Difficulties and some solutions to enhance listening skill for the second year english major students at hung yen university of technology and education

Student: Nguyen Thi Phuong Student Number: 11317103 Trang 2 FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES --- GRADUATION PAPER FIELD: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS DIFFICULTIES AND SOME SOLUTIONS TO ENHANCE LIST

- GRADUATION PAPER FIELD: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS

DIFFICULTIES AND SOME SOLUTIONS TO

ENHANCE LISTENING SKILL FOR THE YEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT HUNG YEN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY AND EDUCATION

SECOND-(NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN VÀ MỘT SỐ GIẢI PHÁP NHẰM NÂNG CAO KỸ NĂNG NGHE CHO SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ HAI CHUYÊN NGÀNH NGÔN NGỮ ANH

TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC SƯ PHẠM KỸ THUẬT HƯNG YÊN)

Supervisor: Nguyen Nang Tuan, MA

Student: Nguyen Thi Phuong Student Number: 11317103

Hung Yen – 2021

FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES - GRADUATION PAPER FIELD: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS

DIFFICULTIES AND SOME SOLUTIONS TO

ENHANCE LISTENING SKILL FOR THE YEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT HUNG YEN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY AND EDUCATION

SECOND-(NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN VÀ MỘT SỐ GIẢI PHÁP NHẰM NÂNG CAO KỸ NĂNG NGHE CHO SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ HAI CHUYÊN NGÀNH NGÔN NGỮ ANH

TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC SƯ PHẠM KỸ THUẬT HƯNG YÊN)

Student: Nguyen Thi Phuong Student Number: 11317103 Supervisor: Nguyen Nang Tuan, MA

(Ký tên)

Hung Yen – 2021

DECLERATION

I certify my authorship of the study report entitle “Difficulties and some solutions

to enhance listening skill for the second-year English major students at Hung Yen

University of Technology and Education”

This graduation paper is the result of my own research and the substance of this thesis

has not been submitted for a degree to any other university or institution and that if this

declaration is found to be false, disciplinary measures and penalties can be taken and

imposed in accordance with university policies and rules

Hai Duong, June, 2021

Signature

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

During the process of doing this graduation paper, I have received many necessary assistances, precious ideas and timely encouragements from my teachers, family and friends This paper could not have been completed without the help, encouragement and support from a number of people who all deserve my sincerest gratitude and appreciation

First of all, I wish to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor-Mr Nguyen Nang Tuan, the English teacher of Faculty of Foreign Languages, who has always been willing to give me valuable advices and suggestions in order that I can complete successfully this study

I also would like to take this opportunity to show my sincere thanks to all my teachers at the Faculty of Foreign Languages, Hung Yen University of Technology and Education, who have handed me basic knowledge to complete this study

I am so thankful to students of K17 at the Faculty of Foreign Languages for their whole-heart participation in the study

I would like to acknowledge my thanks to all the authors of the books, magazines, and the other materials listed in the reference part for their ideas that have been reflected and developed in the study

I am equally indebted to my classmates for their suggestions and encouragements in the process of my study

Last but not least, my particular thanks are given to my parents for their encouragement and support which played an important role in my graduation paper

ABSTRACT

Listening skill is one of the most necessary skills to communicate in the real life In learning a foreign language, it is more and more important to learn this skill 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 The thesis will study the subjective and objective difficulties of the students in learning the listening skill Then, it would like to find out the reasons for those problems and the solutions for both teachers and students in teaching and learning the listening skill Therefore, I applied the quantitative methods to do the research So the collecting data instruments like questionnaires, interviews were used to

do the study The results of the research will point out the difficulties that students meet when they learn the listening skill More importantly, the study helps me find out the causes

of those difficulties so that I can work out the right solutions to the problems With the hope

of improving students’ listening competence, I have tried my best to do this thesis by my own experiences and knowledge in English teaching methodology

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

DECLERATION i

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS vii

LIST OF ABBREVIATION viii

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale of the study 1

1.2 The aims of the study 2

1.3 Research questions 2

1.4 The scope of the study 2

1.5 The method of the study 3

1.6 The organization of the study 3

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

2.1 Introduction 4

2.2 Overview of listening 4

2.2.1 Definition of listening 4

2.2.2 The importance of listening skill 5

2.2.3 Types of listening skill 6

2.2.4 The process of listening 6

2.3 Difficulties in learning the listening skill 7

2.3.1 What makes listening so difficult? 7

2.3.2 What problems do students have with listening? 8

2.4 Factors affecting the English listening 10

2.4.1 The class atmosphere 10

2.4.2 Students’ motivation 10

2.4.3 Quality of Recorded Material 10

2.4.4 Speech 10

2.5 Some common strategies of listening skills 11

2.6 Summary 12

CHAPTER 3: THE STUDY 14

3.1 The setting of study 14

3.2 The participants 14

3.2.1 The teachers 14

3.2.2 The students 15

3.2.3 The textbook (Skills for Success 2- Listening & Speaking and Get ready for IELTS Listening) 15

3.3 Data collection instruments 15

3.3.1 The survey questionnaire 15

3.3.2 Data collection procedures 16

3.4 Data analysis and discussion from the questionnaire 16

3.4.1 Teachers' and students' opinion about listening skill of the second-year students in FFL at UTEHY 16

3.4.2 The causes of difficulties in English listening skills for the second-year English majors at Hung Yen University of Technology and Education 20

3.4.3 Solutions to improving listening skills for the second year English majors at UTEHY 24

3.5 Main finding and discussion 29

3.5.1 Opinions of students about English listening skill 30

3.5.2 Factor affecting English listening skill 30

3.5.3 Suggestions for improving English listening skill 30

3.6 Recommendations 32

3.6.1 For students 32

3.6.2 For teachers 32

CHAPTER 4: INCONCLUSION 34

4.1 Summary of the study 34

4.2 Limitation of the study 34

4.3 Suggestions for the further study 35

REFERENCES 36 APPENDIX 1: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRES FOR STUDENTS I APPENDIX 2: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRES FOR TEACHERS V

LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS

LIST OF CHARTS

Chart 3.1: The students' assessment of learning the listening skill 17

Chart 3.2: Teachers and students’ attitudes towards the importance of English listening skill 19

Chart 3.3: The frequency of students having problems in learning English listening skill 20 Chart 3.4: Teachers opinion about factors influences students' learning listening skills 24

Chart 3.5: Students should do before learning listening 25

Chart 3.6: Teachers should do before teaching listening 26

Chart 3.7: Suggestion while listening 27

Chart 3.8: Suggestion after listening 28

LIST OF TABLES Table 3.1: Teacher’s assessment on difficulties of English listening skill 18

Table 3.2 The factors affecting English listening skills for students 20

Table 3.3: The teachers' assessment about factors affecting English listening 22

Table 3.4: Factors influences students' learning listening skills 23

Table 3.5: The ways to overcome difficulties in learning listening 28

LIST OF ABBREVIATION

FFL: Faculty of Foreign Languages

UTEHY: Hung Yen University of Technology and Education

K17: The name of second-year English major students at Faculty of Foreign Languages at Hung Yen University of Technology and Education

T: Teachers

S: Students

TV: Television

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale of the study

Nowadays, listening plays a vital role in daily life People listen for different purposes such as entertainment, academic purposes, or obtaining the necessary information The four language skills include Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing that all language learners are supposed to acquire Listening is believed to be the most challenging due to the complex and subtle nature of listening comprehension in a second or foreign language

First of all, listening is the most important skill in communication in the real life Listening and speaking are two major parts of communication They are closely interdependent We are able to talk sensibly when we understand what is said to us If we fail to understand spoken language, we may miss important information and respond in a funny way Moreover, in learning a language, listening is a useful means of providing students with comprehensible input, which is an essential component of the whole language learning process And teaching listening skill in classroom helps students make transition from classroom English to real-life English more easily and effectively Therefore, I would like to do this research to help the students and teachers pay more attention to listening skill

Secondly, learning English listening skill is the most difficult in learning a foreign language Listening, like reading, is a receptive skill but it is often the most daunting for students When reading, a reader usually has more opportunities to refer back to the text to clarify understanding, which a listener cannot do in most listening contexts such as TV programs, meetings, discussion, lectures or conversations

Last but not least reason for choosing this thesis title is that many students are not interested in learning listening skill They find listening classes boring On the other hand, practicing listening skill is difficult and it takes long time That is the reason I would like to work out some suggestion so as to help teachers motivate their students to study listening skill more excited and better

At Hung Yen University of Technology and Education (UTEHY), I realize that the second-year students of English major still have many difficulties in their listening skill In the hope of finding out the difficulties of listening that they normally get, a study entitled:

“Difficulties and some solutions to enhance listening skill for the second-year English

major students at Hung Yen University of Technology and Education” has been

conducted because of all above mentioned reason

1.2 The aims of the study

The study is done with the following aims:

Firstly, the study is carried out in order to survey the real state of teaching and learning English listening skill in UTEHY

Secondly, find out the difficulties that the students face when they learn English listening skills at UTEHY

Finally, the study would like to suggest some possible solutions to those difficulties They will be very helpful for the teachers to motivate their students in listening classes These suggestions also wish to help the students catch up with the speed of a normal conversation in real life so that they can improve their communication competence

3 What are some solutions to improve for the second-year English listening skill?

1.4 The scope of the study

Because of the limitations of time and knowledge, the shortage of reference materials, this study cannot cover the whole issue of listening skill It only focus on exploring common difficulties students get in listening skill Moreover, the study could not touch upon all the students at UTEHY It is confined to the second-year students in English faculty at UTEHY only

1.5 The method of the study

The study will be conducted using quantitative methods The study includes survey questionnaires for both teachers and students After getting the results, the researcher will use the tables and charts for presenting the collect data

1.6 The organization of the study

The study has four chapters which conclude: introduction, literature review, the study and conclusion

Chapter 1: The introduction parts indicates the rational for choosing this topic and points out the aims, research questions, scope of study as well as the methods of the study

Chapter 2: Literature review - review some theories as well as previous researches that relate to study

Chapter 3: The study: consist of three parts below:

Methodology and data collection: mention of the methods of the research and data collection from the survey questionnaires

Data analysis, main finding and discussion: analyses the data collected in order to find out the fact of teaching and learning listening skills of English major students at UTEHY

Some suggestions for improving learning listening skills: gives some effective strategies to help students improve learning listening skills

Chapter 4: Conclusion: summarizes of the study as well as limitation for it In

addition, suggestion for further study

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Introduction

This chapter is named Theoretical basis of the study in which the researcher will provide the foundation of knowledge about listening skills so that the readers have an overview of the topic of the study It includes the definition, the significance and types of listening, factors make listening difficult

2.2 Overview of listening

2.2.1 Definition of listening

Listening is considered as one of the most important skills in acquiring both a native language and a second or foreign language It is being paid more and more attention to So far, there have been a number of definitions of listening by different linguists such as Howatt and Dakin (1974); Wolvin and Coakley (1982); Pearson (1983); Bentley and Bacon (1996), Brown (2001), Gary Buck (2001), Scott Shelton (2008)

Howatt and Dakin (1974) defined listening as the ability to identify and understand what others are saying This involves understanding a speaker’s accent or pronunciation, his grammar and his vocabulary, and grasping his meaning

Wolvin and Coakley (1982) regarded listening: “the process of receiving, attending

to and assigning meaning to aural stimuli”

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

Bentley and Bacon (1996) stated that listening, an important part of the second language learning process has also been defined as an active process during which the listener constructs meaning from oral input

According to Brown (2001), listening is “not merely the process of unidirectional receiving of audible symbols” He supposed that one aspect of listening comprehension which is “the psychomotor process of receiving sound waves through the ear and

transmitting nerve impulses to the brain” Hence, listening comprises of three elements: the sender, the message and the listener

Gary Buck (2001), for example, points out that “listening comprehension is an active process of constructing meaning and this is done by applying knowledge to the incoming sound” in which “a number of different types of knowledge are involved: both linguistic knowledge and non-linguistic knowledge”

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

in any given message

To sum up, all of definitions are given with a view to clarifying the nature of the listening skill which is necessary in the process of acquiring a native language or a foreign one

2.2.2 The importance of listening skill

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

It is obvious that listening is really important in the real life

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

of five senses (hearing, smelling, tasting, touching and looking) but listening is a choice to hear and understand it As an integrative skill, listening plays an important role in the process

of language learning or acquisition and facilitating the emergence of other language skill

According to Nord (1980, p.17), listening is the way of learning the language “It gives the learner information from which to build up the knowledge necessary for using the language When this knowledge is built up, the learner can begin to speak The listening-only period

is a time of observation and learning, which provides the basis for the other language skills (Nation, 1990, p.12) Most learners will spend more time listening to the foreign language than producing it themselves Falling to understand spoken language, people may miss important information presented to them or respond in a funny way So training in listening

is really necessary It helps students make the transition from classroom English to the life English more easily and effectively

real-2.2.3 Types of listening skill

According to some authors, namely Nguyen Thi Van Lam and Ngo Dinh Phuong (2006), there are two ways of listening in the real life They are casual listening and focused

listening depending on the purpose of listening

The first type of listening, casual listening, means listening without a particular purpose When we listen, we do not pay much or even any attention to the information unless there is something that interests us Therefore, we hardly remember the content of what we hear Normally, we do this kind of listening when we listen to music, or listen to news on the radio or TV while doing some housework or chatting to a friend

The second is type of focused is listening that means when we listen for a particular purpose to find out information as possible Nevertheless, we do not listen to every word because we know beforehand what we are going to listen so we only catch the most important information from the speech or the lecture Beside, learners also use this type of listening in classroom

In brief, students need to understand clearly to type of listening that they are going

to use When students choose for them a type of suitable listening, they can use methods to effective listening

2.2.4 The process of listening

According to Clark & Clark (1977), the process of listening comprehension concluded there were three parts: the perceptual, parsing, and utilization For the perceptual,

listeners received the sound by a speaker and formed an image in their short-term memory and learners transferred quickly to the information in echoic memory to short–term memory

to process the sounds for meaning Next, it is the parsing process this process reorganized the messages into a meaningful word that could be stored in the short-term memory Then, listeners utilized long-term memory to link the incoming message to their original knowledge When the new information could link with existing knowledge, comprehension occurred In another aspect, Anderson and Lynch (2003) shows that listening involves the reciprocal and multiple skills; one would do well to explore some of the complex elements inherent in the active process that it involves Then, skills can be isolated, focused upon, and improved, providing the attention necessary to be cognizant of, to integrate together, and to put the skills to more effective use In conclusion, listening is a complicated process with so much different activities

2.3 Difficulties in learning the listening skill

2.3.1 What makes listening so difficult?

There are eight characteristics of spoken language which makes listening difficult (Brown, 2001, p.252)

1 In spoken language, due to memory limitations we break down speech into smaller groups of words They are called clustering For examples: “a lot of”, “a number of”, etc Therefore, when listening, learners have to learn to pick out manageable clusters of words, avoiding trying to listen to every word of the speech It is not necessary and makes learners become distracted

2 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

3 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

4 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

5 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

6 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

7 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

8 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 to understand all of these characteristics

of spoken language in order that they get more ease in interaction in general and in listening

in particular

2.3.2 What problems do students have with listening?

Another point of view has been expanded by Underwood (1989) who lists a series cause of obstacles to efficient listening comprehension

First, listeners cannot control the speed of delivery He says: "Many English language learners believe that the greatest difficulty with listening comprehension is that the listener cannot control how quickly a speaker speaks" (Underwood, 1989, page 16)

Second, listeners cannot always have words repeated This is a serious problem in leaning situations In the classroom, the decision as to whether or not to replay a recording

or a section of a recording is not in the hands of students Teachers decide what and when to repeat listening passages; however, it is hard for the teacher to judge whether or not the students have understood any particular section of what they have heard (Underwood, 1989, p.17)

Third, listeners have a limited vocabulary, the speaker may choose words the listener does not know, listener sometimes encounter and unknown word which may cause them to stop and think about the meaning of that word and thus cause them to miss the next part of the speech

Fourth, listeners may fail to recognize the signals which indicate that the speaker is moving from one point to another, giving an example, or repeating a point Discourse markers used in formal situations or lectures such as "secondly", or "then" are comparatively evident to listeners In informal situations spontaneous conversations, signals are vaguer as

in pauses, gestures, increased loudness, a clear change of pitch, or different intonation patterns These signals can be missed especially by less proficient listeners

Fifth, listeners may lack contextual knowledge Sharing mutual knowledge and common content makes communication easier Even if listeners can understand the surface meaning of the text, they may have considered difficulties in comprehending the whole meaning of the passage unless they are familiar with the context Nonverbal clues such as facial expressions, nods, gestures, or tone of voice can also be easily misinterpreted by listeners from different cultures

Sixth, it can be difficult for listeners to concentrate in a foreign language In listening comprehension, even the shortest break in attention can seriously impair comprehension Conversation is easier when students find the topic of the listening passage interesting However, students sometimes feel listening is very tiring even if they are interested because

it requires an enormous amount of effort to follow the meaning

Seventh, students may have established certain learning habits such a wish to understand every word Teachers want students to understand every word they hear by repeating and pronouncing words carefully, by grading the language to suit their level, by speaking slowly and so on As a result, they tend to become worried if they fail to understand

a particular word or phrase and they will be discouraged by the failure It is necessary for students to tolerate vagueness and incompleteness of understanding (Underwood, 1989)

2.4 Factors affecting the English listening

2.4.1 The class atmosphere

Sometimes inconvenience of classrooms affects students listening comprehension

In the large classrooms students who are sitting on the back rows may not hear the recording

as students sit in front Students who prefer to stay next to the windows also effected by the noise that come from outside As a teacher we have to take into account all this conditions

in a body The size of the classroom also makes difficult for teacher to manage the all class

in group activity or to get feedback from students The temperature of class can be counted

as a factor that makes listening comprehension difficult The class that does not have air conditioner or heater may be too hot in summer or too cold in winter

2.4.2 Students’ motivation

Students’ motivation is one of the crucial factors that affect listening comprehension

It can be difficult for students maintaining the concentration in a foreign language learning classroom In listening comprehension, even the smallest pause in attention may considerably spoil comprehension When students find the topic of the listening text interesting, comprehending would be easier For all that, students find listening very boring even if they are interested in the topic because it needs a huge amount of effort in order to not miss the meaning

2.4.3 Quality of Recorded Material

In some classes, teachers use some recorded materials that do not have high quality The quality of sound system can impact the comprehending of learners’ listening

2.4.4 Speech

Munro and Derwing (1999) expressed that too many accented speeches can lead to

an important reduction in comprehension 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 process and at the same time an unfamiliar accent makes comprehension impossible for the listeners

2.5 Some common strategies of listening skills

It is well known that there are many factors that affect students' listening comprehension, hence the question now is how to help students to improve their listening?

My answer is: by encouraging the use of listening strategies

According to Gower, Phillips and Walter (1995), teachers should encourage students

to talk and listen to each other and also provide texts and activities which will develop listening strategies at the same time as providing input for language acquisition They so remark that when selecting a suitable listening text with purpose of practicing listening skills and strategies They also observe that we can help our students to understand a listening text

by choosing a text which will interest the students and formulate aims that are suitable for their level and their needs For them, examples of specific aims are: to develop global listening strategies, to develop intensive listening strategies, to a set a context for a role play, and to introduce a vocabulary "set" in a natural context Ur (1999) suggests considering different types of activities to help students to improve their listening skills: short responses (obeying instructions, ticking off items, detecting mistakes, cloze, guessing definitions, skimming and scanning); longer responses (answering questions, note paraphrasing and translating, summarizing, long gap-filling), and extended responses (problem-solving, interpretation) Those activities are what I consider listening strategies and I am convinced they should be included in an English class

Some of the techniques Brown (1994) recommends are (chapter 14, page 247 - 250 for details): listening for normal sentence word order, discrimination between emotional reaction, getting the gist of a sentence, recognizing the topic, recognizing a familiar word and relate it to a category, finding main ideas, making inferences, use context to build expectations, listen to confirm your expectation, identify specific points of information, predicting, etcetera

Yagang (1994, p.189) proposes a series of what he calls micro – skills (what other author consider as techniques or strategies) of listening to be used with a group of students

to help them develop their listening:

- Predicting what people are going to talk about guessing at unknown words or phrases without panicking

- Using one's own knowledge of the subject to help understanding

- Identifying relevant points (note - taking, summarizing)

- Recognizing discourse markers (well, oh, now, finally, etc.)

- Understanding different intonation patterns and uses of stress

- Understanding inferred information (speaker's attitudes or intentions)

Maggio (1993) suggest various techniques that may be appropriate for learners at different levels of proficiency Maggio (1993) indicates that techniques for a novice/ intermediate levels include extra linguistic support, such as pictures, graphic materials, or physical activity to help students whose listening skills are relatively weak (pre - listening activities, listening for the gist, comprehension checks, etc.) At the higher levels of proficiency, tasks require fuller comprehension of the text, including more detail and an understanding of nuances (dictation, completing target language summary, note- taking/outlining, inferential listening, etc.)

The sequencing of listening tasks into before listening, while listening, after listening sections has been mainstay in the teaching of listening comprehension

2.6 Summary

In conclusion, this chapter mainly summarizes the theories, ideas, opinions related

to the listening skills It has presented the relevant literature, which has helped to form the

theoretical can conceptual framework for graduation paper The following chapter will display the methodology and finding of the research under the light of all above

CHAPTER 3: THE STUDY

This chapter, the researcher will give the full analysis of data collected through the survey questionnaires for teachers and students on the factors affecting English listening skill of the second-year students in FFL at UTEHY It shows an attempt to answer the three research questions posed at the beginning of the study

3.1 The setting of study

In 1992, Basic theory team was founded and developed when it was only with 5 teachers In addition, the Basic theory team and faculty of Basic Sciences were merged together to teach English and English major techniques in 2003 Especially, on December

2007, according to the decision of the Rector Headmaster of UTEHY was changed to Faculty

of Foreign Language In 2011, FFL had nearly 40 teachers Furthermore, the Faculty of Foreign Language in UTEHY has employed many younger teachers The teachers in here who live and work in different places like Hai Duong, Hung Yen and Ha Noi Especially, all the teachers graduated from well-known Universities such as: Hanoi University, Foreign Language University, Hanoi National University and Education, etc Up to now, it has increased both the number and quality of the teachers It focuses training English majors in Hai Duong, Khoai Chau and My Hao The Faculty of Foreign Language consists of more than 300 students who have learnt English for at least 8 years They come from the different provinces of country but most of them live in rural areas Specially, the students here have

to use English in process of studying all subjects which belong to 2 genres: genre of language theory and genre of language practice, Firstly, type of language theory consists of such subjects as: Understanding English semantic, Basic English lexicology, Phonology, Grammar of English, Theory of translation Secondly, type of comprise the following subjects: Interpreting, Reading skills, Listening skills, Writing skills, and Speaking skills Besides, in each subject, some lecturers given by the instructors, has accompanied by discussion among lecturers and learners Nowadays, everything has been in the process of innovation development for better things both of teaching and learning

3.2 The participants

3.2.1 The teachers

The Faculty of Foreign Languages consists of 27 teachers including 2 Chinese teachers Majority of them graduated from the faculty of foreign languages of Hanoi National University or Hanoi University The questionnaire was administered to 5 English teachers who have average 10-14 years’ experience in teaching English They are all professionally experienced with English foreign language

3.2.2 The students

The research was undertaken with the participation of 87 second-year students in Faculty of Foreign Language They age from 19 to 20 and their English level not very high because majority of students come from countryside Furthermore, being local university students, almost all of them come from areas without many chances for learning listening For a long time, they only focused on grammar and vocabulary and they hardly speak English

As a results, when they entered university, their English levels were limited and they have

to face up with many difficulties in studying

3.2.3 The textbook (Skills for Success 2- Listening & Speaking and Get ready for IELTS

Listening)

The second-year students in FFL at UTEHY has learnt 2 listening skill 2 and listening skills 3 semester 1 and the latter in semester 2 of the school years They provide students chances to practice in given different topics in each lesson In addition, they are designed for intermediate students of English as a foreign language The aim is to help students improve their listening skill, therefore it helps them feel confident in the tests and in communication with foreigners To reach this goal, the students are required to have a high concentration to the steps in listening process Besides, they also should try to practice their listening skills every day Specifically, listening skills I and listening skills 2 are 4 - credit courses, they have the detail times for teaching activities such as: 80 class hours In each unit students will learn different topics to practice different

3.3 Data collection instruments

To collect the data for studying the author use quantitative methods including survey for both students and teachers

3.3.1 The survey questionnaire

The questionnaires were designed both for students and teachers because the researcher finds them easy to summarize and analyze the collected data Questionnaires for students consist of 9 questions which are specified in the three research questions Therefore, the survey questionnaires for students was delivered to 87 major second-year students of K17 at Faculty of Foreign Languages, UTEHY to find information for the three research questions Among the 9 questions:

Part I consists of the first three questions (1-3) are designed for collecting general opinion about listening skill of the second-year students in FFL at UTEHY

Part II consists of the next questions (4-5) which shows causes of difficulties in English listening skill for the second-year English majors at Hung Yen University of Technology and Education

Part III consists of the last questions (6-9) presenting some solutions to improving listening skill for the second year English majors at UTEHY

3.3.2 Data collection procedures

The data collection in the study is derived from students who are second-year students at Faculty of Foreign Languages at UTEHY To collect information about the issues

of learning English listening skills of second-year students at Faculty of Foreign Languages

at UTEHY First of all, 87 copies of survey questionnaires were handed out to students and

5 copies of survey questionnaires were sent to the lecturers in FFL

When the data collection was accomplished, the data analysis was initiated The results of survey questionnaires revealed students’ techniques they use in listening skill

3.4 Data analysis and discussion from the questionnaire

3.4.1 Teachers' and students' opinion about listening skill of the second-year students

tables and charts which show the response for the question in the questionnaires Besides, the first question the questionnaires bring a result that, according to students’ opinion, listening skill is very difficult

Question 1: How do you feel about English listening skill?

Chart 3.1: The students' assessment of learning the listening skill

It can be seen obviously in the chart that the listening skill is a difficult skill to learn 64,4% of the learners suppose that listening is difficult For the students, listening to English and learning this skill is really a problem Moreover, the number of learners who agree that learning the listening skill is very difficult took 23% It is the same as the number of the learners who find learning listening normal (10,3%) or easy (2,3%) In fact, as what can be seen by the observation, the learners who confirm that it is easy to learn the listening skill are the best students In short, the survey proves the assumption about the difficulty of listening to English and learning it

So how about teachers? The table below is the result of questionnaire for teachers that the research investigated six teachers

Very difficult 64,4%

Difficult 23%

Quite difficult 10,3%

Not difficult

Very difficult Difficult Quite difficult Not difficult