher presents the studies conducted in the countries where English is taught and learnt as a foreign language The study by Tilahun (2008) explored the factors that contribute to the problems EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners face in listening skills classrooms at Bahir Dar University in Ethiopia The instruments used in the study were a questionnaire for the students, a semi-structured interview with the students; a treasured Intentia with

the listening instigator herniation of listening English is taught and learnt as a foreign language The study by Tilahun (2008) explored the factors that contribute

to the problems EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners face in listening skills classrooms at Bahir Dar University in Ethiopia The instruments used in the study were a questionnaire for the students, a semi-structured interview with the students, a structured interview with the listening instructors, an observation of the listening environment, material analysis, and document analysis The study identified thirty-six difficulties that interfered with the learners' listening comprehension They were related to text, listener, speaker, and environment The study also discovered that the learners' listening difficulties were due to the defects

of the listening materials used in the course and the learners' lack of exposure to English spoken by native speakers Tilahun (2008) proposed many solutions to help the learners improve their listening comprehension skills In particular, the teachers should provide the learners with pronunciation exercises; activate the learners' schemata before listening, and encourage them to listen to authentic materials Also, there should be regular maintenance and a timely repairing of equipment Besides, tasks should be designed to focus on training, not on testing listening comprehension Tilahun (2008) also suggested that more listening difficulties and strategies need to be discovered

The next study the researcher refers to is “The Role of Listening in Language Acquisition; the Challenges & Strategies in Teaching Listening” (D.Renukadevi, 2014) D.Renukadevi was an Assistant Professor of Department of English at Erode Sengunthar Engineering College His study deals with the prime importance of listening in language acquisition and the challenges in attaining listening competence and suggests some strategies to overcome it D Renukadevi declared that “without listening skills, language learning is impossible” The reason was

“there is no communication where there is no human interaction” According to him, listening was crucial not only in language learning but also for learning other subjects Today, learners have problems with listening to all the technological advancements in the field of education The study showed main reasons such as learners spend too little time to improve their listening skills; the inappropriate strategies tested on them in a learning setting may be an important reason for their

poor listening comprehension Other causes may from the listening material and physical settings D Renukadevi also suggested some solutions to help language learners acquire high-level listening skill, such as: Reduce the burden of comprehension by knowing the context of a listening text and the purpose for listening greatly; Both bottom-up processers (linguistic knowledge) and top-down processes (prior knowledge) can be used by listeners to comprehend; Teachers should play an important role in teaching learners strategies and how to apply them into the listening task; Students should be helped to develop sound strategies for comprehension through a process approach to teach listening

And, the study by Hasan (2015) investigated the difficulties EFL (English as a Foreign Language) students encounter in listening comprehension as perceived by ELC (English Language Centre) students at Arab American University- Jenin The instruments used in this study were a questionnaire for the students and a semi-structured interview with the students The study found six factors that posed difficulties to learners ' listening comprehension They were unfamiliar with topics, noises, quality of equipment, fast rate of speech, and limited vocabulary Hasan (2015) suggested a lot of recommendations for the teachers, the ministry of education, and future researchers The teachers should give the learners more instructions on how to listen, use English inside classrooms, get the learners to get acquainted with the prosody of English and give the learners opportunities to use English in authentic situations The ministry of education can include listening skill

in governmental exams and more listening exercises need to be designed in the curriculum He also recommended that more researches on how to improve listening skill have to be conducted with large samples The last study that the researcher would like to review is “Learners’ Listening Comprehension Difficulties

in English Language Learning” (Abbas Pourhosein Gilakjani and Narjes Banou Sabour, 2016) In this study, the researchers reviewed the terms of listening, listening comprehension, listening comprehension strategies, and listening difficulties The researchers showed 3 listening comprehension strategies They are cognitive, metacognitive, and socio-affective They also showed the main problems that learners faced with listening comprehension: The quality of listening material, cultural differences, accents, unfamiliar vocabulary, length and listening speed

The highlight of this study is that the author pointed out a lot of measures to help students improve their listening skills However, most of the measures were applied

to teachers, such as design listening tasks that arouse students’ interest and help them learn listening skills and strategies; provide background knowledge and linguistic knowledge to students while listening to different listening materials, etc These studies above also provide useful information for the present study

1.3.2 In Viet Nam

Recently, in our country, the area of listening comprehension have received the attention of a number of researchers The study by Le Thi Hong Loan (2012) is concerned with the difficulties in learning listening skills experienced by the first-year students at Vietnam Maritime University in Hai Phong city The instruments used in this study were a questionnaire for the students and a questionnaire for the teachers The results of the study identified various kinds of listening problems which were divided into four categories: students' difficulties related to linguistic features, ones related to listening texts, ones related to speakers, and ones related to listeners The causes of these difficulties are the students' poor pronunciation, lack

of knowledge of characteristics of spoken language, inexperience in listening, and bad habit in learning listening From the findings of the study, some suggestions were proposed In particular, the teachers should improve their teaching method and help the students improve their English proficiency Besides, the students should study by themselves outside class She also recommended that further studies should be carried out to find out the difficulties experienced by teachers

The next study is “The difficulties in Learning Listening Skills of Non-English

Major Learners at the University of Industry and how to deal with these difficulties” by an anonymous Industry student The author discovered some

obstacles and solutions to improve listening skills but they are somewhat meager and generalized The study by Trinh Vinh Hien (2013) explored the difficulties encountered by the first-year English major students at Lac Hong University The instruments used in this study was a questionnaire for the students The problems in learning listening comprehension revealed from the results of the study are limited amount of time spent on self-study, the inappropriate strategies of the students, the listening material and the physical settings He suggested that the students should be

exposed to a variety of listening and learn tips or strategies through each of their learning themselves The teachers should teach the learners the strategies and how

to apply them to listening tasks He also recommended that further studies should be conducted to find out more difficulties and listening strategies

The last study by Pham Thi Phuong (2014) investigated the problems experienced by non-major students of English at Hai Phong Foreign Language Center The instruments used in the study were a questionnaire for the students and

a semistructured interview with the teachers The results of the study showed that the students' limited vocabulary, poor pronunciation, anxiety, and speakers fast speech rate were the listening problems the students encountered She suggested solutions in the order of the stages of teaching listening skills According to her, the teachers should motivate the learners flexibly She also expected other researchers

to discover more listening problems as well as realistic solutions

The results of previous studies have clearly identified several listening problems which students in our country have encountered Also, a lot of solutions were proposed to help students in students' listening skills Nevertheless, few research focus on freshmen and sophomores in English Faculty Further studies were hoped to explore the strategies that learners employ in dealing with their listening problems In spite of the researchers' various solutions that contributed to the area of listening comprehension, they hoped that more listening problems and strategies would be discovered by future researchers As expected by the researchers of these studies, my thesis was conducted for the purpose of exploring more difficulties encountered by majors’ students in learning listening comprehension skills and how to cope with the difficulties to better their listening skills In this study, the research object is the freshman and sophomore of English Faculty at Hong Duc University

1.4 Summary

This chapter examines the prior literature related to listening skills With a description of a huge amount of academic study, I hope that I have gained enough relevant knowledge for my own study Focuses on the concepts useful for the accomplishment of the study First, comes an overview of the views of listening

comprehension skills Then the importance and process of listening are stated What

is more in this chapter is the potential difficulties in learning listening skills Therefore, with references from previous studies both in the world and in Vietnam and the own observation and detailed explanation presented in the following chapters, I hope to compensate for the before limitation

Chapter 2: METHODOLODY 2.1 General information about Hong Duc University (HDU) and Faculty of Foreign Languages (FFL)

School was established in 1997, over 20 years of construction and development Hong Duc University, Thanh Hoa province has been a reliable address to students and parents around Thanh Hoa province and other provinces in the Central of Vietnam in training teachers with good teaching and learning quality The school currently consists of 12 faculties The Faculty of Foreign Languages was established in March 1998 on the basis of the Faculty of Foreign Languages, Thanh Hoa College of Education and the Center for Foreign Languages, Thanh Hoa Economic and Technical College After 20 years of growth, there are currently over

550 students who are studying at the faculty and 32 teachers and staff who are working and teaching there The rooms used in teaching and learning language at the faculty are well-equipped with good teaching and learning conditions In addition, most teachers are very energetic and willing to devote their time and energy to teaching They have graduated from different universities in Vietnam, Australia, and England Students in the faculty participate in cooperation activities, exchange teaching methods, English training profession; cultural exchange with many universities and international organizations; cooperating with IIG Vietnam Company, improving the capacity of trainers to test and evaluate Students in the Faculty of Foreign Languages are always active, creative, and confident, equipped with the conditions to change careers after graduation The Faculty currently has 3 divisions: Language - Culture and teaching methods; Skills development; Foreign languages for non-English majors Especially, listening skills is one of the four major skills that are compulsory for students to study Students have to study listening skills that combine with speaking skills within 6 semesters, from semester

1 to semester 6 during their study period of 8 semesters

2.2 Participants

The study was conducted with the participation of 100 students from two classes (K21, K22) of the English department at Hong Duc University to answer the research questions Through survey questionnaires of 100 students of FFL at Hong

Duc University, an overview of learning English listening skills was obtained The questionnaire was given to all the early 2nd semester of English 100 students’ first-year/ second-year at HDU According to interview and survey questionnaires, 50 first-year and 50 second-year students were actually surveyed (see Chart 2.1)

Most students have been exposed to English before Students in mountainous and rural areas usually enter high school when they begin to learn English In urban and peri-urban areas, students are exposed very early, when they have entered secondary school Since students come from all regions, there is a difference in the amount of time they are exposed to English (see Chart 2.2)