A STUDY ON PROBLEMS 10 TH GRADE STUDENTS AT HUNG YEN HIGH SCHOOL ENCOUNTER WHEN DOING COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS IN ENGLISH LISTENING EXERCISES AND SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES ****** ĐỖ THỊ THÚY A STUDY ON PROBLEMS 10TH GRADE STUDENTS AT HU

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

******

ĐỖ THỊ THÚY

A STUDY ON PROBLEMS 10TH GRADE STUDENTS AT

HUNG YEN HIGH SCHOOL ENCOUNTER WHEN DOING

COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS IN ENGLISH LISTENING

EXERCISES AND SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS

(Nghiên cứu về những vấn đề học sinh lớp 10 trường THPT Hưng

Yên gặp phải khi làm những câu hỏi nghe hiểu trong phần bài tập

nghe tiếng anh và một số giải pháp khắc phục)

M.A Minor Programme Thesis

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60.140.111

HANOI - 2014

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

******

ĐỖ THỊ THÚY

A STUDY ON PROBLEMS 10TH GRADE STUDENTS AT

HUNG YEN HIGH SCHOOL ENCOUNTER WHEN DOING

COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS IN ENGLISH LISTENING

EXERCISES AND SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS

(Nghiên cứu về những vấn đề học sinh lớp 10 trường THPT Hưng

Yên gặp phải khi làm những câu hỏi nghe hiểu trong phần bài tập

nghe tiếng anh và một số giải pháp khắc phục)

M.A Minor Programme Thesis

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60.140.111

Supervisor: Prof Nguyễn Hòa

HANOI - 2014

DECLARATION

I - Đỗ Thị Thúy, a candidate for the degree of Master of Arts (TEFL) hereby state that I accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Master‟s Graduation Paper deposited in the library

In terms of these conditions, I agree that the origin of my paper deposited in the library should be accessible for the purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the librarian for the care, loan or reproduction of the paper

Signature

Đỗ Thị Thuý

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This section brings me a favourable chance to express my profound indebtedness to a number of people whose invaluable support and encouragement were of great help in the completion of my thesis

First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Prof Nguyen Hoa, for his insightful guidance, constructive advice as well as critical comments during almost one year of the research process Without his tireless support, this thesis could not have been completed

Secondly, my special thanks go to my respected colleagues at Hung Yen high school for their kindness of saving me much time to pursue the study

I would also like to acknowledge forty tenth graders at Hung Yen high school for their full participation and cooperation during the data collection process

Last but not least, my special words of thanks are sent to my beloved family and my roommates in the hostel of ULIS, VNU for their constant encouragement, inspiration and unconditional love

ABSTRACT

high school encounter when doing comprehension questions in English listening exercises and some suggested solutions” was conducted to examine the difficulties

of tenth graders at the local high school when dealing with English listening comprehension questions in the course book 10 and also give some pedagogical implications for the teachers at the research site The study used questionnaires and interviews for the collection of quick, valid, and updated data from the respondents There were four prevailing problems which coincidentally emerged from both questionnaires and interviews namely new words, fast speech rate, speakers‟ unclear pronunciation and inability to recognize words that students already know From these findings, some suggestions were given to help the teachers improve their teaching of listening comprehension skills at high school

TABLE OF CONTENTS Page

Declaration i

Acknowledgements ii

Abstract iii

Table of contents iv

List of abbreviations vii

List of charts viii

INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aims of the study 2

3 Significance of the study 3

4 Scope of the study 3

5 Method of the study 3

6 Design of the study 3

DEVELOPMENT 4

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Definition of key terms 4

1.1.1 Listening 4

1.1.2 Listening problems 4

1.1.3 Listening exercise 5

1.2 Listening comprehension questions 5

1.2.1 Basic comprehension 6

a Gist questions 6

b Detailed questions 6

1.2.2 Pragmatic understanding 7

c Pragmatic understanding questions 7

1.2.3 Connecting information 8

d Organization questions 8

e Relationship quesions 8

1.3 The process of listening comprehension 10

1.4 Review of previous studies 11

CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODS 2.1 Context of teaching and learning English at Hung Yen high school 14

2.2 Participants 14

2.3 Data collection methods 15

2.3.1 Questionnaires 16

2.3.2 Semi-structured interview 17

2.4 Data collection procedures 17

2.5 Data analysis methods and procedures 19

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 3.1 Data from the questionnaires 20

3.2 Data from the interview 30

CONCLUSION 36

1 Summary of the study 36

2 Pedagogical implications 37

3 Limitations of the study 39

4 Suggestions for further studies 39

REFERENCES 40 APPENDICES I

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

L2: Second language

EFL: English as a Foreign Language

MOET: Ministry of Education and Training

LIST OF CHARTS Chart 1: Message-related problems

Chart 2: Speaker-related problems

Chart 3: Listener-related problems

Chart 4: Physical setting problems

INTRODUCTION

The initial chapter encompasses five sections Starting with the rationale, it continues with setting the research‟s aims, its significance, scope and method, followed by the design of the study in the last section

1 Rationale

No one can deny the great important role of listening According to Gilakjani and Ahmadi (2011), “of the total time spent on communicating, listening takes up 40-50%, speaking 25-30%, reading 11-16%, and writing about 9%” Likewise, Stepanovienė (2012) and Wolvin and Coakley (1988) claimed that listening was the skill most frequently used in both the classroom and daily life

Remarkably, Tomoko Kurita (2012) considered listening as “the heart of language learning” because it makes significant contributions to the development of other language skills Specifically, it helps enhance vocabulary, develop language proficiency and improve language usage (Barker, 1971) Moreover, as Stepanovienė (2012) noted, “students‟ ability to comprehend written material through reading as well as to express themselves through speaking and written communication are directly related to students‟ maturity in the listening phase of language development” Likewise, according to Dunkel (1986), developing proficiency in listening comprehension is “the key to achieving proficiency in speaking”

In spite of its significant role, listening has been regarded as the most difficult language skill by L2 learners so far (Hasan, 2000; Graham, 2003) Many authors share the same opinion that all the L2 learners face problems when listening to the target language (Velička 2007, Kavaliauskienė 2008 and Abedin 2010) Some obstacles have been discovered by various studies of such authors as Goh (2000), Stepanovienė (2012), Hamouda (2013), Wu (2013) , and Phung, T H T (2008)

However, none of the researchers above investigate students‟ problems in a particular kind of listening tasks In addition , their research subjects are mainly students of tertiary level, not high school students

As an effort to fill in the gap, the current study is conducted on “problems that 10 th

grade students at Hung Yen high school encounter when doing comprehension questions in English listening exercises and some suggested solutions”

Specifically, the study will pinpoint common difficulties of English learners when they deal with short-answer questions This kind of listening task is chosen because

it is one of the three most common listening tasks in the current tenth grade textbook namely short-answer questions, gap filling and True/ False questions Moreover, according to Supornsirisin (2007), “the question-answer approach is one

of the most frequently used ways of giving language practice in the classroom Similarly, in testing listening skills, very often a teacher gives students questions in order to test their listening ability” Further, the survey results (see Appendix 2) showed that the local students found short-answer questions the most problematic This survey‟s finding was also in accordance with that of Le, S.‟s (2013) study

with short-answer listening comprehension questions, the researcher hopes to offer some new and useful information that the predecessors have not found out

2 Aims of the study

The research is conducted to pinpoint most common difficulties, underlying reasons and then generate pedagogical implications for the local teachers to overcome the existing drawbacks

With these aims, the study finds answers to the following research question:

What are the problems that 10 th graders at Hung Yen high school encounters when doing comprehension questions in English listening exercises?

3 Significance of the study

The awareness of problems that students encounter when doing English listening comprehension questions in the listening exercises would benefit teachers First, they will know what hinders their students‟ listening comprehension most in this kind of exercise Then, they can modify their teaching methods and take necessary treatment measures to improve their students‟ listening ability

4 Scope of the study

Due to time constraints, instead of dealing with all kinds of exercises available in the current English course book of grade ten, the study only focuses on short-answer questions Besides, the investigation is carried out with a modest sample of forty tenth grade students at Hung Yen high school

5 Method of the study

The selected methods are qualitative and quantitative data analysis First, the questionnaire is used to get information about problems that students face when they deal with short-answer listening comprehension questions Then a semi-structured interview will be applied to elicit hidden reasons for students‟ difficulties and some possible solutions to overcome those perceived drawbacks

6 Organization of the study

The study consists of three parts In the first part, the author gives the reasons for choosing the topic, the research‟s aims and a brief description of its significance, scope, method and organization Nextly, the second part includes three chapters Chapter one covers an in-depth review of the literature Chapter two clarifies the research methods while chapter three demonstrates the findings and further discussion Lastly, the summary of the research, pedagogical implications, limitations and suggestions for further studies are discussed in the Conclusion part

DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter gives an overview of the literature related to the present study In the chapter, definitions of key terms (listening, listening problems and listening exercise), selected theoretical background about listening comprehension questions and the process of listening comprehension are respectively presented Then comes the review of problems that L2 students face in English listening comprehension

1.1 Definition of terms

1.1.1 Listening

There are many different ways to define listening Despite some slight variations in its definitions, listening can be generally understood as “a language skill involving a wide range of “sub-skills” It is more than simply hearing; it is “decoding” sounds and understanding the meaning behind those sounds.” (Forseth, 1996)

It should be added that English learning process includes four skills namely writing, speaking, reading and listening The last skill can be also referred to as listening comprehension, “the skill of being able to understand the oral messages that people transmit” (Landa & Santos 2003) Listening comprehension is, then, a complete process that a learner hopes to acquire when she or he manages the listening skill

successfully

1.1.2 Listening problems

In the current study, the author adopts Goh‟s (2000) definition of listening problems

as “the internal and external characteristics that might interrupt text understanding and real-life processing barriers directly related to cognitive procedures that take place at various stages of listening comprehension” (as cited in Hamouda, 2013)

1.2 Listening comprehension questions

Like other skills, listening skills can be measured through the use of different types of tools Some of the tasks commonly used to test listening comprehension are True/ False questions, multiple-choice, gap-filling summary, cloze test, dictation and open-ended or short-answer questions The following section will focus on the last one Supornsirisin, K (2007) proposed some strengths and weaknesses of this type of task Regarding the former, open-ended questions have no guessing problems that are great troubles of multiple choice or T/ F questions Moreover, open-ended questions are easy to write and they permit the test constructors to ask any questions Hence, they play an important role in testing listening comprehension

In terms of the latter, Supornsirisin (2007) stated that “open-ended questions are not easy to score because more than one answer can be reasonably interpreted as correct” Besides, this kind of task may confuse test-takers if there is no sufficient indication of how much information should be included in the answer (Buck, 1990) Corresponding to the three level comprehension assessment given by Weir (1993) namely “Direct meaning comprehension”, “Inferred meaning comprehension” and “Contributory meaning comprehension”, Philips (2006) suggested five types of listening comprehension questions as follows:

1.2.1 Basic Comprehension

As being defined by Supornsirisin, K (2007), basic comprehension questions are

“ those intended to elicit the entire answer which is in the passage” They are grouped into 2 kinds including gist questions and detailed ones

a Gist questions

Gist questions ask about the overall ideas of a passage as a whole They require students to identify the subject, the topic, main ideas or overall purpose of a passage by hearing the direct statement in the passage, or by synthesizing information from different parts of the passage The following are typical questions of this type

- What is the subject of the passage?

- What is the topic of the passage?

- What is the main idea of the passage?

- What is the purpose of the passage?

b Detailed questions

Detailed questions ask about specific pieces of information that are stated in a passage, exemplified by the two questions below

- What is stated in the passage?

- What is indicated in the passage?

1.2.2 Pragmatic Understanding

Questions at the level of pragmatic understanding consist of one question type, called pragmatic understanding questions

c Pragmatic understanding questions

Pragmatic understanding questions may ask students to identify either the purpose or the stand and attitude of the speakers

To deal with the former, students need to understand not just what the speaker said but why the speaker said it In other words, they must listen to what is said

in a particular context and draw a conclusion about the speaker‟s purpose in saying it; for example, to apologize, explain, clarify a point, change a topic, indicate a change of opinion, or suggest a new action (Supornsirisin, 2007) A typical wording of this question type is:

- Why does the speaker say this?

Regarding the latter, students are often asked about the speaker‟s feelings, such

as “positive or negative, happy or sad, impressed or unimpressed, or enthusiastic or bored” about a particular topic To identify how he or she feels, learners must combine what they hear with the context and also the way the utterance is made because the speaker hardly reveals directly about his or her feelings Below are examples of this question type

- What is the attitude, opinion, point of view of the speaker?

- Select the sentence that best expresses how the speaker feels

- What does the speaker mean?

1.2.3 Connecting information

Questions about connecting information involve a number of ideas rather than a single detail These questions are categorized into two types encompassing organization questions and relationship questions

d Organization questions

Organization questions ask about the organization of the ideas They may specifically ask about how the heard information is organized, or they may ask students to fill out a chart that shows the organization It is noteworthy that this type of question is based on an understanding of the main points and how they are organized rather than on a single point, as demonstrated below

- How is the information in the passage organized?

- Please fill a chart to show the organization of the passage

e Relationship questions

Relationship questions ask about how different ideas or pieces of information

in the passage are related Examples of this question type are shown below

- What is most likely… ?

- What is implied……?

- What can be inferred……?

Apart from the five types of questions mentioned above, Shohamy and Inbar (1991) suggested three types of questions to assess the learners‟ listening ability according to the variety of answers presented in the passage The first type of question is the global question which requires students to synthesize information, draw conclusions and focus on cause and effect relationships and inferences The second type is the local question which requires students to locate details, understand single words with contextual support, paraphrase or

recognize facts The last type of question is the trivial question which requires students to understand precise details which are not related to the main topic Trivial questions are a subcategory of local questions and usually relate to numerical details such as numbers, dates, and percentages or names of people and places which are not directly related to the main topic

Similarly, Davey (1988) proposed three types of questions to assess different levels of comprehension based on the different kinds of answer First, replication questions require students to answer either word for word or with only minor changes in the lexical form of the text The answers to these questions could be found within a single sentence of the text which can be underlined or copied These questions involve finding information about who, what, when, and where Next, synthesis questions require students to connect the information which spreads across the sentences, or paragraphs

of the text This type of question requires an understanding of the relationships in the text such as cause and effect, sequence, comparison and contrast or the topic and sub-topic The answers have been found in more than one place Finally, according to Buck (2001), inference questions which require students to make a deduction, inference, or implication from what they understand of the text message, integrated with their own background knowledge can be utilized at many levels of language processing In another way, inference questions may be used to ask information which is not clearly stated but indicated by the speaker by using choice of words or tone of voice or asking the meaning of indirect speech acts

The three types of questions proposed by Davey above are also known as literal comprehension questions, reinterpretation questions and inference questions respectively (Nuttal, 1996) Like replication questions, literal comprehension questions require answers that are explicitly presented in a text or contained in the words of a text Reinterpretation questions or

Davey‟s synthesis questions require students to reinterpret or obtain information from various parts of a text and put it together Inference questions so named by both Davey and Nuttal, need answers that are not stated explicitly but require listeners to draw a conclusion from the available information Among various ways to name and group listening comprehension questions, the author of the current paper is in favor of the last one

1.3 The process of listening comprehension

Modes of listening process fall in three types encompassing bottom-up, top-down and interactive processing (Gilakjani & Ahmadi, 2011)

First of all, bottom-up processing is closely associated with the listener‟s linguistic knowledge Accordingly, students make use of their knowledge of words, syntax and grammar to make sense of what they hear (Rubin, 1994 as cited in Gilakjani & Ahmadi, 2011)

On the other hand, top-down processing is explained as employing background knowledge to comprehend the meaning of a message This knowledge can be content schema (general knowledge based on life experience and previous learning)

or textual schema (knowledge of language and content used in a particular situation)

The third is interactive process, which is the combination of both aforementioned processes to augment the listening comprehension Accordingly, when the content

of the material is familiar to the listeners, they can employ their background knowledge at the same time to make predictions of what the speaker is going to say

or to overcome barriers of unfamiliar words By contrast, if the listeners are unfamiliar with the content of the listening text, they can only depend on their linguistic knowledge, especially the lexical and syntactical knowledge to make sense of the information

Understanding how listeners process listening comprehension will provide students and teachers with a lot of ideas to listen more effectively It is also necessary to consider the possible problems students often encounter in learning to listen to English

1.4 Review of previous studies about L2 listening comprehension problems

Wu, H (2007) and many other authors (Vandergrift, 2007; Kavaliauskienė, 2008 & Hamouda, 2013) come to an agreement that studies on the L2 listening comprehension have not gained enough attention from researchers As Goh (1997: 161) pointed out, “there are fewer insights about the process of listening and the way it is learned” Similarly, Richard (1983) claimed that “there is little direct research on second language listening comprehension” For that reason, skills of listening “shifted to a secondary position” (Kavaliauskienė, 2008)

Although studies on the L2 listening comprehension is limited, some valuable sources offer valid comments on the problems associated with this kind of receptive skill (Wu, 2013) Specifically, Underwood (1989) identified seven obstacles to efficient listening comprehension including: (1) lack of control over the speed at which speakers speak, (2) not being able to get things repeated, (3) the listener's limited vocabulary, (4) failure to recognize the signals, (5) problems of interpretation due to the lack of contextual knowledge, (6) inability to concentrate, (7) established certain learning habits To clarify the last problem, Underwood supposed that students may wish to understand every word, which results in their mood of embarrassment or discouragement when they fail to understand a particular word or phrase According to him, vagueness and incompleteness of understanding should be tolerated by listeners

Another investigation conducted on Arabic speakers by Hasan (2000) showed three groups of factors that hindered L2 listening comprehension encompassing message factors, speaker elements and listener issues With regard to the first one,

„unfamiliar words‟, „difficult grammatical structures‟, and „the length of the spoken

text‟ were found most problematic to listeners In terms of speaker factor, it was revealed that „clarity‟ was the main cause of EFL listening difficulties Referring to the last group, „lack of interest‟ and „the demand for full and complete answers to listening comprehension questions‟ were two main barriers of EFL students

Focusing on EFL learners with Chinese backgrounds, Goh (2000) investigated listening comprehension drawbacks by collecting data from learner diaries, small group interviews, and immediate retrospective verbalization Findings include ten problems in relation to three cognitive processing phases proposed by Anderson (1995) namely perceptions, parsing, and utilization Problems experienced at the first stage had mainly to do with recognizing sounds and losing attention In particular, four barriers listed in this phase consist of “don‟t recognize words they know”, “neglect the next part when thinking about meaning”, “cannot chunk streams of speech”, “miss the beginning of texts and concentrate too hard or unable

to concentrate” (Goh, 2000)

Nextly, problems with developing a coherent mental representation of words heard were covered in the second phase Three matters being mentioned by the students were “quickly forget what is heard”, “unable to form a mental representation from words heard” and “do not understand subsequent parts of input because of earlier” Lastly, utilization problems concern the use of background knowledge to interprete the input Goh‟s studies clarified two difficulties: “understanding words but not the intended message” and “confused about the key ideas in the message”

In addition, Goh‟s research showed that “Do not recognise words they know”,

“Neglect the next part when thinking about meaning”, “Quickly forget what is heard”, “Unable to form a mental representation from words heard”,

“Understanding words but not the intended message” were the five most largest barriers to the students of his study (Goh, 2000)

Another ten most important factors affecting L2 listening comprehension were

recently revealed in the the research of Stepanovienė (2012) These elements are

“rate of delivery”, “phonological reduction”, “vocabulary”, “syntactic reduction”,

“cross cultural elements”, “sequencing of information”, “breaking down speech into words”, “groups of words”, “lack of knowledge of English idioms”, “lack of redundancy and lastly, rhythm”

It can be seen clearly that various studies are separated, but their findings tend to overlap This strengthens Hamouda‟s (2012) conclusion that “difficulties in listening in a foreign language are typical to listeners from different language background”

Hence, some taxonomy of factors affecting L2 Listening comprehension was proposed Boyle (1984) suggested a division into four groups including listener, speaker, stimulus and context factors Yagang (1994) followed a categorization of four aspects: the message, the speaker, the listener, and the physical setting Meanwhile, Rubin (1994) classified these elements into five categories encompassing text, interlocutor, task, listener and process characteristics

Within the scope of the present study, the author adopted the second taxonomy of Yagang (1994) because it is clear, easy to understand and best serves the study

Summary

This chapter has provided the definitions of several key terms, selected theoretical background and a review of related studies on students‟ English listening comprehension problems The details of the research, including the methodology and the findings, will be described in the next chapters

CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODS

This chapter focuses on describing the research implementation Starting with the context of teaching and learning English at Hung Yen high school, it continues with the details of participants, methods and procedures of data collection, accompanied

by data analysis methods and procedures at the end

2.1 Context of teaching and learning English at Hung Yen high school

Hung Yen high school is a public educational institution located in the centre of Hung Yen city In the school year 2013-2014, there were eleven tenth grade classes encompassing seven natural science oriented classes (from 10A1 to 10A7), another two groups of social science major (10C1, 10C2) and the rests belonging to D group (10D1 and 10D2) Although students are taught up to three periods of English each week, they have not put much attention to this subject compared with others such as Maths, Physics and Chemistry

Regarding the official learning material, the New English Coursebook 10 compiled

by Hoang Van Van et al is chosen for all classes This document consists of sixteen units among which one unit is officially omitted There are five sections included in each lesson encompassing Reading, Speaking, Listening, Writing and Language focus Students are exposed to various kinds of listening tasks such as numbering pictures, sequencing events, multiple choice, True or False, gap-filling, and short-answer questions The three last kinds are the most common ones for tenth graders However, as being aforementioned, the research only focuses on the problems of students when they deal with short-answer questions because it is the most problematic to them and they did not have much chance to practise this kind

of task in junior high schools

2.2 Participants

The target sample of the research consisted of forty tenth grade students (twenty males and twenty females) from group 10A2 at Hung Yen high school who have

been learning English as a compulsory subject

These students were of the same age, same class, but different levels In terms of their results in the school year 2013-2014, only 4.7% of them were classified as good at English Their final grades ranged from 8.0 to 8.3 Another 41.9 % owned the final marks from 6.5 to 7.9 and the rest was of average rating None of them was below average

The main reason for choosing those students was that 10A2 was one of the two tenth grade classes that the researcher was in charge during the past school-year Hence, it would be easier for her to raise the students‟ awareness of the important role of the participants in the study and ask them to complete the questionnaires seriously and responsibly Moreover, based on her teaching experience, the students‟ performance and their results in the class, the author saw that members of class 10A2 were of mixed ability Therefore, the data collected from them would be more extensive

In addition, with the time constraint, the number of forty participants suited the nature of the study Hence, it would be undoubted that the choice of the population supported to ensure the validity, reliability and objectivity of the present study

2.3 Data collection methods

In the current study, both quantitative and qualitative approaches were employed to address the aforementioned research question While the former provided objective, quantifiable and generalized data (Bordens & Abbott, 1999), the latter was “close to the insider perspective” and helped to yield “real, rich and deep data” (Brown & Rodgers, 2002, p.103) Hence, as Nunan (1992) recommended, the combination of these two research methods helped to reduce potential limitations of applying a single approach and consequently enhanced confidence in the collected data In other words, it would provide “confirmatory results” for the whole study (Harris & Brown, 2010)

Specifically, questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were the two data collection instruments chosen to serve the inquiry Each one would be described in details in the two following parts

After carefully examining the available instruments and based on certain knowledge about learners, the author designed these questionnaires to get information as

follows

The questionnaire consisted of two sections In the first one, there were twenty three close-ended items in the form of Likert scale (see Appendix 3), which were adapted from Hamouda‟s (2013) research Close-ended questions were favored because they would be easy for the high school respondents to answer, convenient for the researcher to collate and analyze data and useful to get specific information about the issue examined (Vajendra and Mallick, 1999) Besides, as open-ended questions could “accurately reflect what the respondents want to say” (Vajendra and Mallick, 1999, p.143), one open-ended question was included in the second part to ensure that all the problems were mentioned in the survey All in all, the two types

of questions complemented each other well to provide a credible source of data for the investigation

It is noted that questionnaires were written in Vietnamese, the participants‟ mother tongue so that they could clearly understand all the items stated in the survey

2.3.2 Semi-structured interview

Semi-structured interview was the second data gathering instrument in this study because it gave the interviewer a greater deal of flexibility and brought the interviewee “power and control” over the interview course (Nguyen, 2010, p.51) Furthermore, according to Nunan (1992), this kind of data collecting method provided “incredibly rich” interactions and “extraordinary evidence about life”, which was almost impossible for a structured interview or questionnaire

In the research, the interviews were used to enrich the questionnaire data Several main questions had been prepared by the author ahead of time to help her keep track with the objectives of the study during the interviews rather than ask random questions, which may lead her too far from the focus of the investigation However,

as the interviews went along, possible relevant questions would be added to generate essential details

During the semi-structured interview, the participants were given freedom to talk about anything that came to their mind, either in English or Vietnamese Hence, it elicited hidden reasons behind participants‟ answers in the questionnaires

It should be noted that observation was not chosen to collect data in this study because it would be more appropriate to explore interactions inside the classroom (Brown & Rodgers, 2002) Meanwhile the current inquiry had little thing to do with students‟ behavior or interaction Besides, the use of observation as a method of data collection may suffer from a number of problems When individuals or groups become aware that they are being observed, they may change their attitude Hence, what is observed may not represent their normal behavior (Kumar, 2012)

2.4 Data collection procedures

The data collection procedure from the questionnaire included three phases

In the first stage, the author piloted the initial questionnaire with five tenth grade

students who were randomly chosen among the participants to get their constructive feedback This process aimed at checking whether the collected data suited the study and if there were any items confusing and ambiguous to students (Nguyen, 2010) Hence, after revising carefully all the students‟ comments, the author made necessary alternations and then fine-tuned the final version of the questionnaire to ensure its accuracy, conciseness, comprehensiveness and focus

Nextly, the questionnaire was directly delivered to forty tenth graders in class 10A2

by the researcher in person to ensure effective implementation The researcher‟s brief introduction about the study together with her careful oral instructions were all made in Vietnamese to lessen any misunderstanding and ambiguity Then, during the time of questionnaire filling, if students had any difficulty, the researcher would

be there to give them essential help As a result, several serious limitations of using questionnaires such as the simplicity and superficiality of answers or respondents‟ literacy problems could be minimized (Bordens & Abbott, 1999) Besides, it should

be noted that all the participants were given twenty minutes to complete the questionnaire None were allowed to leave before the scheduled time so as to avoid them trying to rush to fill out the questionnaire in order to leave the class early

In the last phase, the researcher collected all responses of the participants, and then checked the quality of the responses She just took the regular ones which complied with the given requirements of the questionnaire

Regarding the procedure of interviews, ten respondents were randomly chosen for the interview right after finishing the process of taking data from the questionnaire Students were informed that each interview would take no more than fifteen minutes, would be conducted in Vietnamese, and would be confidential Moreover, they learned that the interviews would be audio-recorded and that the tapes would

be destroyed upon completion of the study Afterwards, the interviews took place in

an informal atmosphere to minimize the participants‟ anxiety

2.5 Data analysis methods and procedures

In terms of the data obtained in the questionnaires, they were analyzed statistically

by means of calculating the numbers of responses and the percentages respectively Then, these statistics were arranged according to different categories and displayed

in charts and table for better illustrations and explanations

As for the students‟ Vietnamese responses from the interview, they were both transcribed and translated into English These data were grouped under two areas

including problems that students find most difficult when they do English short-

answer listening comprehension questions and suggested solutions, which served to

answer the research questions

Summary

The chapter has presented the methods of the present study Briefly, the study was conducted among forty tenth grade students at Hung Yen high school The data were collected within one day by two instruments: questionnaires and semi-structured interviews After that, they were analyzed carefully to seek out the answers to the research question

The findings will be demonstrated in the following chapter, Chapter Three: Findings and Discussion

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

This chapter presents, compares and contrasts the data collected from the two different sources so that the research question could be satisfactorily addressed Besides, the discussion of the findings is enclosed to highlight the similarities and differences between those of the present study and existing research in the field

3.1 Data from the questionnaires

3.1.1 Question number 1

With the first question, the respondents were asked to show the frequency of problems by rating the statements on the 5-point Likert scale that ranged from 1 = Never, 2 = Rarely, 3 = Sometimes, 4 = Often, to 5 = Always Those barriers were categorized into 4 following groups, as Yagang (1994) recommended

3.1.1.1 Problems related to the message

Factual data on the message-related barriers were collected thanks to the students‟ responses to the first six statements and were illustrated in the following chart

a Problems pertaining to vocabulary

As seen, up to 52.5% of the students reported that they always had problems with unfamiliar words in the listening passage Another 35% admitted frequently having

this difficulty while the rest 12.5% ranked this barrier at the level of Sometimes

It was remarked that the number of students choosing Always and Often made up a hefty percentage (87.5%) together whilst there was not any choice for Never and

Rarely The contrastive figures suggested that students could hardly avoid limited

vocabulary problems when they coped with short answer questions

Many previous researchers reached a consensus that vocabulary was a major problem impeding students‟ listening comprehension generally (Muhammad Naeem Butt, 2010; Underwood, 1989 and Wu, 2013) Findings from the present study make

it clear that unknown words are the most common problems to the students when they have to do short answer questions in the listening task In Trinh‟s research (2008), he explained that listeners may think that meaning resides within the unfamiliar word, so once facing a new word, they tend to find out the meaning rather than infer it from the context (Hasan, 2000) This is in line with Underwood‟s (1989) explanation that unknown words might cause students to stop listening to think about the meaning of the words, resulting in their missing the next part of the speech

b Problems pertaining to grammar

It can be seen clearly that the number of students choosing Always for problems with complex grammatical structure of the message was 27.5%, almost half less than the corresponding figure for vocabulary obstacle, but still far surpassing those

figures of the other four difficulties Meanwhile the number of people choosing

Often for the two first barriers was the same, standing at 35% Another 30% of the

students sometimes had grammatical problems meanwhile a modest 7.5% ranked

this barrier as Rarely, leaving no percent for Never These facts revealed that

grammatical points were the second biggest drawbacks of the students in the message-related problem group

According to Yagang (1994), obstacle pertaining to grammar could be attributed to the fact that in spoken language, ungrammatical structure is usually used due to the nervousness and hesitation of the speakers Consequently, they often omit parts of a sentence or add something redundant, resulting in students‟ difficulty in understanding the message

c Problems pertaining to the length of a spoken text

It‟s obvious from the chart that a hefty percentage (73%) of the participants sometimes faced difficulties caused by long spoken texts meanwhile the next 15% claimed that they often encountered this barrier The findings confirmed to Ur‟s assertion (1984) that the difficulty in listening comprehension was partly due to the length of the listening text itself which bored listeners and distracted their concentration

However, the length of a message seemed not to be a serious problem to the participants in the current study because only 2% of the participants said that they always confronted this difficulty in comparison with 10% of them reporting that they rarely had this problem

d Problems pertaining to unfamiliar topics

As can be seen from the chart, the biggest percentage of the students (60%) reported that they rarely had problems with unfamiliar topics Meanwhile, the number of

people choosing Often accounted for 22.5%, followed by the percentage of students

sometimes (12.5%) and always (5%) suffered from this drawback

These findings contradicted with Hamouda‟s claim that unfamiliar topic hindered the listening comprehension of the majority of the students (Hamouda, 2013) This could be due to the fact that the two studies were conducted on different subjects Hamouda‟s research investigated first year English major students, so the listening material may deal with almost any area of life, from street gossip, proverbs, everyday conversation, new products to unfamiliar situations to the

students (Hamouda, 2012) In comparison, the current study aimed at 10th graders

at a local school where the theme-based textbook is popularly used Hence, the listening passages are somehow related to the topic of the unit, making it less

problematic to the students

e Problems pertaining to the use of reduced forms

Hamouda (2012), explained that:

Reduction can be phonological (“Djedoit?” for “Did you do it?”), morphological (contractions like “I’ll ”, syntactic (elliptical forms like the answer to “When is the paper due?” “Next Monday.”), or pragmatic (The teacher asks a question, then points to a student in the classroom and says,

“Tom! Please!”

Hamouda (2012:128)

This author also claimed that reduced forms could pose classroom students significantly difficulties, because they got familiar with full forms of the English language

However, the chart above showed that the greatest percentage (57.5%) of the participants sometimes faced this problem meanwhile the next 22.5% rarely, another 15% often and the rest 5% always had this problem These figures indicated that reduced forms were not a major problem to the subjects in the current study

f Problems pertaining to the use of signal words

The chart clearly indicated that signal words posed students the least difficulties The majority of the students (47.5%) rarely had this problem, another 37.5% said

never and the rest modest 15% was for those choosing Always (2%), Often (5%) and Sometimes (8%)

By comparison, these figures were inconsistent with Hamouda‟s (2013) findings that many listeners (26.7% often, 40% always) in the study failed to recognize

signal words A quick survey on several listening passages which engage students

in doing short answer questions in the textbook showed that most of the signal words used in the message were “then”, “but”, “for example”, “also”, “however”, which according to Hamouda (2013) were comparatively evident to students This fact may help to explain why there exist contrastive findings in the two aforementioned studies

3.1.1.2 Problems related to the speaker

The second chart illustrated students‟ responses to the statements from seven to thirteen in the questionnaire

a Problems pertaining to hesitations

Chart 2 proved that hesitations were not a big problem to students when they did listening comprehension questions in the textbook Slightly more than two thirds of the students rarely or never encountered this problem with the figures of 35% for the former and 32.5% for the latter The number of people who sometimes had this difficulty accounted for 32.5% whilst there was no percentage for the students

choosing Always and Often