Immigration officers’ english listening difficulties and use of strategies a study at ho chi minh city immigration office

i MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY --- NGUYEN QUANG MINH IMMIGRATION OFFICERS’ ENGLISH LISTENING DIFFICULTIES AND USE OF STRATEGIES: A S

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MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

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NGUYEN QUANG MINH

IMMIGRATION OFFICERS’ ENGLISH LISTENING DIFFICULTIES AND USE OF STRATEGIES: A STUDY AT HO CHI MINH

CITY IMMIGRATION OFFICE

Major: English Language Course code: 60220201

HO CHI MINH CITY, SEPTEMBER 2021

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MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

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IMMIGRATION OFFICERS’ ENGLISH LISTENING DIFFICULTIES AND USE OF STRATEGIES: A STUDY AT HO CHI MINH

CITY IMMIGRATION OFFICE

Total words: 18,706

Submitted to the Faculty of English Language

in partial fulfillment of the Master’s degree in English Language

The thesis entitled IMMIGRATION OFFICERS’ ENGLISH LISTENING DIFFICULTIES AND USE OF STRATEGIES: A STUDY AT HO CHI MINH CITY IMMIGRATION OFFICE was successfully defended and approved on

……….… at Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HUTECH)

Academic supervisor: Dr LE VAN TUYEN

Examination Committee

1 Nguyen Thi Kieu Thu, Ph.D Chair

2 Tran Quoc Thao, Ph.D Reader 1

3 Luu Thi Mai Vy, Ph.D Reader 2

4 Nguyen Ngoc Tran Chau, Ph.D Member

5 Duong My Tham, Ph.D Secretary Member

On behalf of the Examination Committee

Chair

Nguyen Thi Kieu Thu, Ph.D

HCMC UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

POSTGRADUATE INSTITUTE

HCMC, September 2021

MASTER’S THESIS REPORT

Student name: Nguyen Quang Minh Sex: Male

Date of birth: 30/01/1984 Place of birth: Ho Chi Minh City Major: English Language Student code: 1941900017

I- Thesis title:

Immigration Officers’ English Listening Difficulties and Use of Strategies: A Study at Ho Chi Minh City Immigration Office

II-Objectives and contents:

This study aims at exploring difficulties in English listening skills and use of strategies of immigration officers at HIO The specific objectives of this study are

as follows:

§ to find out difficulties in English listening skills;

§ to examine which strategies used by immigration officer to overcome difficulties in English listening skills

This study was conducted at Ho Chi Minh City Immigration Office The study focused on English listening difficulties and strategies of immigration officers The participants were the officers who were also from different backgrounds The ages

of the participants ranges from 19 to 30 over with an average of 25 The findings found out common listening difficulties that immigration officers had in listening

skills such as the difficulties related to the content of dialogue, the content of linguistic factors, the listener, the speaker and the physical setting Moreover, the findings showed that immigration officer frequently used the cognitive, metacognitive and socio-affective listening strategies to deal with listening difficulties In order to gain the results, the quantitative and qualitative methods were applied In addition, two instruments used for data-collection were questionnaire and semi-structured interview

III- Starting date: (as stated in the Decision issued by the University)

IV- Completing

date:

V- Academic supervisor: (full name, title) LE VAN TUYEN, Ph.D

Le Van Tuyen, Ph.D Nguyen Thi Kieu Thu, Ph.D

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY

I certify my authorship of the Master’s Thesis submitted today entitled:

IMMIGRATION OFFICERS’ ENGLISH LISTENING DIFFICULTIES AND USE OF STRATEGIES: A STUDY AT HO CHI MINH CITY IMMIGRATION OFFICE

In terms of the statement of requirements for Theses in Master’s programs issued by the Higher Degree Committee of Faculty of English Language, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology

Ho Chi Minh City, September 2021

NGUYEN QUANG MINH

RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS

I hereby state that I, NGUYEN QUANG MINH, being a candidate for the degree of Master of Arts (English Language) accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Master’s Theses deposited in the Library

In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my Master’s Thesis deposited in the Library should be accessible for purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Librarian for the care, loan, and reproduction for theses

Ho Chi Minh City, September 2021

NGUYEN QUANG MINH

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would first like to express my deepest gratitude to Dr Le Van Tuyen, my supervisor, for his patience, guidance, insightful advice, and constant encouragement throughout the whole research process Under any circumstances, he always gives me his warm support and dedication He has been a wonderful mentor and I feel grateful for having such a wonderful teacher Without his support and guidance, this thesis would never have been completed

Second, I would also like to show my profound gratitude to all the lecturers of the Institute for Postgraduate and the Department of English Language in HUTECH for their tirelessly devoting time and efforts to enrich, broaden and deepen my knowledge over the past two years

Last but not least, my deepest and sincerest gratitude goes to my family, including my mother, my father, my wife, my daughter, and my parents-in-law with their unconditional love, understanding and help I would like to dedicate this thesis

to my beloved mother who has provided me strong spiritual and material support

Everybody knows that in order to listen to a message is not as simple as hearing it, so the listener has to understand the message and respond in the right manner Through the years, investigations into difficulties in English listening and listening strategies have been the subject of many researchers Additionally, Vandergrift (1999) likewise specifies that the main roles of human listening are data social occasion and delight, however there are different reasons, like sympathy, appraisal and analysis As per Wilson (2009), listening includes the unraveling of the messages, which happens over the long haul It is unique in relation to perusing, who includes the deciphering of the message and it happens over space pages, signs, the backs of envelopes Most spoken data is not recorded and has no long lasting record In light of unconstrained execution typically vanishes from the memory in practically no time Wilson (2009) describes the difficulties into four general categories: characteristics of the message, the delivery, the listener and the environment Characteristics of the message relate to the listeners in recognizing the speech Other difficulties consist of unknown words, lexical density (short spaces of time between content words, forcing listener to concentrate harder), and complex grammatical structures

With the hope to find out the answer for these issues, this research aimed at discovering immigration officers’ difficulties in listening and the use of listening strategies to cope with difficulties at Ho Chi Minh City Immigration Office (HIO) Improving officers listening skills effectively is strongly related to being aware of the factors which have an effect on their listening performance This study employed qualitative and quantitative methods and descriptive method to do the research So the collecting data instruments like questionnaire, interview was used

to the study A total of ninety eight immigration officers participated in answering the questionnaire and five officers joined the semi structure interview questions The data collected from the questionnaire were analyzed by SPSS 20.0 in terms of descriptive statistics (Mean and Standard deviation) The findings show that immigration officers had to deal with many difficulties in listening such as the difficulties related to the listener, the content of the dialogue, the speaker, the physical setting and the linguistic factors Besides, the frequency of using listening strategies was relatively high The cognitive listening strategies were the most frequently used The following strategies were metacognitive and socio affective cognitive strategies Based on the findings, some implications were made to contribute to the administrations and staffs at HIO

Keywords: English listening skills, listening difficulties, listening strategies,

immigration officers

TABLE OF CONTENTS

CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY v

RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS vi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii

ABSTRACT viii

LIST OF TABLES xv

LIST OF FIGURES xvi

LIST OF ABREVIATIONS xvii

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Background to the study 1

1.2 Statement of the problem 2

1.3 Aims and objectives of the study 4

1.4 Research questions 4

1.5 Scope of the study 4

1.6 Significance of the study 5

1.7 Definitions of terms 6

1.8 Organization of the thesis 7

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 9

2.1 Listening to a second or foreign language 9

2.1.1 Definition of Listening 9

2.1.2 Elements of listening 11

2.1.3 Listening Process 12

2.1.4 Stage of listening 13

2.1.5 Factors that make listening difficult 14

2.2 Listening strategies 17

2.2.1 Strategies of listening comprehension 18

2.2.2 Meta-cognitive listening strategy 19

2.2.3 Cognitive listening strategy 20

2.2.4 Socio-affective listening strategy 20

2.3 Difficulties in listening to a second or foreign language 21

2.3.1 Difficulties related to the content of the dialogue 21

2.3.2 Difficulties related to the content of linguistic factors 22

2.3.3 Difficulties related to the listener 22

2.3.4 Difficulties related to the speaker 24

2.4 Previous studies 26

2.5 Conceptual framework of the study 30

2.6 Summary 32

CHAPTER 3 METHODODOLOGY 33

3.1 Research design 33

3.2 Research site 34

3.3 Sample and sampling procedures 35

3.4 Research instruments 38

3.4.1 Questionnaire 38

3.4.2 Interview 39

3.5 Data collection procedures 39

3.6 Data analysis procedure 40

3.7 Reliability and Validity 42

3.7.1 Reliability 42

3.7.2 Validity 42

3.8 Ethical issues 42

CHAPTER 4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 44

4.1 Introduction 44

4.2 Results and Discussion 44

4.2.1 Immigration officers’ difficulties in listening to English 44

4.2.2 Immigration officers’ use of listening strategies at workplace 54

4.3 Discussion 60

4.3.1 Immigration officers’ difficulties in listening to English 60

4.3.2 Immigration officers’ listening strategies 62

4.4 Summary 63

CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION 64

5.1 Summary of the main findings of the thesis 64

5.2 Implications of the study 65

5.2.1 Implications for the administrations 65

5.2.2 Implication for immigration officers 66

5.3 Limitations 66

5.4 Recommendations for the further research 67

REFERENCES 69

APPENDIX A QUESTIONNAIRE 81

APPENDIX B INTERVIEW PROTOCOL 87APPENDIX C SAMPLE OF INTERVIEW DATA ANALYSIS 88APPENDIX D Turnitin Plagiarism Scan 92

LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.1: Participants’ general information 36

Table 3.2 Research questions, data collection and analysis instruments 41

Table 4.1 Immigration officers’ difficulties in listening to English 45

Table 4.2 The difficulties related to the content of the dialogue 46

Table 4.3 The difficulties related to the linguistic factors 48

Table 4.4 The difficulties related to the listener 50

Table 4.5 The difficulties related to the speaker 52

Table 4.6 The difficulties related to the speaker 53

Table 4.7 Immigration officers’ listening strategies 54

Table 4.8 The frequency of using meta-cognitive listening strategy 55

Table 4.9 The frequency of using cognitive listening strategy 57

Table 4.10 The frequency of using socio-affective listening strategy 59

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 2.1 Conceptual framework of listeners’ difficulties in listening and listening strategies (O’Malley and Chamot, 1990; Nakatani, 2010, Assaf, 2015) 31

1

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background to the study

English is the most spoken language in the world and first language used about

400 million people worldwide (British Council, 2020) In fact, English is considered the most used by many people in the world It is the language of many fields such as science, education, diplomacy and education Therefore, mastering English language becomes essential to people Among English skills, listening is considered the most important skills that people need to master (Morley, 1991) As a fact, people spend a lot of time listening to daily activities to satisfy what they need to understand Rost (1994) affirmed that listening plays an essential role in communication Morley (1991) also demonstrated that people spend most of their lives to listening and interpreting what they hear

However, Walker (2010) stated that listening is one of the most difficult skills Moreover, it has been given little attention (Prentis and Parrot, 2014) As a result, people seem to neglect these skills and cannot have enough strategies to deal with listening activities (Hamouda, 2013) It is no doubt that many graduated students cannot satisfy minimum requirements of English listening skills at work Sincerely speaking, listening exercises were believed to have common tasks such as listening and filling the blanks, listening to songs, listening for true or false and etc in education system It is the reason why officers cannot scope with difficulties arisen in listening skills

English listening difficulties contains common issues such as the content of conversation, the speaker, the listener and the surroundings (Trismasari, 2016) These issues cause many troubles for listener to understand what their partner says Consequently, they cannot reach the agreement in the conversation as well as summarize the main ideas of the conversation Moreover, listening difficulties prevent people from confidently communicating and sharing their ideas to the others

Although many studies are conducted to find out the real difficulties, the answer is still far from conclusive

Listeners always do their best to overcome difficulties and experience a variety

of listening strategies By taking advantage of appropriate listening strategies, people find it easy to understand the content of conversation Vandergrift (2007) said that listeners with suitable listening strategies can comprehend the whole of conversation easily when they interact with the others Without a doubt, using listening strategies to cope with difficulties in listening skills has an undeniable role to listeners In reality, the choice and defining appropriate strategies to improve or deal with listening activities is not clear to most of people In particular, officers who do not have necessary lessons taught by teachers find it difficult to have successful strategies The study was conducted at Ho Chi Minh City Immigration Office At present, the office has more than 100 staff that directly works with paperwork and meets requirements of clients They are expected to face a lot of difficulties in listening skills and find out suitable strategies to deal with their problem Although they are trying to search for ways to improve listening skills, problems cannot be avoided

1.2 Statement of the problem

According to Oxford (1993), listening is a complex skill and it is more than just perceptions of sounds It is a process of comprehending meanings, phrases, clauses, sentences and so on Furthermore, it is the integration of language skills such as pronunciation, vocabulary, reading speaking and writing Therefore, listeners must have essential strategies to be fluent at listening skills There is a fact that listening is somehow neglected by teachers and learners (Osada, 2004) Both teachers and learners cannot recognize the importance of listening comprehension What is more, Hamouda (2013) stated that the problems in listening also come from the learning programs of universities They pay much attention to reading, grammar and vocabulary It is obvious that listening and speaking skills are not important in most of EFL classes Besides, the obstacles related to the learning or working environment are big concerns to listeners According to Matsumura, Slater and Crosson (2008), listeners

have few chances to exposure to listening environment in non-native English-speaking countries outside classrooms Consequently, EFL learners have limited listening comprehension and difficulties to interpret what native speaker say Furthermore, Gilakjani and Ahmadi (2011) said that there is a demand of teaching English speaking

in most of EFL classes English teachers use various techniques to improve their students’ speaking skills without regarding listening skills Similarly, Khamkaew (2009) admitted that officers in Immigration Office and also for all the officers who work in the Tan Son Nhat airport rarely interact with English speaking environment They spend most of their working time on administration processes and not having time to experience English environment They cannot use English frequently, so their listening skills become a big obstacle for them to interact with native speakers

With the requirements of being fluent in English at work, immigration officers have to use English effectively in communicative situations However, it is the fact that most of speakers have different accents which cause officers misunderstanding Therefore, immigration officers have to face obstacles with listening skills if they do not find out suitable solutions Besides, immigration officers come from different backgrounds of English Moreover, they come from different areas in Vietnam and have different views of learning English It is clear that officers are not required to be good at English when they apply for positions at HIO English certificates are just what HIO need from applicants As a result, they cannot meet the requirements at work

In addition, officers are very excited about learning English and practicing necessary skills to work effectively What is more, immigration officers always try to register English courses or find good materials to help them However, they cannot improve their English listening skills It is obvious that the shortage of suitable strategies has been causing their boredom and efforts to practice this skill Thus, the researcher decides to conduct this research to find out difficulties which officers meet and consider suitable strategies to improve listening skills among immigration officers

1.3 Aims and objectives of the study

This study aims to investigate difficulties encountered in English listening comprehension and strategies used by the officers in Immigration Department in Ho Chi Minh City in working The results of this study will be the important references for both officers and administrators to evaluate their listening experiences in working

as well as the application in daily communication

The objectives of this study are as follows:

• To explore difficulties that officers in the Immigration Department may encounter in listening at working

• To discover what strategies that they use in English listening skills to support for their oral communication at work

1.4 Research questions

This research seeks to address the following questions:

1 What are the difficulties that officers in the Immigration Department often encounter in English listening at work?

2 What are the strategies that they use to cope with English listening difficulties?

1.5 Scope of the study

This study was conducted at Ho Chi Minh City Immigration Officer The study focuses on the investigation of difficulties the immigration offers encounter in the use

of listening English skills in oral communication and strategies used to cope with those difficulties Due to the large size of the population at HIO, the study did not investigate every individual in the population because of cost and time consumption The participants of the study were officers who worked directly, interacted with foreigners, used English through communication to handle daily jobs, exchanged information, received documents, explained and guided inquiries about immigration, visa issuance procedures, temporary residence for foreigners

In this study, mixed methods were known as the combination of quantitative and qualitative method Mixed method was one of the types which are used in applied research and its use had become very common among the social scientific researches over the past few years Mixed method research involved collecting, analyzing, integrating quantitative method and of interviews, and focus groups of qualitative method research (Judith & Johnson, 2017)

1.6 Significance of the study

This study is hopefully a useful source of information for immigration officers

at HIO It is hoped to provide officers with insights regarding difficulties and strategies used in listening skills In addition, the study is expected to be a helpful guide for those who are responsible for organizing English classes for officers In fact, it will help leaders of immigration department select suitable listening materials for English enrichment classes at HIO

Another contribution of the study is to help officers recognize suitable strategies to deal with difficulties in listening skills Of course, it also helps to formulate officers’ interest in learning English and practicing English listening skills Moreover, since there are not many studies focusing on this issue, the study is hoped

to be a useful for reference for later studies conducted in the same field Last but not least, the study is believed to enlarge the researcher’s knowledge and experience for doing research

This study surveys immigration officers' practices and perceptions regarding listening strategies, and their perceptions of difficulties likely to arise in English listening comprehension for working Thus, this study explores a combination of two important concepts, namely listening strategies and listening difficulties The results of the study are meant to show the extent to which listening strategies are most convenient in Immigration The results of this study provide all the officers include the administration in listening comprehension in English at working, knowledge that they can reflect on As the most obvious beneficiaries, they can compare their practices

with the results of this study and revise their practices to meet their officers’ listening needs better

Coordinators and administrators of Immigration Department will gain insights into the perceptions, strategies, and difficulties of their officer Furthermore, program administrators will understand the difficulties that officers encounter in listening comprehension in work With this background, the administrators will be able to enhance the positive aspects of listening instruction in their programs and plan to find solutions to the problems

At a theoretical level, these components play an valuable role in developing immigration oficers listening skill They also help the officers comprehend intensely their difficulties in practice listening English in administrative centre environment Likewise, they are able to help themselve to build confidence so that they are able to develop their listening functioning

At a practical level, the immigration officers can find suitable methodologies to reduce the negative effects on practice listening skills As a result, they can choose the suitable strategies methodology, and create more comfortable environment in English listening classes for listeners to practice together (Brown, 2001) Furthermore, the researcher expects that this study will give some contributions to the immigration officers There are two significance contributions picked up from this investigate First, the findings from this study may help the immigrations officers to upgrade the quality

of listening skills at Immigration Office Second, this research may also serve for supplementary sources to support and enhance listening skill of officers

1.7 Definitions of terms

The following key terms are defined to provide a particular perspective on issues which will be discussed in this study

Listening: Listening is the ability to comprehend and interpret what other people say;

it involves the process of decoding the sounds into meaningful words

Listening difficulty: Troubles are characterized as the inside and outer attributes that

may interfere with listening text understanding It includes the difficulties related to

the content of the dialogue, the linguistic factors, the listener, the speaker and the physical setting

Listening strategies: Necessary techniques to deal with difficulties in listening

comprehension They are useful ways to assist understanding in each message They include cognitive, meta-cognitive and socio-effective listening strategies

Immigration Officer: A government employee who works in the field of immigration

with many specific roles, they can examine the passports and visas control and prevent the detection of immigration law violations, contributing to maintaining security and order

1.8 Organization of the thesis

This study includes five chapters as below:

Chapter 1: Introduction this chapter gives fundamental issues of the research including the background of the study, explanation of the problems that the researcher has examined establishing the aims and the objectives for the research After that, the chapter also presents the research questions, the scope of the study, the significance of the study, the definitions of key terms as well as the organization of the research Chapter 2: Literature review this chapter surveys the literature related to the research, showing some main components that negatively affect the listening skills of officers at Immigration Office in Ho Chi Minh City Concerning the factors, definitions, the significance of listening skills, characteristics of listening skills, listening skills as well as the strategies that help to reduce the negative impacts of those main components are defined and examined In supplement, a lot of previous studies carried out by foreign and Vietnamese researchers are summarized Lastly, conceptual framework is also presented in this chapter

Chapter 3: Methodology this chapter describes the methodology of the research including the research design, which is based on the two research questions specified

in Chapter 1 Subsequently, it goes on with the research site where the sample and sampling relating to officers participated in the survey and the interviews Afterwards,

the chapter presents the research instruments utilized in the research as well as the methods for collecting and analyzing the data

Chapter 4: Findings and Discussions: this chapter comprises of two main parts Firstly, it presents the answer of the research by analyzing the data collected from survey questionnaire and semi-structured interviews Then, the findings of the study are discussed and compared with the results of previous studies reviewed in Chapter 2 Chapter 5: Conclusion this chapter firstly presents the summary of the main findings of the thesis After that, it presents some suggestions for concerning to immgration officers about listening skill Then, the chapter covers with the limitation

of the research and suggests some recommendations for further researches

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

In this chapter, some reviews of related literature are going to be discussed in order that the researcher can give related evidence to support the topic of research The keys terms mentioned in this study, including communication competence, communication strategies, listening skills, difficulties in listening and strategies for coping with listening problems

2.1 Listening to a second or foreign language

2.1.1 Definition of Listening

Listening has been characterized by numerous scientists Chastain (1971) characterized listening as the capacity to comprehend local discourse at ordinary speed Morley (1972) said listening includes hearable separation, aural syntax, choosing fundamental data, recollecting that it, and associating it to the interaction among sound and type of meaning As per Postovsky (1975), listening varies in importance from sound separation to aural appreciation Goss (1982) characterized tuning in as a course

of understanding what is heard and sorting out it into lexical components to which significance can be apportioned

Bowen, Madsen, and Hilferty (1985) showed that listening is figuring out the oral language Understudies hear oral discourse, partition sounds, order them into lexical also, syntactic units, and fathom the message Listening is a course of getting what the speaker says, making and showing significance, arranging importance with the speaker and replying, and making significance by interest, inventiveness, and compassion

As per Purdy (1997), listening is the most common way of getting, making significance from, and paying all due respects to spoken or potentially nonverbal messages Rost (2002) characterized listening as a perplexing course of understanding

in which audience members coordinate what they hear with what they definitely know

As per Rost (2009), listening helps us to grasp our general surroundings and is one of the important components in making effective correspondence Jafari and Hashim (2015) underscored that listening is a channel for intelligible info and more than 50 percent of the time students spend in learning an unknown dialect is committed to listening

Listening is more than essentially hearing words Listening incorporates a functioning cycle by which listener get, develop importance from, and answer spoken

or potentially nonverbal messages (Emmert, 1994 as cited in Gilakjani, 2011) Listening, all in all, is very a functioning cycle, yet the movement occurs in the psyche Audience members surmise, foresee, construe, reprimand and, most importantly, decipher (Wilson, 2009) Listening appears to be a significant piece of the correspondence interaction Furthermore, listening ought not to be isolated from the other language expressions

According 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, speaker’s grammar and vocabulary, and comprehension of meaning

Listening is considered the most important skills in language acquisition Up to this point, there have been a variety of listening definitions Howatt and Dakin (1974) stated that listening mentions about listeners’ ability to identify and comprehend what the speakers are saying In another definition, listening refers to the process of receiving, addressing and allocating meaning to aural stimuli (Wolvin & Coakley, 1982)

As indicated by Thomlison (1984), listening is the capacity of an individual in the process of recognizing and comprehending what other people are saying This procedure includes comprehending the speaker's meaning and the use of language and jargon Underwood (1989) defined listening as “the activity of concentrating and making efforts to get the meaning from spoken messages.” (p.18) Listening is more than basically hearing words Listening incorporates a functioning process by which understudies get, build significance from, and react to spoken as well as nonverbal

messages (Emmert, 1994) Howatt and Dakin (1999), listening skill is an individual’s capacity to recognize and understand what is implying in speakers’ spoken messages

A capable listener is prepared to do doing these four things at the same time (Islam, 2012) Listening can be characterized as the action of focusing on the communicated in language of local speakers The audience develops implications by utilizing signals from logical data and from existing information (Underwood, 1989) Rost (2011) stated that listening is a procedure of accepting what the speaker really means, building and speaking to importance, arranging importance with the speaker and reacting, and making meaning through inclusion, creative mind and compassion

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

Listening involves listening for thoughts, feelings, and intentions To sum up, it

is widely admitted that listening comprehension is not merely the process of a unidirectional receiving of audible symbols, but an interactive process (Brown, 2007)

In conclusion, listening is a process of identifying and understanding what the speakers say, which includes understanding a speaker’s pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary

2.1.2 Elements of listening

The two components of listening, full-scale and small-scale aptitudes cannot be isolated Full scale abilities are clearer since it just methods comprehension of what being said Notwithstanding, small scale aptitudes are minimal more muddled to comprehend, as it about understanding in general, however, we need to consider things like decision of jargon, pitch, disposition, more profound implications and a mess more The following are the depiction of large-scale and small-scale aptitudes that are associated with an overall discussion and scholastic discourse (Richards, 1983)

Moreover, Brown (2004) proposes the smaller scale aptitudes associated with comprehending what another person speaks to us The listeners need to keep the

language in a momentary memory, separate the particular sounds in the new dialect, discern pressure and beat designs, into national shapes Additionally, Brown (2007) makes reference to that the full scale aptitudes for conversational talk are the accompanying: perceive strong gadgets in spoken talk, perceive the informative elements of articulations, as indicated by circumstances, members, and objectives, construe circumstance, members, objectives utilizing genuine world information, recognize strict and suggested implications, create and utilize a battery of listening methodologies, for example, recognizing catchphrases, and speculating the which means of words from setting

Moreover, Brown (2007) mentions that the macro-skills for conversational discourse are the following: recognize cohesive devices in spoken discourse, recognize the communicative functions of utterances, according to situations, participants, and goals, infer situation, participants, goals using real-world knowledge, distinguish between literal and implied meanings, develop and use a battery of listening strategies, such as detecting key words, and guessing the meaning of words from context

In sum, the macro and micro skills in listening are very essential in performing listening comprehension Those elements of listening are useful in specifying the objectives for the learning

2.1.3 Listening Process

Listening understanding is viewed as a perplexing, intuitive procedure in which listener members are associated with a powerful development of importance Listener members comprehend the oral contribution from sound separation, earlier information

on jargon; syntactic structures, stress and sound, as well as other utilize etymological, paralinguistic, or even non-semantic pieces of information in logical expression (Rost, 2002)

Brown and Yule (1983), listening in perception implies that an individual comprehends what he has received On the off chance that he learns the content through listening to it, he will get it Hamouda (2013) characterized listening in understanding as an intelligent procedure in which listener members are engaged with

building meaning Listener members appreciate the oral contribution through sound separation, past information, linguistic structures, stress and inflection, and phonetic or non-etymological pieces of information

According to numerous specialists and listener of English, listening is a perplexing and dynamic process that includes recognition, consideration, comprehension, and memory During the procedure of listening appreciation, different elements may influence listener listening capacity Arrangements of common factors have been distinguished (Hayati, 2010; Flowerdew, 1992) while the job of explicit elements has likewise been inspected A few elements that have been the focal point of exploration incorporate discourse rate (Blau, 1990; Griffths, 1992; Zhao, 1997; Conrad, 1989), lexis (Rost, 1992), highlights in phonology and foundation information (Chiang, 1992; Long, 1990)

Other issues have likewise been identified with listener troubles These range from text structure and language structure to individual factors, for example, inadequate introduction to the objective language, and an absence of intrigue also, inspiration Earthy (1995) recognized the importance of every one of these issues, and

further contended that listener challenges are additionally identified with the degrees

of intellectual requests made by the substance of the writings Buck (2001) recognizes various challenges which can be gone up against in listening assignments, for example, obscure vocabularies, new points, quick discourse rate, and new complements

2.1.4 Stage of listening

Listening exercises are typically sub categorized as pre-listening, while listening, and post listening exercises (Wilson, 2009) Pre listening exercises, which go before the listening section, ought to set up the understudies for the perception task by enacting understudies' jargon and foundation information or by giving the understudies the data expected to grasp the substance of the listening text (Thanajaro, 2000) In this progression, the understudies are assisted with planning what they will hear by enacting their schemata (Wilson, 2009) The exercises including conceptualizing jargon, auditing areas of language, or examining the subject of the listening text Two straightforward holds back nothing listening period are to give adequate setting to

coordinate what might be accessible, in actuality, and to make inspiration of the students to what they will hear (Field cited in Richard and Renandya, 2002)

While listening ought to assist the understudies with fostering the ability of removing importance from the discourse stream Understudies decipher the speakers' message, check and change their expectations Educators might request that understudies note down keywords to sort out the primary thought of the text (Karakas,

as refered to in Gilakjani, 2011) Understudies might listen a subsequent time, either to check or to respond to additional natty gritty inquiries In this situation, for the purpose

of instructing, numerous chances to hear the information might decrease understudies' nervousness It implies that they can pay attention to the section considered troublesome There are various other factors concerning the entry that become an integral factor: trouble, length, the academic concentration and the potential for fatigue

On the off chance that the emphasis is on close language investigation, it very well may be rehashed a few times, though on the off chance that the attention is on tuning

in for substance, it will not be (Wilson, 2009)

Post listening exercises, following the listening entry, comprise of expansions and improvement of the listening task It might feature on social subjects and different angles connected with the materials Also, Wilson (2009) makes reference to that in this stage, conversation on challenges like obscure jargon, and answers the substance

of the section, is performed, typically orally

2.1.5 Factors that make listening difficult

Yagang (as cited in Hien, 2015) mentions that the problem in listening was accompanied with the four following factors: the message, the speaker, the listener and the physical setting Moreover, a numbers of research have been conducted to pick out the problem in listening The problems were believed to cause by the speech rate vocabulary and pronunciation Related to the difficulties of listening performances, the following eight characteristics need to be considered:

1 Clustering: attending to appropriate “chunks” of language phrases, clauses, constituents

2 Redundancy: recognizing the kinds of repetitions rephrasing, elaborations, and insertions that unrehearsed spoken language often contains, and benefiting from that recognition

3 Reduced forms: understanding the reduced forms that may not have been a part of an English learner’s past learning experiences in classes where only formal

“textbook” language has been presented

4 Performance variables: being able to “weed out” hesitations, false starts, pauses, and corrections in natural speech

5 Colloquial language: comprehending idioms, slang, reduced forms, shared cultural knowledge

6 Rate of delivery: keeping up with the speed of delivery, processing automatically as the speaker continues

7 Stress, rhythm, and intonation: correctly understanding prosodic elements of spoken language, which is almost much more difficult than understanding the smaller phonological bits and pieces

8 Interaction: managing the interactive flow of language from listening to speaking to listening, etc

2.1.6 The importance of listening skills

Listening is a complex process which includes classifying, understanding and interpreting spoken languages Bueno et al (2006) stated the complex process of listening due to the double psychological and social nature “listening is the phenomenon of psychology, which happens on a cognitive level and the phenomenon

of society, which develops interactively between people and the surroundings Listening is considered a complex process, which needs to be understood and evaluated before combining with phonological aspects and with speaking skills” (p.282) Besides, it helps people to recognize speakers’ accent, acquire detailed comprehension and also motivate them to learn the accent As a result, listening helps learners learn foreign languages with confidence and expectation of success Moreover,

the designed activities in listening skills are used to stimulate learners’ imagination and encourage them to speak In daily lives, listening is a powerful tool which helps people understand, reach agreements, deal with issues and especially give information such as laws, rules, policy, instructions and etc effectively Brown (2001) stated

“listening is not a one-way street It is not merely the process of unidirectional receiving of audible symbols One facet - the first step - of listening comprehension is the psychomotor process of receiving sound waves through the ear and transmitting nerve impulses to the brain But that is just the beginning of what is clearly an interactive process as the brain acts on the impulses, bringing to bear a number of different cognitive and affective mechanisms” (p.69)

Listening plays a prominent role in most of the daily conversations The listening activity occupies 40-50% in communication (Gilakjani & Ahmadi, 2011) Devine (1982) expressed that listening is the most important means through which the information is received and processed Guo and Wills (2006) stated “Listening is the medium through which people gain a large proportion of their education, their information, their understanding of the world and human affairs, their ideals, sense of values” (p 3) According to Peterson (2001), through listening, learners can be aware

of language systems at different levels and establish the foundation for their productive skills

Of all four language skills, listening is considered the most significant in learning a second language (Richards & Rodgers, 2001, Morley, 2001; Rivers, 1981) Hasan (2000) expressed that listening provides the foundation of acquisition and expansion of other skills Listening is the most frequently used in classrooms throughout all levels of education Thanks to listening, learners can understand input

on the right level Moreover, learners can get more attention to vocabulary, grammar and patterns in language through listening exercises

Rost (1994) stated the significance of listening in language classrooms as follows:

1 Listening is important in classrooms because it is considered a base to provide input It is evident that learners can learn and comprehend new knowledge easily

if they understand the input

2 Learners must use listening to interact with others to achieve comprehension in most activities in class

3 Authentic spoken languages create challenges for learners’ understanding of language because native speakers always use these languages Therefore, learners must pay much attention to listening

4 Listening exercises help teachers identify learners’ attention to vocabulary, grammar and interaction patterns in the language (p 141-142)

Due to the significance of listening skills, Bueno et al (2006) suggested that it is very important to follow a pattern in listening periods in order to comprehend the input

as well as interpret the meanings of contents properly:

1 Pre-listening is the first stage where the context of conversations or talks is established People should create motivation with the purpose of preparing for what they hear

2 The next stage is listening, where listeners need to solve issues or answer the questions properly Listeners need to acquire vocabulary, grammar and etc to respond the talks or listening tasks

3 The last stage is post-listening, where listeners have to check their understanding

or answers It is useful for listeners to formulate positive attitude of analyzing and consolidating what they have just heard

2.2 Listening strategies

Appropriate strategies are needed to reach the expected goal, especially in listening comprehension In this case, strategies can be perceived as conscious, action which is conducted on purpose to improve learning and allow the learners to use information more effectively (Oxford, Chamot, and O’Malley, as cited in Wilson, 2009), are categorized into three groups: cognitive strategies, metacognitive strategies and socio-affective strategies Cognitive strategies are those that we use in order to complete an immediate task For instance, a student may find out the topic before

listening to predict contents Metacognitive strategies are related to learning in general and often have long-term benefits For example, listener might choose to tune in CNN recording once a week as astrategy to improve their listening Socio-affective strategies are concerned with the learners’ interaction with other speakers and their attitude towards learning

For example, listener may choose to rehearse a telephone conversation in practicingwith another speaker in order to develop confidence In short, good listeners may use many strategies at the same time and in accordance with the task at hand They may listen regularly to a radio broadcast (metacognitive), take notes on the key points (cognitive) and then meet fellow students in the café and tell them all about what they just listened to (socio affective)

2.2.1 Strategies of listening comprehension

Listening comprehension is currently perceived as a functioning ability which requires the listener to choose and decipher the data they get as far as what they definitely know; listener members select the information which is significant for them and utilize their experience information to interpret the speakers' goals In this way,

"listening is the expertise that sets the heaviest handling expectations for language students" (Rubin, 1995, p 8) So any unknown dialectal listener could benefit from hearing procedure tips

“ In order to have the best strategies for listening tasks, it is vital that individuals must have appropriate strategies which can assist them to listen better A lot of researchers discuss strategies in listening in different perspectives Gilakjani and Sabouri (2011) said that good listening strategies include predicting, clarifying and taking advantage of non-verbal signs which can be applied for listening skills

According to Oxford (1990) there are two main groups of strategies: direct and indirect strategies Regarding to direct strategies, they refer to the language processing such as vocabulary memory and recognition of form Indirect strategies include solving listening obstacles Holden (2004) emphasized that individuals find it easy to understand the contents of spoken messages with suitable listening strategies Brown

(1995) suitably thinks about techniques which are used to deal with listening difficulties are explicit strategies O’Malley and Chamot (1990) mentioned about strategies like meta-cognitive, cognitive and socio-affective listening strategies They were chosen to solve listening difficulties for the participants of this study and discussed in details as follows:”

2.2.2 Meta-cognitive listening strategy

“ Metacognitive strategies are based on the definition of metacognition which mentions about the nature of learning It can be used to reinforce self-confidence, motivation in learning According to Vandergrift (1999), metacognitive strategy consists of planning, monitoring, selective attention and evaluating Flavell (1979) said that metacognitive strategies are beliefs about what factors affects the outcome of cognitive enterprises Sheorey and Mokhatari (2001) claimed that this strategy is useful to plan particular actions to achieve defined aims Holden (2004) proved that this strategy has an impact on listeners in a positive way Wenden (1998) demonstrated that this strategy is the first step to construct learners’ character It is clear that the use of this strategy assists learners to have learning autonomy Learners are more active to control and look for the best methods to practice and strengthen their learning Learners have to draw a plan to listen, examine the process of listening and evaluate learning outcome through listening exercises.”

“From the views of Vandergrift (1999), there are three important steps which need to be considered for listening process Planning is the first step and must be considered an anticipated listening goal for learners to achieve (Ozeki, 2000) Monitoring is the second process in which learners check their perceptions during listening to make sure that they can understand the messages from the recording Basing on this step, learners will set up their goal which is set for themselves (Stein, 1999) Thirdly, selective attention means that learners will have their own ways to select and decide which parts of listening discourse to focus on (Goh, 1998) Evaluating is the last step of metacognitive listening strategies in which listeners consolidate and assess their processes to the goal that they have set to follow.”

This strategy includes specific activities that listeners need to follow Listeners need to focus on what the speaker says, because it helps them not be distracted by distractors In addition, listeners need to decide in advance what they need to pay attention to

2.2.3 Cognitive listening strategy

“The cognitive strategies are techniques that listeners use to deal with the learning tasks and reinforce the language acquisition (Derry & Murphy, 1986) Language learners use this strategy to process and store new information (Goh, 1998) The cognitive strategies are identified with appreciating and putting away contribution to working memory or long-haul memory for later recovery (Richard, 2008) According

to Brown (2006), top-down and bottom-up strategy are two categories of this strategy Bottom-up processing refers to the use of sound, meanings and semantic contents to comprehend what is heard step by step Firstly, listeners get the words from recording After that they get the meaning by merging the words they had got Nunan (2010) stated that listeners have to listen to sounds and then put them into working memory in order that they can make a link of these sounds and comprehend the contents of recordings Top-down processing mentions background knowledge to understanding what mentions in spoken message to language (Richards, 2008) With this listening strategy, listeners can use previous knowledge to interpret the sounds in an effective way

“In terms of cognitive strategies, listeners try to comprehension without translating They use equivalents to interpret the meaning and structure of the target language Besides, listeners just focus on the main words to interpret the whole dialogue They can take advantage of their current knowledge of words to create meaning Moreover, thanks to this strategy, listeners can locate them firsts and details later What is more, they can base on clues such as main topics of dialogues, contexts

or also speakers’ gestures to guess the meaning of spoken message.”

2.2.4 Socio-affective listening strategy

“Vandergrift (1997) said that this strategy assists individuals feel more confident to work with speakers in order to interpret the meanings in s smart way Griffiths (2010)

defined “socio-affective strategy is activities which are selected by individuals to adjust their language learning” (p.1) It is considered a good way to enhance listeners’ motivation in listening Flowerdew and Miller (2005), it can be taken advantage to improve individuals’ learning and encourage them to keep the conversation Bacon (1992) divided this strategy in social and affective strategy.”

Regarding to the social strategy, individuals have the chances to share what they hear to others in order that they can comprehend listening activity According to Savigon and Sysoyev (2002), “social strategies assist learners to corporate with work with others and comprehend the target languages Affective strategy relates to individual’s confidence during the listening process It is considered a self-motivated strategy (Dörnyei, 2003).”

2.3 Difficulties in listening to a second or foreign language

As indicated by Bingol et al (2014), there is a great deal of challenges that listener may experience in listening in cognizance forms and the design is to know about these issues furthermore, attempt to explain them A portion of these issues are

as per the following:

2.3.1 Difficulties related to the content of the dialogue

“It is obvious that the shortage of background information and contextual knowledge were big problems for listeners to comprehend the spoken message Underwood (1989) reported that unfamiliar topics and learners’ lack of background information caused listeners difficulties to approach the meaning of messages

Anderson and Lynch (2003), background information includes common culture beliefs, facts, ideas and lifestyle Lacking of these data cause difficulties for listeners

to follow what other people says In fact, the native English speakers tend to use idioms and slangs for their messages (Koichi, 2002) Therefore, listeners need to have enough background to analyze the data in each spoken message.”

Cervantes and Gainer (1992) found that long and complex dialogue have negative impact on listeners In fact, listeners find it easy to comprehend short

messages or dialogues In terms of long dialogue, they do not have ability to summary and draw clear conclusions of the dialogue

2.3.2 Difficulties related to the content of linguistic factors

“Munro and Derwing (1999) different accents in speech can bring about the deduction

in listeners’ comprehension Goh (1999) confirmed that a speaker’s intonation or pronunciation is the most important components that influence listeners’ understanding New intonations can cause genuine problems in listening appreciation Buck (2001) said that when listeners listen to a new accent for example, Thai English for the first time, they find it difficult to recognize speakers’ meanings This will surely affect listeners’ understanding and make them feel confused during the conversation.”

Underwood (1989) admitted that listeners cannot distinguish the content and signal words They do not realize that the signal words are rarely given the same stress

as key words in spoken message As a result, they cannot hear signal words and recognize the transition points in long dialogues

“As indicated by Bingol et al (2014), when spoken messages contain unknown words it would be difficult for listen to recognize In the event that listener recognize the significance of words, it can excite their advantage and inspiration and can have a positive way on the listener' listening cognizance capacity.” A great deal of unfamiliar words appears in conversations, listeners feel exhausted to catch up with the meaning

It also makes listeners become bored and tired.”

2.3.3 Difficulties related to the listener

Supplementary fascinatingly, Ur (2000) clarified that listening comprehension was difficult for listeners because what they listened to in the classroom was not the same from real existence communication circumstances In the classroom, there was repetition The teacher repeated the listening text more than one time, so that listeners could answer the assigned tasks But within daily circumstances, when having a conversation, listening to the radio, watching a program on television etc., a listener did not have the chance to keep repeating what the speaker said Perhaps a speaker could repeat what he or she said for one more time, but not extra than that Appearing