Luận văn thạc sĩ nghiên cứu khảo sát những phương pháp nhằm nâng cao kỹ năng làm bài thi TOEIC cho sinh viên trường đại học hàng hải việt nam

In an attempt to investigate the obstacles encountered by the students at Vietnam Maritime University (VIMARU) while sitting for the TOEIC test and giving some recommendations to improve their test taking skills, the main purposes of the study were to find out (1) the main difficulties affecting the students’ test results, (2) and giving the students some suggestions to better test taking skills. The subjects of the study were 85 third – year students and 5 TOEIC teachers. The students were invited to answer a survey questionnaire. The result of the research showed that lack of test taking skills led to bad results for the students. Besides, the study reveals that teachers played an important role in instructing the students about necessary techniques in the hope that they would gain better scores.

In an attempt to investigate the obstacles encountered by the students at Vietnam Maritime University (VIMARU) while sitting for the TOEIC test and giving some recommendations to improve their test taking skills, the main purposes of the study were to find out (1) the main difficulties affecting the students’ test results, (2) and giving the students some suggestions to better test taking skills The subjects of the study were 85 third – year students and 5 TOEIC teachers The students were invited to answer a survey questionnaire The result of the research showed that lack of test taking skills led to bad results for the students Besides, the study reveals that teachers played an important role in instructing the students about necessary techniques in the hope that they would gain better scores.

First of all, I would like to express my very affectionate and felt thanks to my supervisor, Dr Nguyễn Huy Kỷ, for his effective instructions and invaluable advice during the preparation and completion of this paper.

deeply-I also wish to acknowledge my debt to all the lecturers of the Faculty of Post- Graduate Studies at Vietnam National University, Hanoi – University of Languages & International Studies, whose lectures and ideas have inspired

my thesis.

My appreciation also goes to the lecturers and students at Vietnam Maritime University for their valuable assistance in completing my survey questionnaire and providing me with a lot of useful information.

Finally, I would like to send my great thanks to my family, my friends for their encouragements and advice.

On the whole, without all their help my paper would not have possibly been completed.

FLC: Foreign Language Center

ETS: Educational Testing Service

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURESTable 1: Students’ attitute towards TOEIC test (Questions 1, 2 &3)

Table 2: Students’ attitude towards TOEIC listening classes (Questions 4, 5, & 6) Table 3: Factors that cause difficulty in TOEIC listening texts (Question 7)

Table 4: Factor that causes difficulty in TOEIC reading texts (Question 10)

Table 5: Students’ attitude towards TOEIC reading classes (Questions 8, 9)

Table 6: Students’ preparation for the TOEIC test (listening skill) (Questions 11, 12) Table 7: Students’ preparation for the TOEIC test (reading skill) (Questions 13, 14,

15, 16)

Table 8: Students’ expectation from the teachers (17, 18)

Table 9: Students’ attitude towards TOEIC supplementary materials (Questions 19,

20, 21, 22)

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Declaration i

Abstract ii

Acknowledgements iii

List of abbreviations iv

List of tables and figures v

Table Of Contents vi

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1.Rationale of the study 1

2.Objectives of the study 2

3.Methods of the study 2

4.Research questions 3

5.Scope of the study 3

6.Organization of the study 3

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 5

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1.1 The TOEIC test 5

1.2 An overview of the previous studies 5

1.3 Theoretical background 6

1.4 Summary 13

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 14

2.1 An introduction about VIMARU and FLC 14

2.2 Students and learning requirements 15

2.3 Teachers and teaching methods 16

2.4 Materials and Assessments 16

CHAPTER 3: DATA COLLECTION, DATA ANALYSIS, MAJOR FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 18

3.1 Selection of subjects 18

3.2 Data collection instruments 18

3.3 Data analysis, findings and discussion 19

3.4 Summary 29

CHAPTER 4: SOME SUGGESTED METHODS TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’ TOEIC TEST TAKING SKILLS AT VIMARU 31

4.1 Suggestions for the teachers 31

4.2 Suggestions for the students 34

PART C: CONCLUSION 39

1.Recapitulation 39

2.Conclusions 39

3.Teaching implications 40

4.Limitations of the study 41

5.Suggestions for further study 41

REFERENCES 42 APPENDIX I

PART A: INTRODUCTION

In the first chapter, the researcher introduces the reasons for chosing the thesis, as well as the scope, methods, objectives, and the organization of the study The

research questions are also stated

1 Rationale of the study

There is no doubt that the role of English in the life of any society in the worldtoday has been becoming more and more important The widespread need forEnglish as an international language puts a considerable pressure on the educationresources of any countries In case of our country, since our government carried outthe open door policy to attract foreign investment and co-operate with othercountries, teaching and learning English has become necessary Moreover, it is theEnglish that is used as an effective medium of international communication It is thelanguage of trade, science, technology, tourism, sport, music and many other fields

of life That is the reason why at present, learning English is not only the interestbut also the great and practical demand for many people, especially for studentswho always want to assess the modern world Therefore, English is now taught as acompulsory subject to all students at university in our country

English plays an important part in the growth and global intergration Nowadays,the criteria for evaluating one’s English ability for people who wish to get a goodjob by A, B, C certificates is out of date IELTS, TOEFL, TOEIC have been the bestchoices Together with other requirements, TOEIC certificate is really necessary forany job seekers That’s why many people are trying their best to be successful in theTOEIC test

At VIMARU students are required to get TOEIC certificate as a condition tograduate The required score depends on the course that the students are taking in.From my observation as a lecturer of English, my students hardly do their test wellright at the first test They have to do the test again and again to achieve the scorethey need before graduation They have to sit for a Listening and Reading

Comprehension test as their final examination It’s blamed that lack of test takingskills leads to students’ test failure

Previous researches related to TOEIC test paid attention to either ListeningComprehension or Reading Comprehension The researcher challenged herself toinvestigate how bad test taking skills affect students’ TOEIC test result

As a teacher the researcher would like to do something in the hope of improving herstudents’ TOEIC test taking skills so that they can do their TOEIC test well.Therefore, the researcher has chosen the research topic entitled

A survey research on methods to improve students’ TOEIC test taking skills at Vietnam Maritime University

2 Objectives of the study

The purpose of this study is to examine the areas of difficulties in doing TOEIC test encountered by students at VIMARU so that techniques can be given to help them improve these skills

3 Methods of the study

To bring in full presentation of the thesis, firstly, the researcher spent timereading books and materials available on teaching reading and listening to getknowledge of the subject

The procedure used in this thesis is the quantitative one which consists of thefollowing tasks:

- Students are invited to answer a survey questionnaire

- Collecting data and information from the students and the teachers at FLC ofVIMARU to exchange the experiences

- Evaluating the techniques that best fit the teachers and the third year students atVIMARU

Besides, this thesis is also carried out through a variety of methods such asclass observation, informal interview and discussion with the teachers and students

at FLC of VIMARU

4 Research questions

The study was intended to answer three following questions:

(1) What are the obstacles encountered by the students while sitting for theTOEIC test?

(2) What have the teachers done to prepare their students before the TOEIC test?(3) What is the current studying situation on the preparation for the TOEIC test

5 Scope of the study

Due to the limit of time and knowledge, this study merely focuses on

methods to improve TOEIC test taking skills of the students at FLC of

VIMARU The researcher can just conduct survey on students to investigate someproblems showing the TOEIC test bad results experienced by these students thensuggest certain techniques to help them better their TOEIC reading and listeningtest taking skills Also, such follow-up aspects such as other factors affect thestudents’ performance on the TOEIC test are left untouched

6 Organization of the study

The thesis is divided into three main parts:

Part A (Introduction) presents the reasons for the choice of the study, aimand objectives of the study as well as the scope, methods and organization of thestudy

Part B (Development) Chapter 1 firstly introduces an overview and theimportance of the TOEIC test Next it will give a close look at previous studies

Then it provides an overview of the theoretical background of the research It isconcerned with various linguistic concepts most relevant to the research topic such

as the nature of reading and listening, types of reading and listening, etc Then, itgives a closer look at presenting teaching and learning TOEIC at VIMARU

Chapter 2 shows the context, description of instruments data collection Chapter 3 analyzes the results to draw the major findings and then thediscussions about the findings

Chapter 4 offers some suggested methods to improve TOEIC test takingskills for the students at FLC of VIMARU

Part C summaries some major findings and discussions of the thesis Thenthe researcher comes into some conclusions about factors that caused bad TOEICtest results for the stusdents at FLC of VIMARU and gives some suggestions forbetter test taking skills and for further research With any research paper, thelimitations are unavoidable so the researcher will show her limitations whileconducting this thesis in this part

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

In this chapter, some of the most important issues in the theories related tothe study will be taken into consideration It is an overview on the TOEIC test,introduction of previous studies, as well as theories of listening and readingcomprehension are also introduced

1.1 An overview on the TOEIC test

TOEIC is an acronym that stands for Test of English for International Communication The TOEIC test measures one’s ability to use English in daily

business situations covering such topics as corporate development, finance andbudgeting, corporate property, IT, manufacturing, purchasing, offices, personnel,technical matters, meetings, telephone communications, health and business travel,etc Educational Testing Service (ETS) began developing the TOEIC test in 1978 as

a way of measuring the communicative ability of business people The test is based, with students using a pencil to mark their answers on a special machine-readable answer sheet.The test has two sections: Listening Comprehension (100multiple choice questions) and Reading Comprehension (100 multiple choicequestions) The total time allowed for the test (including administrative tasks) isapproximately 2.5 hours The Listening section takes 45 minutes; the Readingsection takes 75 minutes The content of the TOEIC is not specialized, thevocabulary and content are familiar to those inviduals who use English in dailyactivities The TOEIC test is scored on the scale of 10 to 990 Only correctresponses count toward TOEIC score Listening TOEIC test is divided into fourparts including Picture Description, Questions and Responses, Short Conversationsand Short Talk Reading TOEIC test is devided into three parts includingIncomplete Sentences, Incomplete Texts and Reading Comprehension

paper-1.2 An overview of the previous studies

Previously, many studies were conducted on some fields of TOEIC For example,M.A thesis by Nhữ Hà Phương (2012): “Common errors made by pre-intermediate

students in the TOEIC listening test and some suggested solutions” A Master’sThesis submitted to Vietnam National University, University of Foreign Languagesand International Studies The thesis’s far less attention is paid to the commonerrors made by students in TOEIC test To bridge the gap, this thesis aims toexplore the errors made by pre-intermediate students in the TOEIC listening testand to find out the solutions regarding this issue This work hopes to both contribute

to the existing body of TOEIC research as well as to pave the way for future studies

in this field

The M.A thesis titled “Some strategies for students to avoid the typical traps in thelistening section of the TOEIC test” by Hoàng Vĩnh Lộc introduces the typical trapsand specific strategies for the listening section of the TOEIC test to help thestudents be confident in taking the TOEIC test The writer’s hypothesis was thatafter having acquaintance with the traps and knowing the strategies for avoidingthem, the students can success in taking the test and getting required test scores Inthis research, the writer wishes to introduce the typical traps in the TOEIC listeningsection and effective strategies for avoiding them Besides, the writer, at theposition of a language learner would love to make some recommendations forimproving the students’ listening skill for the TOEIC test and building moreeffective listening classes at the Faculty of Foreign Languages of Lac Hong University

1.3 Theoretical background

To provide a theoretical background to the study, this section is devoted to the examination of concepts most relevant to the thesis’s topic They are nature ofreading and reading comprehension, reading process, classification of reading Theimportance of listening, classification of listening and listening process are also introduced

of reading is not completely understood nor easily described

Rumelhart (1977) defines “reading involves the reader, the text, and the interactionbetween the reader and the text” It means the role of learners and reading texts areplaced an important position in reading act

According to Goodman (1971:135), reading is “a psycholinguistic process by whichthe reader, a language users, reconstructs, as best as he can, a message which hasbeen encoded by a writer as a graphic display”, and the act of reconstruction isviewed as “a cyclical process of sampling, predicting, testing and confirming.” William (1986:3) shares the same view on reading when he argues that “writtentexts, then, often contain more than we need to understand them The efficientreader makes use of this to take what he needs, and no more, to obtain meaning.”Harmer (1989:153) views reading from a different perspective He considersreading as a mechanical process that “eyes receive the message and the brain has towork out the significance of the message.”

Though definitions of reading are numerous, none can certainly capture all the ideasand features of what reading is However, what they all share is that they try to findout the nature of reading, and reading act, in which the readers, reading process, andreading message are emphasized

1.3.1.1.2.Reading Comprehension

Reading comprehension plays a key role in teaching and learning reading a foreignlanguage It can be understood as the ability to obtain the information as required inthe reading lessons as efficiently as possible Thus, three elements - reading text,background knowledge of the reader, and the contextual aspects relevant for theinterpretation of the text - are involved in the reading process

Swam (1975:1) proposes “a student is good at comprehension we mean that he canread accurately and efficiently so as to get the maximum information of a text withthe minimum of understanding.”

Grellet (1981:3) considers “reading comprehension or understanding a written textmeans extracting the required information from it as effectively as possible.

Though these opinions are not exactly the same, what comes up as a common point

is that reading comprehension is the process in which the readers, as they read, can recognize the graphic forms of the reading text and understand what is implied behind these forms

1.3.1.1.3.Reading Process

Bottom-up Models

In Bottom-up models, the reader begins with the written text (the bottom), and

constructs meaning from letters, words, phrases, and sentences found within, andthen processes the text in a linear fashion In the process of meaning interpretation,the language is translated from one form of symbolic representation to another(Nunan, 1991) Clearly, these are text-driven models so the reader plays a relativelypassive role as he/she builds comprehension by moving eyes from letters to letters,words to words, phrases to phrases, and sentences to sentences to identify theirexact meaning Samuels and Kamil (188:301), in which the shortcomings of thesemodels are stated, says the lack of feedback makes it “difficult to account forsentence-context effects and the role of prior knowledge of text topic as facilitatingvariables in word recognition and comprehension.”

In Top-down models the reading process moves from the top, the higher level of mental stages down to the text itself This approach emphasizes the reconstruction

of meaning rather than the decoding of form, the interaction between the reader andthe text rather than the graphic forms of the printed pages The readers proves hisactive role in the reading process by bringing to the interaction his/her availableknowledge of the subject, knowledge of and expectations about how languageworks, motivation, interest and attitudes towards the content of the text

Apparently, the strong points of top-down models outnumber those of the

bottom-up as the reader – the central of the reading process as we personally assume –

proves his active role However, to some researchers, these models still revealcertain shortcomings because it sometimes fails to distinguish adequately betweenbeginning readers and fluent readers Moreover, a purely top-down concept of thereading process makes little sense for a reader who can be stymied by a textcontaining a large amount of unfamiliar vocabulary What is more, in top-downmodels, the generation of hypotheses would actually be more time-consuming thandecoding (Stanovich, 1980).

The third type – interactive models of the reading process – is proposed in the

thought of the perceived deficiencies of both bottom-up and top-down models.Interactive theorists appreciate the role of prior knowledge and prediction, and atthe same time emphasize the importance of rapid and accurate processing of theactual words of the text

Hayes (1991:7) proposes “in interactive models, different processes are thought to

be responsible for providing information that is shared with other processes Theinformation obtained from each type of processing is combined to determine themost appropriate interpretation of the printed pages.”

To sum up, the appearance and popularity of interactive models show thatinteractive models can maximize the strengths and minimizes the weaknesses of theseparate use of either bottom-up or top-down models

1.3.1.1.4.Classification of Reading

Classification according to Manner

Reading, according to manner, is divided into reading aloud and silent reading in

which “reading aloud involves looking at the text, understanding it and also sayingit.” (Doff, 1988:70) Though reading aloud is considered a way to convey necessaryinformation to the others, it is an unpopular activity outside classroom

In fact, reading aloud proves itself to be advantageous for the learners because ithelps them make the connection between sounds and spelling of letters and words,

and assists the teachers to check learner’s pronunciation However, there iscontradictory opinion about it Greenwood (1985) criticizes the overemphasis of thepurpose of “teaching pronunciation” through reading aloud

Unlike reading aloud, silent reading is more often used in both real life andclassroom, and “it is the method we normally use with our native language, and onthe whole the quickest and most efficient” (Lewis, 1985:110) Because reading is avery personal skill so silent reading is a more effective skill for readingcomprehension because firstly learners do not need to read all the words in the text,secondly they can read at their own speed and if they do not understand thesentence, they can go back, thirdly students can not only attain the main ideas in ashort time but also understand its details thoroughly to answer the questions, andfinally the teacher can check his/her learners’ understanding easily and add readingmaterials and exercises suitable to their ability

Classification according to Purpose

According to purpose, reading is categorized into four types: skimming, scanning, extensive reading, and intensive reading.

Skim-read and scan-read are necessary reading techniques for general sense or the

gist of a reading text

Nuttal (1982:36) says “by skimming, we mean glancing rapidly through the text todetermine whether a research paper is relevant to our own work or in order to keepourselves superficially informed about matters that are not of great importance tous.”

Grellet (1981:19) states that “when skimming, we go through the reading materialquickly in order to get its main points or the intention of the writer, but not to findthe answer to specific questions … When scanning, we only try to locate specificinformation and often we do not even follow the linearity of the passage to do so.”

Though these two reading techniques are important for quick and efficient reading, they should not be selected separately because a text can be best tackled

by a combination of strategies

Unlike skim-read and scan-read which to some extent still have something incommon, extensive and intensive reading are viewed differently Whileextensive reading is associated with reading outside the classroom and fluencyand pleasure in reading are expected as reading fruits while intensive reading,also called study reading, involves the close guidance of the teacher and requiregreat attention to the text Students need to “arrive at a profound and detailedunderstanding of the text not only of what it means but also of how the meaning

is produced” (Nuttal, 1989:23)

1.3.2 Listening Comprehension

1.3.2.1 The importance of listening

It is now widely accepted that oral communication can not take placewithout listening and listening plays a central and possibly predominant part in thewhole process of language learning Listening, speaking, reading and writing are thefour skills of parts of that “indivisible range called communication” They are

interrelated and interdependent According to Pearson Ian (1981), The Functional Notional Approach in Language Teaching, p 80 , listening is tied to the essential

cognitive elements of comprehension and understanding In order to take part inoral communication, clearly, the first thing anyone must have is the ability to absorbthe pieces of information from the speaker by listening When nobody listens to aspeaker or when a listener fails to understand the message, communication isconsidered unsuccessful Moreover , listening is an important way of acquiring thelanguage , a good way of picking up vocabulary and structures Teaching listening

to spoken language is ,therefore, of primary importance

“ Teaching the comprehension of spoken language is therefore of primaryimportance if the communication aim is to be achieved.”

(Wilga.M.Rivers, Teaching Foreign Language Skills, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago & London, 1968, p 135.)

1.3.2.2 Classification of Listening

Many learners of English will, sooner or later, find themselves in a variety ofsituation where they need or want to listen to English being used in real – life for arange of purposes However, they feel a big gap between listening activities in theclassroom and actual situations This is because in listening materials learners listen

to dialogues, conversations which are very grammatical and controlled in manyways The speakers often speak at perfectly controlled speed, with perfect voicetone, accent and correct grammar Whereas, in real – life conversations learnersencounter various people speaking with different accent, speed and voice tonewithout paying attention to grammar

Class-room listening

According to Rixon (1986) and Hubbard, R and others (1984), there aretwo kinds of listening in classroom, they are: intensive listening and extensivelistening

1.3.2.2.1 Intensive listening

Intensive listening is the careful, focused listening to a short passage fordetailed information or for full comprehension, for example, listening to theannouncements, listening to the instructions or listening to the weather forecast.There may be much concrete information for this kind of listening and learnersoften find it difficult to get full comprehension in the first listening This helpslearners develop their listening skill or knowledge of the language in their effort to

do exercises or other activities The passage should be short so that learners havechances to get to grip with the content, have several tries at difficult parts and to befitted within the time allowed of a lesson Learners also feel it easy, interesting andencouraging when they listen to a short passage Therefore, they often listen with agreat concentration and stretching effort

1.3.2.2.2 Extensive listening

Extensive listening is free and general listening to natural language forgeneral ideas, not for particular details The listening passages for extensivelistening can be long (reports, talks, etc) or short (introductions, instructions, phonemessages,etc) The language that is used in this type of listening is often within thestudents’ current ability so that students find it pleasing and interesting when theyare listening Students feel satisfied as they can understand the passage well Theyare not asked to do any language work and they can do their listening freely withoutany pressure Moreover the topics are various and entertaining, it, therefore,motivates students to develop their listening skill as well as exposes them tovaluable extra contact with spoken language

1.4 Summary

In short, this chapter focuses on the concepts which are useful for theaccomplishment of the paper Firstly, it is an overview of the TOEIC test Next, it isoverview of the previous related studies to this thesis And then that is anintroduction of theories about reading and listening comprehension

on the findings.

2.1 An introduction about VIMARU and FLC

2.1.1 An introduction about VIMARU

Founded in 1956, The VIMARU has been a leading university of Vietnam in themaritime section With total number of nearly 16,000 students who study 19 fields

of education and constant – annual enrolment of 2,400 to 3,000 students, VIMARUnowadays has been assigned for aducating higher aducation level graduates ofnautical science, marine engineering, electrical and electronic engineering,shipbuilding, sea – transport economics, waterway engineering and all the otherfields relating to the national maritime sector Besides, the university also educatespostgraduates of MSc and PhD in the fields of Nautical Science, MarineEngineering, Energetic Engineering, Naval Architecture, Waterway Engineering,Sea – transport Economics, etc

2.1.2 A brief introduction about FLC

As a department of VIMARU, FLC has been a reliable address for those who areeager to study foreign languages and want to practise for the test to achieve theinternational certificates like TOEIC, IELTS FLC provides a variety of language

courses to meet the students’ needs, for example Japanese classes, English classesfor marine purposes, etc However, FLC mainly trains TOEIC test – taking skills forVIMARU’s students as well as students from other universities in Haiphong city ATOEIC training – course may last from 50 to 100 hours Students can choosesuitable time to attend any courses Each TOEIC class may have from 25 to 45students It is potential for the lecturers at this center to access to students ofdifferent levels and variable TOEIC test score requirement, thereby they candevelope their teaching methods as much as they can.

Alongside with many of evening classes, FLC has full-time classes and classes forTOEIC training Apart from this, the center also has training cooperations withother colleges, universities, or institutes within Vietnam such as Hanoi University ofScience and Technology; Vietnam National University, Hanoi; International School

of Education, etc

With its new position as a member of Vietnam Maritime University, the Centergoes on with upgrading teaching and learning facilities, training teachers, expandingthe teaching areas

2.2 Students and learning requirements at FLC

Students who join TOEIC classes normally come from VIMARU There are alsomany students who come from other universities in Haiphong city as HaiphongMedical University, Haiphong Private Univerisity as well as Haiphong University.They can be freshmen or final – year students But most of them have the samepurpose to gain TOEIC certificate The students come from different departments ofVIMARU and levels of English Normally, those who come from MaritimeEconomics Faculty are better than any other Falcuties However, these students are

trained with the same course book Starter TOEIC in 6 periods of English per week.

They have to study English at least three times a week and within 15 weeks ofstudying, each class has 3 TOEIC-based progress tests designed by the teacher ofthe class The content and length of the tests are different from classes At the end

of fifteen weeks, they are asked to sit for a full TOEIC- based test and then thescore will be converted into10- mark scale as a traditional way of marking.

2.3 Teachers and Teaching Methods

At FLC, there are totally 14 teachers of English aged from 22 to 45 Most of themhad formal ELT training in different tertiary institutions inside Vietnam The oldestteachers have more than 20 years of teaching experience, and the youngest just hasmore than a year The teachers in FLC are assigned to teach at different levels, anddifferent classes Class time is often 2 hours, and teachers have to go to class at leastonce a day Each teacher is responsible for one class separately

Most of classes in FLC are TOEIC ones The fact is that not all the teachers use thesame techniques and activities to teach reading and listening skills They have tried

to choose the activities that are suitable to their students It is good for the students

to get used to as many types of activities and techniques as possible In order to findout the effective way of implementing the activities and techniques, the teachershave to spend a lot of time choosing and designing the reading and listeningactivities that the students can do properly The activities are often used such as true

or false exercises, answering the questions, filling in the blanks, choosing thecorrect answer, etc

The methods of teaching reading and listening skills and the reading andlistening activities are considered to be the effective way to improve the students’abilities of reading and listening and the quality of teaching and learning readingand listening skills of the center is improved everyday

2.4 Materials and Assessments

English, as mentioned above, is taught at different levels The teachers often choosethese following materials as their course books: Beginning TOEIC Test –taking

skills Very Easy TOEIC second edition by Anne Taylor & Garrett Byrne, Developing skills for the TOEIC test by Paul Edmunds & Anne Taylor, Building TOEIC Test –taking skills Starter TOEIC third edition by Anne Taylor & Casey

Malarcher, Target TOEIC second edition by Anne Taylor, Longman New Real TOEIC Full Actual Tests, Oxford Practice Tests for the TOEIC Test, Barron’s TOEIC Practice Exams, Barron’s 600 essential words for the TOEIC Test.

From the combination of the two skills in one lesson, the teachers at FLC find ithard to develop intensively each skill separately What they often do in each readingsection is giving hand-outs to their students which they could do either in the class

or at home, then the teachers correct their mistakes if any and give explainations ifnecessary In a listening section, students are asked to do four sample parts as thereal TOEIC test, after that their teachers correct their mistakes if any and providesthem with new words and explainations if they want

CHAPTER 3: DATA COLLECTION, DATA ANALYSIS, MAJOR

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 3.1 Selection of subjects

The survey was conducted with the participation of 85 third- year students at classesTOEIC 7 and TOEIC 5 These classes did not start at the same time This means thestudents are not learning the same lesson when the survey was carried out.However, they have finished 20 lessons of the course so they all know what theirteachers in each practice skill often present About the students, there are 75 of themare male, and only 10 of them are female All of them have one thing in common:they are all officially trained at VIMARU and have at least 6 years of learningEnglish These figures show that the data collected from the survey will surely bereliable because the learners are well aware of their mission, and have enoughknowledge of English to answer the questions given

3.2 Data collection instruments

To arrive at the reliable data, survey was conducted and questionnaire wasadministered to 85 students at two TOEIC classes The questionnaire was used asinstrument for data collection It was designed to get information concerning:

1, Students’ attitude towards TOEIC test (Questions 1, 2, 3)

2, Students’ attitude towards TOEIC listening class (Questions 4, 5, 6)

3, Factors that cause difficulty in TOEIC listening texts (Question 7)

4, Factors that cause difficulty in TOEIC reading texts (Question 10)

5, Students’ attitudes towards TOEIC reading class (Questions 8, 9)

6, Students’s preparation for TOEIC listening skill (Questions 11, 12)

7, Students’ preparation for TOEIC reading skill (Questions 13, 14, 15, 16)

8, Students’ expectation from the teachers (Questions 17, 18)

9, Students’ attitudes towards TOEIC supplementary materials (Questions 19, 20,

21, 22)

All the questions in the survey were designed in the hope that the researcher can getthe students’ opinions about the TOEIC supplementary materials they are using, theteachers they are contacting with, and the methods of teaching reading and listeningthey are adapting to, the preparation for TOEIC test they are making, as well as thedifficulties they are facing with These questions were close to the methods that theresearcher expects to be appropriate for the improvement of students’ TOEIC testtaking skills

3.3 Data analysis, Findings and Discussions

To have a good understanding of the issues under discussion, it is essential to refer to animportant source of data collection associated with the literature review All the questions

in the survey were purposefully designed so that the researcher can get the students’opinions on the TOEIC test, the reading and listening materials they are using, theteachers they are contacting, and the methods of teaching reading and listening skills theyare adapting to These questions are closely related to the techniques that can be workedout to improve the current teaching and learning reading and listening skills at FLC bymeans of literature comparison and by cross-checking with information obtained fromthe responded questionnaire Here are some major findings, interpretations anddiscussions

3.3.1 Students’ attitude towards TOEIC test (Questions 1, 2 &3)

Table 1

As shown in the above table, most of the students of FLC learn English in order togain TOEIC certificate (87%), only 8,9% of them learn English with an aim ofcommunication, 2,5% for entertainment and 1,6% for studying abroad

As for the students’ attitude towards TOEIC test, a large number of the students(55,3%) think that TOEIC test is very difficult, no students consider TOEIC test iseasy , the number of students who finds TOEIC test difficult or quite difficult is thenearly the same (0%, 21,4%, 23,3%)

Another observation from the table above is that most students find that they seem

to lack time to complete the TOEIC test (79,5%), only 20,5 % of the students findthat time limitation is suitable And no one said that two hours is too long for aTOEIC test Maybe the students do not have a good time management while doingthe test

It can be concluded that the students at FLC are studying for the TOEIC testbecause they have a very real need to improve their scores So they can be some ofthe most motivated learners They find the TOEIC test difficult so they always try to

do best in the test They are all aware of their mission in completing their TOEICtest However, what they are doing seems not effective to get better test scores

3.3.2 Students’ attitude towards TOEIC listening classes (Questions 4, 5 & 6)

From the table above we can see that in listening lessons, most of the teachers (70,6%) provide their students with techniques for listening 24, 3 % of them givedetailed explaintions about their students’ listening errors Not many of them (5, 1

%) give the students the answers and none of them do all the four listening sampleexercises for the students (0%)

Table two also indicates that the students have had a lot of opportunities to copewith different kinds of listening activities in the class-room and their types oflistening activities are various, the most popular forms are : true/ false (20%),answering questions (22%), identifying and correcting mistakes (20%), the gap-filling (20 %), chart/form completion (18%)

The figure in the table shows that teachers usually decide to stop or replay therecording (85%), only 15 % of the students are confident enough to ask the teachers

to stop or replay when they have something that they do not understand in therecording

In conclusion, the teachers at FLC are trying to make every TOEIC listening lessoninteresting by proving their students with various kinds of listening activities Theyare also aware of the important of listening techniques to the students to listeneffectively so they introduce them to their student right at the beginning of alistening course The problem is the students are not active enough in learninglistening They do not feel confident enough to ask the teachers to stop or replay therecording when they have something that they do not understand clearly in thelistening texts, so usually they do not know understand the texts thoroughly so it ishard for them to choose the correct answers for each listening exercise

3.3.3 Factors that cause difficulty in TOEIC listening texts (Question 7)