Factors causing listening comprehension difficulties for grade 10 students in tran dai nghia high school

ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT FACTORS CAUSING LISTENING COMPREHENSION DIFFICULTIES FOR GRADE 10 STUDENTS IN TRAN DAI NGHIA HIGH SCHOOL... The world context together with my individual d

ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

FACTORS CAUSING LISTENING

COMPREHENSION DIFFICULTIES FOR GRADE 10 STUDENTS IN TRAN DAI

NGHIA HIGH SCHOOL

This thesis would not have been completed without the help and support of many people During my process of carrying out the study paper, I have met lots of difficulties but I have received the great support, guidance and encouragement from

my supervisor, teachers, my family and my friends

Firstly, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my supervisor, Mr Trinh Quoc Lap for his valuable guidance, enthusiastic support, and helpful advice He had

to spend much of his precious time with me

Secondly, I would like to send my sincere thanks to Mr Nguyen Thanh Tung and Mrs Pham Thi Mai Duyen for their useful feedback

Thirdly, I would like to send my gratitude to all teachers of English Department for their dedication teaching me much vital knowledge during my student time and to executive staff who gave me valued opportunity to conduct the study

Fourthly, I am grateful to 100 grade 10 students in Tran Dai Nghia high school for helping me fill the questionnaires

Finally, I wish to express my thanks to my family and my friends, who offered

me supports and advice

Thus, once again, I would like to express my great gratitude to all of you

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS iv

LIST OF TABLES v

ABSTRACT vi

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 General statement of the problem 1

1.2 Statement of the hypotheses, objectives, and research question 3

1.2.1 Hypotheses 3

1.2.2 Objectives 3

1.2.3 Research question 3

1.3 Organization of the study 3

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

2.1 Listening comprehension 5

2.2 The importance of comprehension 5

2.3 Potential factors causing listening comprehension difficulties in second language learning 6

2.3.1 The text 6

2.3.2 The listener 9

2.3.3 The speaker 13

2.3.4 The environment 14

2.4 Justification of the present study 14

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHOD 16

3.1 Research design 16

3.2 Subjects 16

3.3 Data collection instrument 16

3.4 Research procedure 17

4.2 Factors causing difficulties in listening comprehension 18

4.2.1 The speaker 19

4.2.2 The listener 20

4.2.3 The text and the environment 21

CHAPTER 5: SUMMARY AND DISCUSSIONS 23

5.1 Discussions 23

5.2 Implications 25

5.3 Limitations 26

5.4 Recommendations 27

5.5 Conclusions 27

REFERENCES 29

APPENDICES 31

Appendix 1: questionnaire (English) 31

Appendix 2: questionnaire (Vietnamese) 35

EFL: English as a foreign language

ESL: English as a Second Language

IELTS: International English Language Testing System

SLA: Second Language Acquisition

TOEFL: Test of English as a Foreign Language

Table 1: Descriptive statistics of factors causing listening comprehension difficulties

Table 2: Descriptive statistics of each factor causing listening comprehension difficulties

Table 3: The frequency of factors related to the speaker causing difficulties in listening comprehension

Table 4: The frequency of factors related to the listener causing difficulties in listening comprehension

Table 5: The frequency of factors related to the text causing difficulties in listening comprehension

Table 6: The frequency of factors related to the environment causing difficulties in listening comprehension

In this study, an attempt was made to explore the factors which cause listening

comprehension difficulties for language learners The subjects of the study were 100

grade 10 students in Tran Dai Nghia high school They all come from basic classes; no

one studies in social classes which focus much more on teaching and learning English

The required data for the study were collected by using one questionnaire Then,

descriptive analysis was employed to analyze the responses given to each item in the

questionnaires Finally, the study confirmed that 10th graders in Tran Dai Nghia high

school encountered lots of problems with their listening comprehension The study at

last identified four major factors which cause difficulties in students’ listening

comprehension These factors consisted of the text, the listener, the speaker and the

environment

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

The chapter firstly introduces the general statement of the problem Besides, the

hypotheses, the objectives, and the research question are also included At last, it provides the

organization of the present study

1.1 General statement of the problem

Vietnam has recently joined in World Trade Organization (WTO) with many

opportunities as well as many challenges The country as one of the most fascinating

destinations to tourists from all over the world has triggered an explosive interest in

English language learning and a severe demand for English studying Being able to

communicate in English – the international language - in order to integrate Vietnam

into the world becomes more important to Vietnamese people, especially to

Vietnamese students - who play the influential role in how much the country will

develop

Grasping the problem, the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) has

promulgated the renovation policy The new English textbook, which focuses on

developing listening, speaking, reading and writing skills, but not just on vocabulary

and grammar as in the past, has been introduced into all schools’ curricula Due to this

textbook, students are hoped to acquire English proficiency

However, after many years of implementing the new curriculum, the

curriculum seems to be not effective as expected In reality, many Vietnamese

students particularly encounter difficulties in using English to communicate because

among the four skills, the aural and oral are the most neglected skills Evidence which

supports this claim is the dissatisfactory listening scores of Vietnamese students in

standardized tests such as TOEFL and IELTS For instance, after at least 5 years of

studying English, many grade 10 students in Tran Dai Nghia high school, where I had

my apprenticeship, cannot understand even plain sentences that their English teachers

talk to them Therefore, in English classes, the mother tongue is used more than the

target language; which demonstrates the weakness in listening ability of students

Nevertheless, listening plays an important role in people’s life A study by Wilt

(1950), found that 45 % of communication time was spent for listening, 30 % for

speaking, 16 % for reading, and 9 % for writing According to Bulletin (1952),

listening, the fundamental language skill, is the medium through which people get a

large part of their education, their information, their understanding of the world and of

human affairs, their ideals, sense of values, and their appreciation

Moreover, listening ability plays a significant role in the development of other

skills By being able to understand people accurately, students are much more likely to

be able to reproduce accurately, refine their understanding of grammar and develop

their own vocabulary (Huang, 2009) Anderson and Lynch (1988) pointed out the

effect of listening skill on speaking skill as well They asserted that for L2 learners,

effective speaking relies on successful listening These two researchers also figured

out the influence of listening skill on reading skill and, at last, advised both native and

foreign learners that “explicit practice to improve listening skills would be advisable

and beneficial, both for its own sake and also as a support to reading skill

development” (p.18)

The globalization of the world economy and the crucial role of the listening

comprehension in communication require students to be good listeners since many of

them may need to use English for their further study or work It is a big challenge for

language teachers to help their students do so First of all, in my opinion, English

teachers need to ascertain the factors that cause difficulties in listening comprehension

for their students Being aware of these factors, teachers can help their students

overcome and get success in listening comprehension in particular and in

communication in general However, the real thing is, in Vietnam, very little attention

is paid to teaching listening lessons as well as finding students’ difficulties in listening

comprehension Some teachers think that listening is the easiest skill to teach, whereas

most students think it is the most difficult skill to tackle

The world context together with my individual desire to help high school

students improve their listening and contribute to enrich the listening research which

has been done so far, I am interested in doing a research on “factors causing listening

comprehension difficulties for grade 10 students in Tran Dai Nghia High School”

1.2 Statement of the hypotheses, objectives, and research question

1.2.1 Hypotheses

I hypothesize that four factors: the text, the listener, the speaker, and the

environment are major causes to listening comprehension difficulties for 10th graders

in Tran Dai Nghia High School

1.2.2 Objectives

The objective of the study is to identify the factors which cause listening

comprehension difficulties for grade 10 students in Tran Dai Nghia High School to

help students avoid encountering these difficulties so that they can get successful

listening comprehension

1.2.3 Research question

The study is conducted to answer the question:

Which factors cause listening comprehension difficulties for grade 10

students in Tran Dai Nghia High School?

1.3 Organization of the thesis

This thesis consists of five chapters

Chapter 1 is an introduction to general statement of the problem, the research

question, the objectives of the thesis, and some hypotheses of the researcher about the

factors causing listening comprehension difficulties for grade – 10 students in Tran

Dai Nghia High School At last, it introduces the organization of the present study

Chapter 2 is the theoretical research, literature review It presents some key terms

related to the research question like listening comprehension Besides, some findings

of previous researches related to the problem have also been presented

Chapter 3 presents a description of research methodology which consists of the

research design, the procedure, the description of subjects, the instrument, and the

description of measures employed

Chapter 4 shows the results of the study In this chapter, data collected from the

instrument will be analyzed critically through charts and tables Consequently, the

factors causing listening comprehension difficulties for grade 10 students in Tran Dai

Nghia High School will be revealed

Chapter 5 summarizes the research problem, method, results In this chapter, the

researcher discussed the results critically Next, pedagogical implications, limitations

and recommendations are presented Finally, the conclusion is also included

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter reviews literature related to the concept of listening comprehension, the

significance of comprehension, and potential factors that are claimed to affect the learners’

listening comprehension At the end of the chapter, justification of the present study is

presented

Comprehending a spoken language is a complex process in which the listener

constructs a meaning out of the information provided by the speaker (Samuels, 1984)

In the listening comprehension process, the listener has an active role in activating

many kinds of knowledge, and applying what he knows to what he hears and trying to

understand what the speaker means (Anderson & Lynch, 1988) Specifically, the

listener has to “discriminate between sounds, understand vocabulary and grammatical

structures, interpret stress and intonation, retain what was gathered in all of the above

and interpret it within the immediate as well as the larger socio-cultural context of the

utterance” (Vandergrift, 1999, p.168) According to Buck (2001), the process of

listening comprehension begins with taking an acoustic signal and then processing

that in some ways to understand the text He also claims that listening comprehension

is the result of an interaction between a number of information sources: the acoustic

input, different types of linguistic knowledge, details of the context, and general world

knowledge, etc.; and listeners use their available information, or whatever information

seems relevant to help them interpret what the speaker is saying

2.2 The importance of comprehension

Krashen (1981, as cited in Anderson & Lynch, 1988) has claimed that

comprehension is central and possibly prominent in the whole process of language

learning; and it may be at the heart of the language acquisition process Winitz (1981,

as cited in Byrnes, 1984) also believes that comprehension is important in both first

language and second language learning because of its function as the basic mechanism

through which the rules of language are internalized and its chronological production

precedence

2.3 Potential factors causing listening comprehension difficulties in second

language learning

This section summarizes the four factors including the text, the listener, the

speaker and the environment (or sometimes called the physical setting) which are

emphasized in books of foreign language teaching experience of many years, articles

about listening comprehension, and studies conducted on listening comprehension

Anderson and Lynch (1988) state that listening difficulty “can be a product of the

interaction between the text, the listener, and the context in which listening takes

place” (p.81)

2.3.1 The text

One of the main factors believed to affect listening comprehension is the text

According to Anderson and Lynch (1988), some of characteristics of language input

which may cause difficulties for L2 learners are “the content of what is said may be

fairly unpredictable; it may be abstract in nature; it may deal with a range of complex

topics, and it will probably be expressed in quite involves linguistic form” (p.46)

 Texts containing unknown words

Underwood (1989) states that unknown words in listening texts cause

difficulties which listeners may encounter in their listening For foreign language

learners, when encountering an unknown word – a suddenly drop barrier, they stop

and think about the meaning of the word; which makes them miss the next part of the

speech As a result, if listeners pause too long over one word or phrase, the meaning

of the whole speech may be lost or misinterpreted (Lowe, 1984, as cited in Joiner,

1986)

 Texts containing anaphoric terms

Samuels (1984) defines an anaphoric term as “a word used as a

substitute for a preceding word or group of words” (p.24) According to Pearson and

Johnson (1978, as cited in Samuels, 1984), anaphoric terms create difficulties for

listeners to comprehend a message The reason is to understand the anaphoric term;

one must locate and identify its referent This is very difficult because, when listening,

one cannot go back in the text to locate the referent Consequently, comprehension

will suffer

 Texts containing referring expressions

Anderson and Lynch (1988) argue that texts containing a varied range

of referring expressions are potentially problematic, even for relatively mature native

listeners To a foreign language listener, it is far more difficult to comprehend such

texts Consequently, the speed of comprehension is reduced when listeners have to

make inferences (Haviland & Clark, 1974, as cited in Buck, 2001) or, much more

seriously, comprehension is lost

 Length of texts

According to many researchers, the length of listening texts is a source

of difficulty Call (1985) claims that listening to long texts may put an additional

burden on memory, and may cause lapses in concentration As a result, listeners lose

information and comprehension For example, listening to a fifty-minute lecture,

where physical tiredness can cause listeners’ attention to wander makes them miss

parts of the talk (Anderson and Lynch, 1988) And by the time speakers have finished

a ten - minute speech, an average person has already forgotten half of what was said

(McCutcheon, Schaffer, & Wycoff, 1994) If listeners listen to too long texts, their

comprehension will be reduced considerably because they may forget lots of the

information provided To give the reason for a failure to understand long messages,

Anderson and Lynch (1988, p.9) state simply because “our mental recorder did not

have enough blank tape available to make the recording”

 Texts containing long sentences

In Call’s (1985) research, subjects found them especially difficult to

digest long utterances with embedded due to the limitations of short-term memory

 Unfamiliar – topic texts

Regarding the results of Chinese EFL students’ multiple - choice

comprehension test after they have listened to a lecture in Chiang and Dunkel’s (1992)

research, the subjects scored higher on the familiar-topic lectures than on the

unfamiliar-topic lectures

 Difficulty of texts

Anderson and Lynch (1988) claims that if learners listen to listening

materials that are so difficult as to be incomprehensible, they may be dispirited; and

these materials encourage their passive and unsuccessful listening habits

Accordingly, their comprehension suffers

 Linguistic features in texts

Yagang (1994) indicates some linguistic features of oral texts which

cause difficulties for students to understand these texts First of all, liaison (the linking

of words in speech when the second word begins with a vowel) and elision (leaving

out a sound or sounds in rapid speech) make students hard to distinguish or recognize

individual words in the stream of speech Secondly, colloquial words, expressions and

slang raise comprehension problems for students those are familiar with formal or

bookish English Thirdly, ungrammatical sentences which may be omitted some

elements or added some redundant ones are also a source of comprehension

difficulties As Buck (2001) states that spoken language consists of short phrases or

clauses not connected by any formal grammatical relationship because these ones

strung together by the coherence of the ideas Reduced and ungrammatical forms

which would be expected to hinder understanding are mentioned by Joiner (1986) as

well

 Information organization in texts

Glenn (1978, as cited in Anderson & Lynch, 1988) claims that when

events in a story are described out of chronological sequence, then it is harder to

understand that story

 Specific text types

Buck (1990) argues that students who are used to the spoken prose as in

news broadcasting and reading aloud written texts may sometimes find the natural

dialogues difficult to understand because the former one is characterized by an even

pace, volume, pitch, and intonation; meanwhile, the latter kind of listening material is

full of hesitations, pauses, and uneven intonation In other words, there are some

specific text types causing certain difficulties for listeners to understand the meaning

of texts

 Hesitation phenomena

Hesitation presents a major comprehension difficulty to non-native

listeners of spontaneous speech (Buck, 2001) In Voss’s (1979) research, 22

non-native speakers of English were asked to listen to a 210 word passage of spontaneous

speech The passage consisted of a variety of hesitation phenomena: repeats, false

starts, filled pauses and unfilled pauses Results indicated that nearly one-third of all

perception errors were connected with hesitation phenomena

 Disruption

Any disruption or flashback seems to make the information more

difficult to understand (Anderson & Lynch, 1988)

 The absence of signaling cues in texts

Jung (2003) examined the effects of discourse signaling cues on L2

learners' listening comprehension of high-level information and low-level information

in academic lectures Of the 80 Korean EFL learners, 40 learners in signaled group

listened to the lecture with discourse signaling cues, and 40 remaining learners in

nonsignaled group listened to the lecture without such cues The results indicated that

discourse signaling cues play an important role in L2 listening comprehension In

comparison with the signaled group, the nonsignaled group recalled noticeably worse

2.3.2 The listener

Listeners appear to have considerable impact on listening comprehension

Anderson and Lynch (1988, p.6) argue that understanding is not something that

happens because of what a speaker says: “the listener has a crucial 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 speaker means.” Thus, whether or not

comprehension occurs depends much on the listener

 Lack of nonverbal forms

Samuels (1984) states that when listeners do not see speakers’ body

language and facial expressions, they find it more difficult to understand what

speakers mean because the nonverbal forms of communication has an important

function as at least the verbal forms

 Lack of background knowledge

Buck (1990, p.71) states that:

It is clear that background knowledge, whether conceived as frames, scripts or schema,

is obviously important in listening comprehension… In cases where the listener’s

background knowledge for a specific event is different from the speaker, not only may

helpful top-down constraints be lacking, but there is the possibility of the listener being

led down various garden paths in an attempt to understand events in terms of

inappropriate knowledge structures

Background knowledge is very important in listening comprehension If

listeners have no knowledge relevant to the particular events being described in the

text, then it will be more difficult to understand, or could cause listeners considerable

confusion even though the language may not be linguistically challenging (Buck,

2001) The effect of background knowledge on listening comprehension is also

demonstrated through Sadighi and Zare’s (2006) study These two researchers

explored the effect of background knowledge on listening comprehension on 24

Iranian EFL learners studying in 2 TOEFL preparation classes They are divided into

an experimental group (in Pouya Language Institute) and a control group (in Shiraz

University Language Center) The results of a 50 listening question TOEFL test of

language proficiency showed that the control group had a worse performance as

compared with the experimental group in the listening test Finally, the two

researchers counseled that teachers need to recognize that students’ background

knowledge contributes significantly to students’ comprehension

 Lack of language knowledge

Anderson and Lynch (1988) argue that although the L2 system may not

always be the principle cause of comprehension difficulty, the L2 learner will still

come up against problems that are primarily linguistic

Firstly, if listeners’ knowledge of pronunciation is inadequate, their

ability to discriminate sounds will be weak and their comprehension will be impeded

In a research study, Henricksen (1984, as cited in Buck, 2001) indicated that L2

listeners’ comprehension is reduced significantly by the presence of phonological

modification Even higher – level L2 listeners can fail to recognize the language they

actually know very well Therefore, according to Buck (2001), listeners need to know

the phonological system – the complex set of rules that determine the pronunciation of

connected speech – in order to be able to process natural speech in real time

Secondly, any lack of grammatical knowledge can reduce L2 listeners’

listening comprehension For example, if they cannot discriminate subordinate clauses

from main clauses, even though they understand all the words in the sentence,

understanding is unlikely to occur with accuracy Moreover, if listeners are unable to

segment complex embedded sentences into more basic syntactic units – which may

result from their lack of the knowledge of grammar, their comprehension will suffer

(Samuels, 1984)

Lastly, Brindley (1997) claims that lack of the knowledge of key lexis

can lead to miscommunication or even breakdown Stæhr (2009), in an empirical

study, investigates the role of vocabulary knowledge in listening comprehension with

115 advanced Danish EFL learners This study thus provides empirical evidence that

vocabulary knowledge is an important factor for successful listening comprehension

in EFL Furthermore, when foreign- language students’ knowledge of English clichés

and collocations – parts of lexis knowledge - is insufficient, they cannot predict a

missing word or phrase This is a major problem for students (Yagang, 1994)

 Lack of sociocultural, factual, and contextual knowledge

According to Underwood (1989), 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 Similarly,

students in Goh’s (2000) study expressed difficulties in understanding the intended

message though they were familiar with literal meaning of words This may occur

because listeners lack sociocultural, factual, and contextual knowledge of the target

language Any insufficiency of such knowledge or gaps in knowledge of the second

language culture, of the associations and references available to native users can

present an obstacle to comprehension because language is used to express its culture

(Anderson & Lynch, 1988)

 Having trouble with multiple meanings of words

It is a common phenomenon in EFL classes that listeners know only the

most common meaning of a word despite the fact that each word may have multiple

meanings Therefore, when listeners encounter a word in one of its less common uses,

they are more likely to confuse (Samuels, 1984) Accordingly, listening

comprehension difficulties occur

 Lack of motivation and attention

Both Samuels (1984) and Underwood (1989) affirm the importance of

motivation and attention of listeners in listening comprehension Without motivation

and attention, learning does not occur and comprehension is impeded (Samuels,

1984) The inattention of listeners to speakers is one of the reasons for poor

comprehension because comprehension can be weakened seriously when there is even

the shortest break in attention (Underwood, 1989)

 Lack of interests

Different listeners often have different motives for listening due to

different interests and different needs (Buck, 2001) Thus when some specific

listening materials do not attract listeners, they may get out of these; which makes

comprehension impossible

 Inability to recognize familiar words

It is essential for listeners to recognize words that they have already

learnt when they occur within the swift stream of speech There are some reasons

recommended for not being able to identify known words Firstly, Aiyun (2004)

points out that listeners cannot recognize familiar words because they are not familiar

with the pronunciation of certain words In other words, if a listener pronounces the

sounds accurately himself, it will be much easier for him to hear the words correctly

when said by someone else Secondly, Rixon (1986) argues that spoken words do not

stay still to be scrutinized and puzzled over as written words Thus it is more difficult

for students to identify words in speeches than in writings In speeches, sometimes

sounds are said quickly, in an unemphasized position in a sentence and juxtaposed

with other words which may affect its pronunciation If listeners do not know these

changes, they “may simply not recognize it as the same word, or may even miss its

existence completely” (Ur, 1984, p.18) Finally, listeners do not have enough time to

search their memory for the meaning of some words immediately although they are

familiar with the words (Ur, 1984)

 Problems with distinguishing sounds

In English, the number of words which can be confused or

misunderstood by inaccurate perception is moderately large (Ur, 1984) Similarly,

Underwood (1989) affirms that there are different words seeming similar in sounds

but different in meanings in English (as ship/sheep, meat/meet, fit/feet, write/right,

sight/site, etc) When foreign listeners come across such words, they may fail to

distinguish one from the other Therefore, listeners’ comprehension would be impeded

much when they encountered such annoying words, including English homonyms and

homophones

 Psychological and physical factors

Both psychological and physical factors may affect listeners’ perception

and interpretation of listening material negatively It is too tiring to listen to and

interpret unfamiliar sounds, lexis and syntax for long stretches of time In listening,

the pace is decided by someone else, and the breaks may or may not occur where

listeners need them (Ur, 1984) In a word, when listeners are too fatigue, they are

most likely to give up listening As a result, their comprehension undergoes

 Negative personal beliefs

According to Galvin and Cooper (1999), personal beliefs may keep

listeners from really hearing what other people are saying Some people believe they

know everything about a certain topic; so they do not need to listen carefully to others

This attitude creates closed minds and barriers to listening

2.3.3 The speaker

Speakers who play a significant role in the listening process by providing input

are likely to be a considerable source of listening comprehension difficulties

 Unfamiliar accents

Accent is a very important variable in listening comprehension An

unfamiliar accent can cause problems, may disrupt the whole comprehension process

or can make comprehension almost unattainable for a listener (Buck, 2001) It may

occur because many foreign listeners are used to the accent of their own teachers

(Buck, 1990; Ur, 1984) or to the standard variety of British or American English

(Buck, 1990) Thus, when coping with unfamiliar accents, they feel dismayed; which

breaks down their comprehension

 Fast rate of speech

It is hardly surprising people everywhere believe that many foreign

language learners have trouble with the fast stream of speech in native language

When a speaker speaks more than 3 words per second, listeners have insufficient time

to process everything such as thinking about the precise meaning of each word, the

way relative clauses are constructed, and speculating on what the pronouns may refer

to When the speech rate gets faster, listeners do not have enough time even to process

the lexical and grammatical information, and they will begin to miss parts of the text

At the certain speed, their processing will tend to break down completely; and they

will fail to understand much at all (Buck, 2001) Galvin and Cooper (1999) affirm that

if speakers speak too quickly (i.e more than 120 to 180 words a minute), the audience

will get confused

2.3.4 The environment

The environmental factor causing comprehension difficulties may comprise the

unintentional noises, the lack of visual clues supporting for interpreting what is being

said and the bad quality of sounds in the recordings resulted from poor-quality

equipment

 Unintentional noises

Noises, including both background noises on the recording and

environmental noises, can get the content of the listening passage out of listeners’

mind (Samuels, 1984) Without the whole content of the passage or the important

information in mind, listeners have trouble with their listening comprehension

 Lack of visual clues

Ur (1984) argues that visuals have an important function as aids to

learning because they attract students’ attention, help and encourage them to focus on

the subject in hand In many instances of listening, visual cues may contribute as

much as 93% of the total meaning of the utterance (Coakley and Wolvin, 1982, as

cited in Joiner, 1986) Therefore, it’s fairly difficult to concentrate on a spoken

material that is heard “blind” Without these visuals, students’ attraction may be

distracted and their comprehension will endure

 Poor-quality equipment

In his book, Samuels (1984) claims that unclear sounds resulting from

poor-quality equipment can interfere with listeners’ comprehension

In short, as can be seen in the literature review, efforts have been made by

numerous researchers, scholars and teachers to identify the listening comprehension

difficulties experienced by language listeners as well as the factors causing the

difficulties Of all, the text, the listener, the speaker and the environment are four

major factors believed to cause difficulties hindering language listeners from

comprehending what is heard

2.4 Justification of the present study

The present study, depriving from students’ unsatisfactory listening results in

tests and inability to understand English spoken speeches, leading to inability to

communicate in English, is conducted basing on these sound foundations The

findings of this study would hopefully be a preliminary study on factors causing

listening comprehension difficulties for grade 10 students in a high school in the

Mekong Delta

In the system of education in Vietnam, English is a requisite subject in the

curriculum However, students in high schools encounter various problems in

comprehending listening texts because this skill is emphasized by neither teachers nor

materials and the aural skill is also neglected at the lower educational levels By

investigating the factors causing difficulties in listening comprehension for high

school students, English teachers can suggest appropriate methods to develop

learners’ listening skills It is an urgent demand for English teachers, as for me

Awareness of these factors would also benefit students themselves When students

recognize their problems, they will be able to improve their listening and become

better listeners It is hoped that what the present research tried to demonstrate profit

language trainers and learners in some ways

To grasp the objectives of the study, the researcher of the present study has

adapted the questionnaire of Tesfaye Tilahun (2008), Addis Ababa University,

Ethiopia This is the data collection instrument in his graduate thesis for the degree of

masters of Arts in teaching English as a foreign language However, the researcher of

the current study has added some subjective ideas, some ideas related that she found

in numerous sources and literature, and revised the questionnaire so that it is suitable

for the real situation in Tran Dai Nghia high school, Vietnam and her objectives of

conducting the project