An investigation into the first year english majors difficulties in efl listening comprehension and recommendations

As a result, many English majors have problems in listening comprehension, especially the first-year students.. LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Students’ listening activities in classroom Table

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY Nº 2

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NGUYEN THI THU HUYEN

AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE FIRST-YEAR ENGLISH MAJORS’ DIFFICULTIES IN EFL LISTENING COMPREHENSION AND

RECOMMENDATIONS

(GRADUATION PAPER SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS

OF THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF ARTS IN ENGLISH)

SUPERVISOR: TA THI THANH HOA, M.A

Hanoi, May 2013

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS For the completion of this thesis, I have received great assistance and support from many people without whom the work could not have been fulfilled

First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere thanks to Mrs Ta Thi Thanh Hoa, M.A., my supervisor This thesis could have probably not completed without her patient, enthusiastic and instructive supervision and encouragement

I also would like to show my profound gratitude to all the lecturers at Hanoi Hanoi Pedagogical University N0.2, especially the lecturers in the Foreign Language Faculty for tirelessly devoting time and efforts to enrich, broaden and deepen my knowledge over the past four years

My special thanks go as well as to the Foreign Languages Department of Hanoi Pedagogical University N0.2 for giving me the opportunity and permission

to implement this report

I am particularly grateful to the first-year English majors coming from course

38 of Foreign Language Faculty, Hanoi Pedagogical University N0.2 who help me

a lot in completing the survey so that I can get the data for my research

I cannot help fully expressing my gratitude to all people that direct and indirect support me to accomplish my thesis in time My thesis may still have many shortcomings

Last but not least, I owe a debt of gratitude to my beloved family, for their whole-hearted encouragement and endless support

ABSTRACT Listening skill is one of the most important skills to the learners of English Apart from speaking skill, listening is key skill used in communication Therefore, it is a compulsory subject for the first three-year English majors at Hanoi Pedagogical University N0.2 (HPU2)

However, listening comprehension has been considered the most difficult of the four language skills It requires a long training process As a result, many English majors have problems in listening comprehension, especially the first-year students It is often harder for the beginners to listen because they lack of experience and don’t have appropriate learning methods Therefore, this research entails studying difficulties in learning to listen to English faced by students as well as causes of these difficulties and conducting a survey for the reasons Based

on the results of the survey, the difficulties and causes have been found Solutions

to the problems have been suggested

It is hoped that this study will make contribution to solving some of the existing problems of inadequate listening competence of the English majors at HPU2

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP Title: An investigation into the first-year English majors’ difficulties in EFL

listening comprehension and recommendations

(Graduation paper submitted in partial fulfillment of The Degree of Bachelor of Arts in English)

I certify that no part of this research has been copied or reproduced from any other person’s work without acknowledgements and that the report is originally written by me under strict guidance from my supervisor

Dated submitted: May 2013

Student Supervisor

Nguyen Thi Thu Huyen Ta Thi Thanh Hoa, M.A

LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Students’ listening activities in classroom

Table 2: Students’ pre-listening activities

Table 3: Students’ ways to deal with new words

Table 4: Problems from listeners

Table 5: Problems from listening materials

Table 6: Listening strategies to English of students at HPU2

Table 7: Students' expectation of their teachers' teaching techniques

LIST OF CHARTS

Chart 1 and 2: Students’ attitudes towards listening skill

Chart 3: Students’ pronunciation in listening

Chart 4: Students’ attitudes towards speed of speakers

Pie chart 1: Students’ habits of learning to listen outside class

Pie chart 2: Students’ while listening activities

Pie chart 3: Students' post-listening activities

Pie chart 4: Students' vocabulary in listening

Pie chart 5: Students' attitudes towards unfamiliar and various accents Pie chart 6: Effect of hesitation on students in listening

Pie chart 7: Effect of features of spoken language on listening

Pie chart 8: Students' attitudes towards noise in listening

LIST OF ABBREVIATION

HPU2: Hanoi Pedagogical University Number 2

EFL: English as Foreign Language

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i

ABSTRACT iii

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS vi

PART ONE: INTRODUCTION 1

I RATIONALE 1

II RESEARCH PRESUPPOSITION 2

III RESEARCH OBJECTIVES 2

IV RESEARCH SCOPE 3

V RESEARCH TASKS 3

VI RESEARCH METHODS 3

VII SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PROPOSED RESEARCH 4

VIII DESIGN OF THE RESEARCH WORK 4

PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT 6

CHAPTER ONE: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 6

1.1 Literature review in brief 6

1.2 Theoretical background of listening comprehension 7

1.2.1 The general concepts of listening comprehension 7

1.2.2 Classification of listening comprehension 9

1.2.2.1 Real-life listening 10

1.2.2.1.1 Casual listening 11

1.2.2.1.2 Focused listening 12

1.2.2.2 Classroom listening 12

1.2.2.2.1 Intensive listening 12

1.2.2.2.2 Extensive listening 12

1.2.3 Process of listening comprehension 13

1.2.3.1 Bottom-up processing 13

1.2.3.2 Top-down processing 14

1.2.3.3 Interactive processing 14

1.2.4 Factors affecting listening comprehension 15

1.2.4.1 The listeners 16

1.2.4.1.1 The listeners’ background knowledge 16

1.2.4.1.2 The listeners’ linguistic knowledge 17

1.2.4.1.3 Listeners’ ability to concentrate 18

1.2.4.2 The speakers 18

1.2.4.2.1 Different accents 18

1.2.4.2.2 Speed of speakers 19

1.2.4.2.3 Hesitations 19

1.2.4.3 Listening materials 19

1.2.4.4 Physical settings 20

1.2.4.5 Features of spoken language 20

1.2.5 Students’ listening activities 21

1.2.5.1 Students’ activities in pre-listening stage 21

1.2.5.2 Students’ activities in while-listening stage 22

1.2.5.3 Students’ activities in post-listening stage 23

1.2.6 Potential problems in learning to listen to English 24

CHAPTER TWO: INVESTIGATION INTO COMMON PROBLEMS OF LISTENING COMPREHENSION 26

2.1 Survey 26

2.1.1 Purpose of the survey 26

2.1.2 Participants 26

2.1.3 Setting of the survey 27

2.1.4 Type of the survey 27

2.1.5 Administration of the try-out 2.1.5.1 Preparations of the try-out 2.1.5.2 Try-out 2.1.6 Research methods 28

2.1.6.1 Data collection instruments 28

2.1.6.2 Data analysis methods 28

2.2 Data analysis 29

2.2.1 Students’ attitudes towards EFL listening 29

2.2.2 Students’ learning habit of listening outside classroom and in classroom 30

2.2.2.1 Outside classroom 30

2.2.2.2 In classroom 31

2.2.3 Students’ activities in three stages of listening: pre, while and post

listening 31

2.2.3.1 Students’ pre –listening activities 31

2.2.3.2 Students’ while listening activities 32

2.2.3.3 Students’ post-listening activities 32

2.2.4 Students’ problems in listening comprehension 33

2.2.4.1 Problems from the listeners 33

2.2.4.2 Problems from the speakers 38

2.2.4.4 Problems from listening materials 41

2.2.4.5 Problems from physical settings 42

2.2.5 Listening strategies of fresh students at HPU2 43

2.2.6 Students’ expectation of their teachers’ techniques 43

2.3 Discussion of major findings 44

2.3.1 Difficulties of the first year majors at HPU2 in learning to listen to English and causes 44

2.3.1.1 Students’ limited vocabulary 45

2.3.1.2 Students’ incorrect pronunciation 45

2.3.1.3 Lack of control of speaking speed 45

2.3.1.4 Listening unfamiliar and different accents 46

2.3.1.5 Other problems 46

CHAPTER THREE: MAJORS SOLUTIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’ LISTENING COMPREHENSION 49

3.1 Improving the students’ linguistic knowledge 49

3.1.1 Enriching vocabulary 49

3.1.2 Improving Pronunciation 50

3.1.3 Getting used to different accents 51

3.2 Applying listening strategies 51

3.2.1 Using interactive model 3.2.2 Predicting the content of the spoken text by signals 52

3.2.3 Identifying main ideas based on signals 53

3.2.4 Taking notes of the main ideas 54

3.2.5 Guessing vocabulary based on context 56

3.2.6 Determining the relationships of ideas 57

3.2.7 Mastering the features of spoken language

PART THREE: CONCLUSION 59

III.1 The achievement of the study 59

III.2 Limitations of the research 59

REFERENCES 60

PART ONE INTRODUCTION

I RATIONALE

It cannot be denied that English language in the whole world has become more and more important It is considered the international means of communication in many fields of our life These days, the English language has become the global language It is the mother tongue of many countries over the world Besides, a number of countries use it as a second language In fact, English

is the native language of more than 350 million people and it is spoken more than any other languages It is the international language of different fields such as business, politics, science, technology, banking, tourism and others Therefore, the demand for learning English is very great In Vietnam as well as in other countries, there is a greater and greater need to learn English, from young to old, and from male to female alike It cannot be denied that English plays a vital role in Vietnam nowadays Therefore, English is being taught at every educational level It has become a compulsory subject in most schools

In order to acquire good knowledge of English, we must master four basic language skills namely listening, speaking, reading and writing in which listening

is the most important and challenging skill Listening plays a crucial role in daily life People listen for different purposes such as entertainment, academic purposes

or obtaining necessary information As for foreign language learning, listening is

of paramount importance since it provides the language input (Rost, 1994) Without understanding input appropriately, learning simply cannot get any improvement Apart from speaking skill, listening is a key skill used in communication Listening skill is very important because unless you are able to hear, you cannot understand what others mean, so you do not know how to reply This means that only when you can understand, you can speak Therefore, without comprehending spoken input, no communication can be achieved (Cross, 1998)

Despite the fact that listening is an important skill, language learners, especially those who learn English as a foreign language in a non-native setting, find it difficult to acquire good listening skills In fact, many learners of English have difficulties in listening comprehension, especially the first-year students, which leads them to the poor listening performance It is harder for the beginners

to listen well because they often lack of experience and have no appropriate learning methods Therefore, as a prospective teacher, I would like to make a contribution to the English teaching in Vietnam In addition, the research available

on EFL comprehension is still insufficient Comparing with other skills, there are fewer insights into the process of listening and the way it is learnt

For the reasons mentioned above, this study is conducted The research is an attempt to identify common problems of learning to listen to English faced by the first-year English majors at Hanoi Pedagogical University N0.2 as well as to provide some suggestions with the hope to improve listening skill Besides, I also wish to contribute to enriching the listening research which has been done so far

II RESEARCH PRESUPPOSITION

Several principle questions are raised as follows:

1) What problems of listening comprehension are most often encountered by the first-year English majors at Hanoi Pedagogical University N0.2?

2) What are the possible causes of the first-year English majors’ difficulties in acquiring listening skill?

3) What techniques should students apply in improving the effectiveness of teaching and learning listening comprehension?

III RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

The study is aimed at the following goals:

1) To find out the most common difficulties in learning listening comprehension encountered by the first-year English majors at Hanoi Pedagogical University N0.2 2) To identify the causes of the problems of listening comprehension faced by the first-year English majors at Hanoi Pedagogical University N0.2

3) To provide some suggested solutions to minimize the difficulties and improve efficiency in listening comprehension

IV RESEARCH SCOPE

Within this study, the researcher only focuses on the first-year English majors

at Hanoi Pedagogical University N0.2 to investigate the troubles that students at this class usually encounter and then give some proposals to overcome discovered difficulties and to improve students’ listening ability

The population involved in the study is fifty English majors of Course 38 of Faculty

of Foreign Languages at Hanoi Pedagogical University N0.2

V RESEARCH TASKS

The study involves fulfilling the following tasks:

1) To study the definition, process of listening comprehension, classification

of listening comprehension, factors affecting listening comprehension, students’ listening activities as well as potential problems in learning to listen to English 2) To investigate the most common difficulties in listening comprehension encountered by the first-year English majors and causes

3) Based on the major findings, possible suggestions to the problems are proposed to minimize the student’s difficulties and enhance effectiveness in listening comprehension

VI RESEARCH METHODS

1) Data collection

I have already collected documents from book in library and in the internet to complete this study Moreover, some of documentary which my supervisor introduced and provided are greatly useful for my research

2) Survey questionnaires

In terms of the methods, the questionnaire is designed as a means for researcher to collect data Questionnaires are more amenable to quantification, cheap and easy to answer Moreover, questionnaires are considered more reliable way since they are anonymous and this encourages greater honesty Questionnaires included closed and open-ended questions

The questionnaire is given to students of the first-year English majors with the hope to find out their attitudes towards their listening skill and their difficulties in listening to English as well as their expectations to their teachers As they are in their first academic year, they often experience such problems It is stage that students should be equipped with variety of techniques right from their early listening With appropriate strategies, they will have built up their listening skill by the time

3) Data analysis

Based on the results of the survey, data analysis method is also used for the research Data gathered from responses of the students to given questionnaires were sorted and analyzed statistically to get the answers for the given research questions VII SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PROPOSED RESEARCH

Difficulties in any language teaching and learning, particular in English as a foreign language, are sometimes predictable and sometimes unpredictable It is, therefore, essential for teachers to have better treatment to anticipate difficulties After the research, it is hoped that the result will be useful:

1) For learners of English, the result of this study helps to work out the common problems face by fresh students and to provide some ways to overcome these difficulties and improve their listening skill- one of the most difficult skills 2) For teachers of English, the findings of this study will give valuable and useful information on problems and proposals to the problems so that they can have effective methods of teaching listening comprehension

This study is also beneficial to anyone who is interested in listening comprehension VIII DESIGN OF THE RESEARCH WORK

The research work has three main parts, namely: Introduction, Development and Conclusion The part “Development” consists three chapters

Chapter 1 is entitled “Theoretical background” It includes two sections Section one presents literature review in brief The second one deals with things related to the listening comprehension such as definition, classification, process and stages in listening comprehension as well as factors affecting the process of listening comprehension

Chapter 2 is named “An investigation into the first-year English majors’ difficulties in listening comprehension” It has three sections Section one is devoted to the survey which focuses on the methods used to gather and analyze data and describes the current situation of students at HPU2 The second section presents data analysis based on the collected results of the survey The last section makes discussion of some common problems faced by students and possible causes

of these problems

Chapter 3 is entitled “Major solutions and recommendations to improve students’ listening comprehension” It provides some recommendations for improvement of the listening comprehension

PART TWO DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER ONE THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

1.1 Literature review in brief

The issues of teaching and learning the listening skill have been of great concern among a number of researchers There have been many researchers who studied listening over the world such as Anderson and Lynch, Mary Underwood, Flowerdew and Miller, Yagang, Penny Ur, and Hasan and so on Actually, listening plays an important role in second language instruction for several reasons

(Rost, 1994) In listening (1988), Anne Anderson and Tony Lynch give an

alternative view of listening: listening is not passive language skill, but active and

the listener acts as active model builder In the book Language, culture and

cirriculum, Hasan (2000) points out that the learner’s perception of their listening

problems and strategies can affect their comprehension both positively and negatively According to Yagang (1994), the problems in listening are accompanied with the four following factors: the message, the speaker, the listener

and the physical setting Mary Underwood in Teaching Listening (1989) gives a

clear description of the features of spoken language In additions, she also

mentions potential problems in learning to listen to English In Assessing listening,

Gary Buck (2001) mainly focuses his attention on the assessment of listening, it covers virtually all aspects of second language listening research and aims not only

at language testers, but it is also suitable and accessible to researchers and

language instructors as well David Nunan in Practical English language teaching:

listening deals with techniques of teaching listening in general and teaching

listening for different learners’ level In terms of recommendation, in Listening

strategy guide, Michael Berman (2003) introduces some listening strategies to

improve the effectiveness in listening

The research available on English listening comprehension as the foreign language is still insufficient Comparing with other skills, Goh (1997) say that

“there are fewer insights into the process of listening and the way it is learnt” Similarly, Richard (1985) states that: “there is little direct research on second language listening comprehension” As for that, I am doing this research not only to help students in our university with better listening but also to make a considerable contribution to enriching the listening research which has been done so far

1.2 Theoretical background of listening comprehension

In this chapter, I would like to provide a theoretical background to the present study to help students know more and deeply about the listening comprehension It

is composed of five sections The first section presents various ways of defining listening The second section is about classification of listening comprehension The next section focuses on listening comprehension processing The fourth section is designed to look at the factors that make listening difficult The coming section mentions students’ activities in three stages of a listening lesson The last one deals with potential problems in listening comprehension

1.2.1 The general concepts of listening comprehension

It is considered that listening comprehension is a fundamental and important skill in language learning It is also a significant and essential area of development

in a native language as well as in a foreign language; therefore, there have been numerous definitions of listening comprehension which present different views of scholars toward the concept

There are two influential views: traditional view and alternative view (Listening, 1988)

Traditional views considered listening, alongside reading skill, as a passive language skill while speaking and writing were active skills Learners play a passive role in the listening learning process Listeners were thought of as human tape recorders: they took in a bit of information, stored it in a sort of medium-term memory and used it in much the same way as a tape recorder In other words, they just listen to the messages, record and understand the meaning of the speaker’s utterances without paying sufficient attention to such factors as context, background knowledge of the speakers as well as intentions, attitudes, implications and other

shades of meaning For this perception, teaching listening, in the traditional way, is thought as teaching listening for sounds, not for meaning Therefore, Anderson and Lynch criticized “this view represents an inappropriate and inadequate view of the listening process” (Listening, 1988) This notion is not a tenable one

Until recently, the view on the concept of listening comprehension has been changed and replaced with alternative view However, there exist different points

of view about listening comprehension defined by various researchers

Alternative view, according to Anderson and Lynch, in contrast with traditional view, considers the listener as an active model builder Listening is really a receptive skill and the role of the listener is no longer passive but active Therefore, the role of the successful listeners has to be thought of as an active one

In the listening process, the listeners keep an important part to play in the process

by activating various types of knowledge and by applying what he knows to what

he hears and trying to understand what the speakers mean Or in other way, this kind of listener could combine the new information in what he has just heard with his previous knowledge and experience to reach full comprehension of what had been heard (spoken text) Both researchers agreed with this view, which emphasizes the active interpretation and integration of incoming information with prior knowledge and experience Other scholars supported this view as well

Buck (2001) describes listening comprehension as “Listening comprehension is

an active process of constructing meaning and this is done by applying knowledge to the incoming sound” in which “number of different types of knowledge are involved: both linguistic knowledge and non-linguistic knowledge”

O’Malley and Chamot (1989) make a conclusion that “Listening comprehension

is an active and conscious process in which the listener constructs meaning by using cues from contextual information and existing knowledge, while relying upon multiple strategic resources to fulfill the task requirement”

According to Richards and Schmidt (2002), “Listening comprehension is the process of understanding speech in a first or second language The study of listening comprehension in second language learning focuses on the role of individual linguistic

units e.g., phonemes, words, grammatical structures as well as the role of the listener’s expectation, the situation and context, background knowledge and topic”

Among the various definitions, a representative one is propounded by Clark and Clark (1997) They give both a narrow and broad definition Comprehension has two common senses In it narrow sense it denotes the mental process by which listeners take in the sound uttered by a speaker and use them to construct an interpretation of what they think the speaker tended to convey…comprehension in its broad sense, however, rarely ends here, for listeners normally put the interpretation they have built to work”

Rubin (1995) gave a quite clear definition of listening comprehension that

“Listening is conceived of as an active process in which listeners select and interpret information which come from auditory and visual clues in order to define what is going on and what the speakers are trying to express”

Listening comprehension becomes an active skill in which learners keep a positive role of attending in what have been heard, treat, understand and interpret the information so that they may respond to this information immediately or remember the message to respond at a later time This reflects exactly that listening comprehension process consists of four steps: receiving-understand-assess-respond

in sequence given by Steil, Barker and Wakson (1983) Only when listener can respond, listening comprehension process is completed

In conclusion, listening comprehension is not a passive but active and conscious process in which listeners construct and convey the meaning by using not only the linguistic clues but also their non-linguistic Linguistic knowledge is

of different types, containing such important types as phonology, lexis syntax, semantics and discourse structure The non-linguistic knowledge used in comprehension is knowledge about the topic, the situation and context, background knowledge and experience

1.2.2 Classification of listening comprehension

In the view of Shelagh Rixon (1986), listening can be classified into two types: real-life listening and classroom listening

1.2.2.1 Real-life listening

Listening plays a fundamental role not only in the classroom but in daily lives

as well Of course, every day you listen to a variety of different things Learners use listening skill in many of situations in real-life for a range of purposes such as entertainment, academic purposes or obtaining necessary information Obviously, there is a big gap between listening activities in the classroom and actual listening

in real-life Listening materials which is used by learners to study are very grammatical and controlled speed, with perfect voice tone, accent and correct grammar On the other hand, real-life listening refers to real-life conversation performed by speakers who have different accents, voice tones and speed without

or less paying attention to grammar The language used in real-life listening is often colloquial with full of slang or idioms

In Teaching Listening Comprehension (1992), Penny Ur states that there are plenty of different types of listening used in real-life situations Following is a list

of listening types in real-life suggested by Penny Ur:

- Listening to the news/ weather forecast/ sport report etc on the radio

- Discussing work/ current problems with family or colleagues

- Making arrangements/ exchange news etc with acquaintances

- Chatting at a party

- Attending a lesson/ seminar

- Being interviewed/ interviewing

- Watching a film/ theatre show/ television program

- Hearing a speech/ lecture

- Being tested orally in a subject of a study and so on

According to Penny Ur (1992), “there is a distinction between formal speech or

“spoken prose” and the informal speech use in most spontaneous conversation” In his view, informal speech is usually both spontaneous and colloquial in character; formal speech is characteristically neither There are some basic differences between formal speech and informal such as redundancy, noise, colloquial language and auditory character (Teaching listening comprehension, 1992)

Penny Ur also indicates that there is a distinct difference between the auditory effect of a piece of spoken prose and that of informal conversation The former is characterized by a fairly even pace, volume and pitch Spontaneous conversation,

on the other hand, is jerky, has frequent pauses and overlaps, goes intermittently faster and slower, louder and softer, higher and lower Hesitations, interruptions, exclamations, emotional reactions of surprise, irritation or amusement, which are liable to occur in natural dialogues, are bound to cause an uneven and constantly changing rhythm of speech The overall effect of all this is perhaps more dramatic and interesting than that of formal speech, but this does not mean that it is, all in all, more comprehension or easier to listen to

To summarize, we may say that most but not all of our real-life listening activity is characterized by the following features:

- We listen for a purpose and with certain expectations

- We make an immediate response to what we hear

- We see the person we are listening to

- There are some visual or environmental clues as to the meaning of what is heard

- Stretches of heard discourse come in short chunks

- Most heard discourse is spontaneous and therefore differs from formal spoken prose in the amount of redundancy, noise and colloquialisms, and in its auditory character

Sometimes particular situations may lack one or more of these characteristics- when watching television we are not normally expected to respond, when listening

to a lecture we may have to hear an uninterrupted speech for a very long time indeed- but it is only very rarely that none of them is present at all

According to Adrian Doff (1995), there are two types of real-life listening: casual listening and focused listening

1.2.2.1.1 Casual listening

Casual listening refers to listening to something with no particular purpose and often without much concentration or we are listening to something without

some ideas what we are going to hear In daily life we often meet this kind of listening such as listening to music while studying or listening to radio television while we do something else Thus we may not remember much of what we hear or there may be nothing in your mind (Adrian, 1995)

1.2.2.1.2 Focused listening

In contrast, focused listening is when we listen to something for a particular purpose to obtain necessary information In this case, we often listen with much attention but we do not listen to everything we hear with equal concentration- we often listen for the key points or for particular information (Adrian, 1995)

to grasp information in detail in their effort to do exercises or other activities The passage should be short so that it helps listeners fell easy, interesting and encouraging Therefore, they often listen with great concentration

is an activity in which listeners are not asked to do language work on what they hear Therefore these types of listening allow learners to listen for pleasure without any pressure Further more, the language used in this sort of listening is often within the listeners’ current ability so that students find it interesting when listening and feel satisfied as they understand the passage well This contributes to motivating them to enhance their listening skill

1.2.3 Process of listening comprehension

Besides the controversies over the definition of listening comprehension, there also exist the concerns about the process of listening comprehension Listening comprehension is regarded theoretically as an active process in which individuals concentrate on selected aspects of aural input, form meaning from passages, and associate what they hear with existing knowledge

Considering how the listeners process the input, researchers have classified listening process into two types: bottom-up process and top-down process (Flowerdew and Miller, 2005)

1.2.3.1 Bottom-up processing

Bottom-up processing is the text based process in which listeners try to make sense of what we hear by focusing on the different parts: the vocabulary, the grammar or functional phrases, sound, etc (David Nunan, 1999) It is activated by the new incoming data The features of the data pass into the system through the best fitting, bottom-level schemata Schemata are hierarchically formed the most specific at the bottom to the most general at the top It acknowledges that listening

is a process of decoding the sounds, from the smallest meaningful units (phonemes) to complete texts Thus, phonemic units are decoded to construct phrases; phrases are connected to construct complete, meaningful text That is to say, meaning is arrived at as the last step in the process A chain of incoming sounds trigger schemata hierarchically organized in a listener’s mind- the phonological knowledge, the morphological knowledge, lexical and syntactical knowledge Thus the listen makes use of “his knowledge of words, syntax and grammar to work on form” in the bottom-up processing (Rubin,1994) This process

is closely associated with the listener’s linguistic knowledge However, bottom-up

processing has its weak points Understanding a text is an interactive process between the listener’s previous knowledge and the text Efficient comprehension that associates the textual material with listener’s brain does not only depend on one’s linguistic knowledge

1.2.3.2 Top-down processing

Top-down processing is explained as the process in which listeners employ both background knowledge and content schema in order to comprehend the meaning of aural 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 particular situation) In this process, the listeners combine the new information in what he has been heard with his previous knowledge and experience to reach full comprehension of what had been heard The role of this previous knowledge or background knowledge is central to the way he understands the spoken message, whether through listening or reading (Listening, 1988) Using this model helps listeners have a general view of the text

We see what is going on However, we miss a lot of details Besides, in case the listening topic is unfamiliar to listeners, he can not make use of his background knowledge to construct the meaning but depend heavily on his linguistic knowledge in comprehending Hence, only relying on top-down processing may lead to the failure of comprehension

1.2.3.3 Interactive processing

The interactive processing overcomes the disadvantages of bottom-up processing and top-down processing to augment the comprehension In the early 1980s, it was the tendency that only top-down processing was acknowledged to improve the second language in listening comprehension However, it is now more generally accepted that bottom-up and top-down processing should be combined to enhance listening comprehension Complex and simultaneous processing of background knowledge information, contextual information and linguistic information make comprehension and interpretation become easy When the content of the materials is familiar to the listener, he will employ his background

knowledge at the same time to make predictions which will be proved by the new input As opposed with this, if the listener is unfamiliar with content of the listening text and deficient in language proficiency, he can only depend on his linguistic knowledge, especially the lexical and syntactical knowledge to make sense of the information In deed, the two processes can not be separated during listening comprehension but support each other When listeners employ only one

of two processes, they will fail to understand the spoken text or lack of complete understanding It is accepted that learners should combine both bottom-up and top-down processes to enhance the effectiveness in listening comprehension In other words, listening comprehension is not either top-down or bottom-up processing, but an interactive process in which listeners integrate their prior knowledge, experience and linguistic knowledge to comprehend the text This combination of two models will bring about success in listening comprehension

From the cognitive perspective, Anderson (1983) elaborates that comprehension process consists of perception, parsing and utilization

Coakley and Wolvin (1986) suggest that listening comprehension in a second language is the process of receiving, focusing attention on, and assigning meaning

to aural stimuli It includes a listener, who brings prior knowledge of the topic, linguistic knowledge and cognitive process to the listening task, the aural text, and the interaction between the two

1.2.4 Factors affecting listening comprehension

Listening skill plays an important role in learning a foreign language, yet it is not easy to master this skill In the eyes of many learners of English, it is regarded

as the most challenging skill Many studies have been conducted aiming not only

at seeking the ways to teach the listening skill effectively but also try to answer the question which factors cause difficulties in listening comprehension

According to Yagang (1994), the problems in listening are accompanied with the four following factors: the listeners, the speakers, the messages and the physical settings Brown and Yule (1983) suggest that “there are four main groups

of factors, which can cause difficulty in listening These are speakers (that includes the number of speakers, the speakers’ speech, and the speakers’ accents), the

listeners (this consists of the role of listener, the level of response required and the listeners’ interest in the subject), and the content (vocabulary, grammar, and information structure and background knowledge), and support (whether there are pictures, diagrams visual aids…)” Further more, a numbers of research have been carried out to pick out the problem in listening The problems are believed to cause

by the speech rate, vocabulary and pronunciation (Higgins, 1995) As Flowerdew and Miller (1996) assume that the problems of the students were for the speed of delivery, new terminology and concept, difficulties in focusing and problems related to the physical environment According to Buck (2001), listeners’ linguistic competence, listening task characteristics and interaction between listeners and exercises are factors causing problems in listening comprehension

In summary, there are a number of factors that affect listening comprehension

1.2.4.1 The listeners

1.2.4.1.1 The listeners’ background knowledge

Background knowledge of the listeners is one of the factors affecting the listening performance In order to improve listening comprehension skill, listeners should pay attention to both linguistic factors and the system of the foreign culture Underwood (1989) notices that students whose the stress and intonation which occur in English are familiar have less trouble than those whose own language is based on different rhythms and tones She also pointed out that students whose culture and education includes a strong storytelling and oral communication tradition are generally better at listening than those from a reading and book-bases culture and educational background Wardhaugh (1986) states that language and culture have inseparable relationship We cannot understand and evaluate a language without cultural factor In some cases, it is very difficult to understand the inside meaning of the text if learners from different cultures Therefore, if learners apply culture system, customs and habits of source language to target language for interpretation, they will misunderstand the message Without background knowledge of the culture of a second language, which is involved in

what they are to hear, listeners will have to cope with many obstacles (Anderson and Lynch, 1988) Therefore, the cultural background of listeners plays an important role to comprehend the listening text

In Teaching Listening Comprehension, Penny Ur (1992) realizes that many students actually did not perceive certain English sounds with any accuracy because these sounds did not exist in their mother tongue The sound / /as in

“think” for example does not exist in French; therefore a native French speaker may not notice at first that it occurs in English and he may simply assimilate it to the nearest sound familiar /s/ or /f/

Thus, listeners who have different background knowledge such as culture and education have to face many troubles in learning to listen in English

1.2.4.1.2 The listeners’ linguistic knowledge

The listener’s linguistic can be understood as listeners’ vocabulary and pronunciation The success of listening performance may be mainly determined by the listeners’ competence If the listeners are good at pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary, they will be better at listening skill than those who are lack of vocabulary and have problems with pronunciation

One difficulty in listening comprehension is the limitation of vocabulary Limited vocabulary is actually a language barrier for learners to master this skill New words prevent students from incomplete comprehension In listening, choice of vocabulary is in the hands of the speaker, not the listener In teaching listening, Mary Underwood (1989) indicates that learners cannot catch the words or phrases they are going to hear because of vocabulary limitation Listeners’ focus may also be interrupted when they find some unknown words It makes listeners incapable of grasping the meaning of the message Besides, on facing a new word, listeners tend to spend much time finding out the meaning of the word than infer it from the context and thus making them miss the next part of the speech Listeners, therefore, need to develop skill of keeping up with the speaker and skill of identifying the main points without understanding all the new words when listening

Another reason resulting in listening problems is incorrect pronunciation In fact, many learners even have trouble in recognizing familiar words or phrases due

to wrong pronunciation The reason for this problem is wrong pronunciation When listeners pronounce some words incorrectly, obviously, they can not hear the correct sound because it is pronounced in a different way Hence, learners may get confused in recognizing the word “sit” or “seat”, “food” or “foot”, “ship” or

“sheep” Moreover, the listeners often fail to listen to the joining sounds such as

“come in”, “your eyes”, they may think this is a new word that they have never known Another reason why sounds may be misheard is that the learners are not used to the stress and intonation pattern of English words

1.2.4.1.3 Listeners’ ability to concentrate

Inability to concentrate can be caused by a number of things, but in listening work it is a major problem, because even the shortest break in attention can seriously impair comprehension (Mary Underwood, 1989) Students will pay more attention if they find the topic interesting But sometimes, even when the topic is interesting, students simply find listening work very tiring, because they make an enormous effort

to follow what they hear word by word Outside factors may make listeners hard to concentrate, for example poor recording or unsuitable classrooms with poor acoustics

In summary, to master the listening skill, learners must improve their vocabulary, pronunciation, ability to concentrate and interpretation

1.2.4.2 The speakers

Another factor relating to listening result is from the speakers Problems such

as different accents, speed of speakers, hesitation and linguistic features are considered to cause difficulty in listening comprehension

1.2.4.2.1 Different accents

Variety of accents can causes problems for students in listening comprehension since they do not have much exposure to different accents Accents are related to pronunciation, stress, rhythm and intonation patterns Yagang (1994) asserts that the listeners have tendency to get familiar with the accents which they mostly often If listeners are exposed to standard British or American accents, they will face difficulty in understanding other accents For instance, if learners listen to

French people speaking English, they will feel hard to understand him or her as they speak English in a native French intonation For this problem, students need much more exposing to various kinds of accents

1.2.4.2.2 Speed of speakers

Many English language learners believe that the greatest difficulty with listening comprehension is that the listeners can not control how quickly a speaker speaks They feel that the utterances disappear as it were before they can sort them out Clearly, in many situations, listeners are not able to get things repeated such as when they listen to the radio or watch television If the speakers say too fast, listeners can not keep up with the speed And when they try to find out the meaning of what they have just heard, they miss the next information Or they simply ignore a whole chunk because they can not find the meaning quickly enough Either way, they fail to listen

1.2.4.2.3 Hesitations

Hesitation often occurs during ordinary conversation Long gaps in speech are

often filled with sounds/ expressions such as er, erm, uhm, ah, well, I see simply to

avoid long silences, which are generally thought to be rather embarrassing in English conversations The pauses which occur in speech give the listeners time to think about what has just been said and to relate it to what has gone before Mary Underwood (1989) showed that hesitation of speakers during conversation can make the utterances interrupted And this may prevent learners from incomplete comprehension

1.2.4.3 Listening materials

Some other problems of learning to listen to English have arisen from messages Unfamiliar topics often bring about a problem in listening comprehension The listening material may contain a variety of fields in life These conversations may include words, phrases or terms unfamiliar to listeners They are totally strange to the topic so it is hard to listen when the message is full of terminology On the contrary, if the topic is familiar with the listeners, they can integrate their background knowledge, experience and linguistic competence to understand the spoken text easier On the other hand, if the topic and the content of the passage are interesting, listeners will be interested in and encouraging to listening They also pay much attention to the text so they can understand better A

boring topic, in contrast, will cause listeners’ distraction, one of major problems in listening because comprehension can be seriously impaired by even the shortest break in attention (Mary Underwood, 1989) In addition, when the listening material is too long, listeners will be tired, stress and under pressure In addition, learners’ poor attention can be caused by the length of the messages The longer the passage is, the poorer the students’ concentration becomes The success of listening work depends much on the topic and the content of the passage Besides,

it is informal language used in listening material that causes a great difficulty to students Most learners of English find it difficult to deal with colloquial language

It is said to be the language of spontaneous speech This type of language is usually used a lot in everyday talk, gossip and family quarrels In fact, many learners have limited experience of English used in such situations In their lessons, they seem to be exposed to standard English or textbook language and tend to use formal language because this is what is expected when teachers and students talk to each other

1.2.4.4 Physical settings

Not only the problems come from the listener, the speaker, or the message but also come from the environment surrounding the students including noise, poor quality of tape recordings and poor equipment If the listening activity is carried out with noise around, the learners will be distracted by the noise Otherwise, the noise makes a complex of sounds instead of the solo recording played So, the best place for students to

do the listening is the laboratory room This distracts the students from listening and focusing on the task A large classroom with so many people can not ensure good quality

To some extent, all these physical settings reduce the effect of listening process

1.2.4.5 Features of spoken language

The features of spoken English are really obstacle to learners

One of the most factors causing difficulty in listening is the way in which words are pronounced There are words, which are stressed when speaking while some have no stress Thus, stress sometimes makes some words lose their clarity The phenomenon of liaison, elision, assimilation, homophone are actually terror to learners in learning to listen since the students are used to hearing each

separate word by unit in a sentence and slow stream of listening Elision is the loss

of sounds, which occurs rapid speech Assimilation is the way in which most speakers modify pronunciation to save effort Besides, they get used to the written words that organized orderly in a textbook Thus, in the stream of speech, students find it hard to recognize separate words The pronunciation of English, therefore, can cause students problems in recognition and in comprehension

Another reason why listening to English is difficult is that the listeners are not used to the rhythm and intonation patterns of the English language Penny Ur (1984) agreed that the English system of intonation and rhythm can interfere with foreign listeners’ understanding of spoken English

1.2.5 Students’ listening activities

Students’ activities in listening lesson can be divided into three stages: listening; while-listening and post-listening (Mary Underwood, 1989) Each stage has its own aims and activities

pre-1.2.5.1 Students’ activities in pre-listening stage

Pre-listening stage is the stage in which students prepare for listening tasks This activity is set up before the students hear the passage to help them get the most of what they are going to hear According to David Nunan (Practical English language teaching: listening) “Pre-listening stage is more than just an introduction

to the topic, although that aspect of it is important” It aims at helping students focus their mind on the topics by narrowing down the things that the students expect to hear and activating relevant knowledge and prior knowledge (Mary Underwood, 1989) It not only introduces listeners the topic they are going to listen but help them to get certain knowledge related to the listening as well Actually, it

is very difficult for learners to listen without being supporting any ideas of what they are about to hear Even if the sounds or the words they hear are familiar, they may still be unable to understand because they are not prepared at all about the listening text Pre-listening activity may reveal students something, not too much, about the content of the passage by mentioning some information about the topic

In this stage, students are prepared to achieve the most from the passage by predicting some of the content of what they will hear and helps them recognize the difficult word in the passage The pre-listening, therefore, is of great importance in

helping students partly understand about the content of the spoken text If the learners do the pre-listening activities well, they will deal with listening task easier Penny Ur (Teaching listening comprehension, 1984) emphasis the importance of this stage: “It would seem a good idea when presenting a listening passage in class

to give students some information about the content, situation and speakers before they actually start listening” Mary Underwood (Teaching listening, 1989) also has the same point of view “before listening, students should be turned in so that they know what to expect, both in general and particular tasks.”

In this stage, students may know something related to topic through doing such activities as reading something relevant; students looking at pictures; discussion of the topic or situation; a question and answer session, written exercise; following the instructions for while-listening activity; consideration of how the while-listening activity will be done (Underwood, 1989) Selecting which activity

to use depends on a lot of such factors as: the time available, the material available, the ability of the class, the students and the teacher’s interest, the nature and content of the listening text (Mary Underwood, 1989)

1.2.5.2 Students’ activities in while-listening stage

While-listening stage involves activities that students are asked to do during the time they are listening to the text The purpose of this stage is to develop the students’ skill of eliciting messages from spoken language

This stage helps students to know how the language sounds in term of pronunciation, stress, rhythm, and intonation so that they can use what they hear as

a model for them to follow and practice It enables students to appreciate the differences between the pronunciation of words when spoken within utterances and

in isolations well as the relationship between written and spoken form

According to Mary Underwood, “good while listening activities help learners find their way through the listening text and build upon the expectations raised by pre-listening activities.” To be effective activities, while-listening stage should follow two criteria Firstly, they should be interesting in order to motivate students

in listening and related activities A successful while-listening stage depends mostly on the topic, the content and the length of the listening text as well as the

students’ interest The interesting activities in while-listening stage will be very helpful for the students in listening lessons because they encourage students involved in listening activities and attract their attention Secondly, while-listening activities should be things that are within the ability of most students Actually, If while-listening activities are too difficult, it will discourage students from paying attention Activities in while-listening stage, therefore, should be simple, easy to handle to provides opportunities for students who are good at listening as well as who may be less good at this skill to follow

Mary Underwood (1989) recommended various students’ activities in listening stage:

while Marking/checking items in pictures

- Multiple-choice questions

- Putting pictures in order

- Text-completion

- True/ false exercise

- Making models/arranging items in patterns

- Completing grids

1.2.5.3 Students’ activities in post-listening stage

Post-listening stage refers to activities related to a particular listening text which are done after the listening is completed Some post-listening activities are extensions of the work done at the pre-listening and while-listening stage and some relate only to the listening itself (Mary Underwood, 1989) This stage helps check whether the students have understood what they need to understand or not and whether they have completed while listening activities successfully There is a number of ways to reach this purpose: the students discuss or summarized the text

by individual or by group…moreover, post-listening stage finds out the reasons why some students have missed part of message Another purpose of this stage is

to give the students the opportunity to consider the attitude and manner of the speaker of the listening text It also aims at expanding the topics and the language

of the listening texts

1.2.6 Potential problems in learning to listen to English

Underwood (1989) offers seven conceivable causes of obstacles to efficient listening comprehension, most of which are related to what was already mention First, listeners cannot control the speed of delivery Underwood says “Many English language learners believe that the greatest difficulty with listening comprehension, as opposed to reading comprehension, is that the listener can not control how quickly a speaker speaks” (Underwood, 1989)

Second, listeners cannot always have words repeated This is a serious problem in learning 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)

Third, listeners have a limited vocabulary The speaker may choose words the listener does not know Listeners sometimes encounter an 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 or spontaneous conversations, signals are vaguer as in pauses, gestures, and increased loudness, a clear change of pitch or different intonation patterns These signals can

be easily missed especially by less proficient listeners

Fifth, listeners may lack contextual knowledge Sharing mutual knowledge and common context makes communication easier Even if listeners can understand the surface meaning of the text, they may have considerable difficulties

in comprehending the whole meaning of the passage unless they are familiar with the context Non verbal cues, such as facial expression, 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 (Mary Underwood) Concentration 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 a mount of effort to follow the meaning

Seven and last, students may have established certain learning habits such as a wish to understand every word they hear By tradition, teachers want students to understand every word they hear by repeating and pronouncing words carefully, by grading the language to suit the level by speaking slowly and so on Consequently, students tend to become worried if they fail to understand a particular word or phrase and they will be discouraged by the failure It is thus sometimes necessary

to tolerate vagueness and incompleteness of understanding

CHAPTER TWO: AN INVESTIGATION INTO COMMON PROBLEMS

OF LISTENING COMPREHENSION

The previous chapter, in general, provides an overview of the relevant literature in the field of the study This chapter presents the findings of the practical research with the first-year English majors at Hanoi Pedagogical University N0.2 It consists of two sections The first section deals with the survey questionnaire, which was designed to identify some common problems faced by first year-English major students at Hanoi Pedagogical University N0.2 The next section of this chapter presents some common difficulties and possible causes of difficulties encountered by students

2.1 Survey

As it was mentioned in chapter one, the study not only helps students of English have a deep insight into the listening comprehension but also find out the first-year majors’ difficulties in EFL listening comprehension Due to the frame work of a thesis,

to identify all the difficulties faced by the students of all educational levels is impossible Therefore, this research is only focused on common problems in EFL listening faced by the first-year English majors at Hanoi Pedagogical University N0.2

To find out the common problems encountered by those students, a survey questionnaire was conducted

2.1.1 Purpose of the survey

The overall objectives of the survey questionnaire are to explore ways employed

by students while doing their listening It also aims at finding out difficulties faced by the first-year English majors at Hanoi Pedagogical University N0.2 and then provide some recommendations to improve their listening comprehension

2.1.2 Participants

The number of participants in the survey consists of 50 majors of Course 38 of Faculty of Foreign Languages at Hanoi Pedagogical University N0.2 Their age ranged 18-19 Among these students, females are majority and males are only minority The students participating in my investigation including both students of

bachelor's degrees and pedagogical The time they have learnt English is different Most of them have been learning English for eight years Some have learnt English for eleven years Therefore, the expected English level is intermediate Listening skill is one of basic subjects in their study program They often have two listening periods per week Survey questionnaire was delivered to these students.

These students are attending listening lessons with the course book: English book given by the teachers The book provides a wide range of different listening texts and exercises with a view to helping students improve their listening skill There are two reasons for choosing the first-year English majors as the participants of the study Firstly, listening is almost ignored in both secondary and high school, where students spent seven years in English learning This leads to poor listening skill when they become majors As compared with other language skills, listening is considered the most challenging subject Therefore, low scores

in listening are unavoidable Secondly, as they are in the first-year of academic, they often suffer from problems because they lack both experience and skill Their language competence is also limited It is the stage that students should be equipped with variety of techniques right from their early listening With appropriate strategies, they will have built up their listening skill by the time

2.1.3 Setting of the survey

This study was carried out at Hanoi Pedagogical University N0.2 targeting at the first-year English students This study was carried out at mid March 2013, when they were learning their second term of the first year with 2 listening periods per week Up to time to the study, they had been studying English at the university for nearly 1 year with approximately 80 listening periods

2.1.4 Type of the survey

To collect the data, a completion test was used It involves such activities as choosing the correct answer from multiple-choice questions or answering the questions

2.1.5 Administration of the try-out

2.1.5.1 Preparation of the try-out

The teachers in charge of two classes which were intended to do the survey questionnaire were asked for permission before the try-out was carried out

2.1.5.2 Try –out

The try out was conducted on April, 5th, 2013 The students from the two classes were gathered in a room and asked to do the questionnaire as well as

possible in compliance with their own ability They were instructed carefully

before answering the questionnaire Importantly, they were reminded that the result

of the questionnaire was to serve the research and it had no influence on their study results Hence, they made their real effort to do the questionnaire without copying from the others The allocated time for twenty three questions was thirty minutes

2.1.6 Research methods

2.1.6.1 Data collection

Questionnaires are used in this study because of its advantages Using survey questionnaires allowed the researchers to collect the data easily but not taking much time to administer as other procedures Moreover, the researchers found it easy to summarize and analyze and report about the collected data because all participants answer the same questions Also, since the same questionnaires are given to all the subjects at the same time, the data are more uniform and accurate Besides, questionnaires are easily quantified because multiple-choice questions are used Finally, participants had an opportunity to express their attitudes to teaching and learning listening skill at this school Due to these advantages, questionnaires were used as a main data collection in this study

The survey questionnaires consist of 23 questions, with multiple-choice questions with an option for the participants to give their own ideas as required The survey questionnaire was used as a mean of collecting data for this study The questionnaires were given to serve following purposes: to investigate students’ learning habits of listening and to identify factors causing listening comprehension problems as well as to find out the techniques for improving listening skill

2.1.6.2 Data analysis methods

Data gathered from responses of the students in the given questionnaires were sorted and analyzed statistically to get the answers for the given research questions