Improving listening skills for first year students at the faculty of english hanoi open university

GRADUATION THESIS B.A DEGREE IN ENGLISH STUDIES IMPROVING LISTENING SKILLS FOR FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS AT THE FACULTY OF ENGLISH - HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY Date of birth : 27/09/1994 HA NOI

GRADUATION THESIS B.A DEGREE IN ENGLISH STUDIES

IMPROVING LISTENING SKILLS FOR FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS AT THE FACULTY OF ENGLISH - HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

Date of birth : 27/09/1994

HA NOI, 2016

DECLARATION

Title: IMPROVING LISTENING SKILLS FOR FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS

AT FACULTY OF ENGLISH-HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

I certify that no part of the above report has been copied or reproduced by

me from any other’s work without acknowledgement and that the report is

originally written by me under strict guidance of my supervisor

Hanoi, 15th April 2016

Student Supervisor

Nguyễn Thị Thanh Hoa Nguyễn Văn Quang

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I am, first of all, greatly indebted to my supervisor, Nguyen Van Quang, for his valuable suggestions, instructions and correction without which I can hardly fulfill this study

I would like to thank all lecturers and friends at Hanoi Open University who have supported and guided my thinking by permanent observation, critical comments and those who have helped me by their approval

My deep appreciation also goes to the first-year students at Hanoi Open University who have helped me to collect data for this study

Ultimately, my gratitude and appreciation are also extended to my family, for their assistance, support and encouragement during the development of this study All have enabled me to accomplish my study

Hanoi, 15th April 2016

Student

Nguyễn Thị Thanh Hoa

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale of the study 1

2 Aims and objectives of the study 1

3 Scopes of the study 1

4 Research questions 2

5 Methods of study 2

6 Design of the study 2

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 4

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

1.1 Listening skills 4

1.1.1 Definitions of listening skills 4

1.1.2 Traditional point of view on listening skills 7

1.1.3 Current point of view on listening skills 8

1.2 Classification of listening skills 9

1.2.1 Real-life listening 9

1.2.1.1 Types of real-life listening 9

1.2.1.2 Characteristics of real-life listening 10

1.2.3 Classroom listening 11

1.2.3.1 Intensive listening 11

1.2.3.2 Extensive listening 12

1.3 Sub-skills involved in listening skills 12

1.4 Listening phases 13

1.4.1 Pre-listening 13

1.4.2 While-listening 14

1.4.3 Post-listening 16

1.5 Major factors influencing the listening skills 18

1.5.1 Vocabulary 18

1.5.2 Background knowledge 19

1.5.3 Speed speech 20

1.5.4 Phonological aspects 21

1.5.5 Physical conditions 22

1.5.6 Summary 22

CHAPTER 2: DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS 24

2.1 Research procedures 24

2.1.1 Participants 24

2.1.2 Instrumentations 24

2.1.3 Survey questionnaires 25

2.2 Findings and discussion 25

2.2.1 First-year student’s attitude towards listening skills 26

2.2.2 First-year student’s obstacles when learning listening skills 28

2.2.3 First-year student’s attitude towards their teachers creating listening activities and motivation 35

2.2.4 First year students’ self-study methods to enhance listening skills 36

2.5 Summary 38

CHAPTER 3: RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS

AT THE FACULTY OF ENGLISH – HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY TO

IMPROVE LISTENING SKILLS 39

3.1 Stages of listening 39

3.1.1 Pre-listening 39

3.1.2 While-listening 41

3.1.3 Post-listening 42

3.2 Applying listening sub-skills 43

3.3 Self-studying 46

3.4 Background knowledge 47

3.5 Vocabulary and Grammar 47

3.6 Becoming active listeners 49

3.7 Summary 53

PART C: CONCLUSION 54 REFERENCES

APPENDIX

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

Table 1: Students’ attitude towards listening ……… 28

Table 2: Students’ opinion on the importance of listening skills……… 29

Table 3: Listening sub-skills applied by first-year students ……… 29

Table 4: Obstacles of students when listening……….30

Table 5: First-year students’ attitude toward their teachers creating listening interest and motivation……….35

Table 6: First-year students’ listening self-study……….36

Table 7: Students’ methods to enhance listening skills……… 37

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

In Vietnam these days there is an increasing number of people wish to know and master of English since English has become an international language spoken all over the world in various aspects of life, such as communication, trade, business, health care, education Therefore, teaching and learning English have been paid much attention to nowadays

However, compared with other skills language skills, listening is considered the most difficult one for most English learners Indeed, many first-year students at the Faculty of English – Hanoi Open University find it really challenging to learn listening skills effectively Thus, the present study is done to further listening skills for first-year students at the Faculty of English – Hanoi Open University with hope that this study will offer some benefits for students learning English skills

2 Aims and objectives of the study

The purpose of this study is to help the freshmen at Faculty of English – Hanoi Open University to understand the reasons why they find it challenging to boost listening skills Accordingly, some feasible solutions are given with hope that first -year students can find out suitable approaches in learning English listening skills

3 Scopes of the study

Teaching and learning English, especially listening skills, are quite complex and varied among these levels However, within the study, the author will only focus on some main difficulties of the first-year students at Faculty of

English - Hanoi Open University Additionally, the study also gives some suggestions to help them to improve listening comprehension

4 Research questions

The study mainly focuses on answering these following questions:

- What are the difficulties of the first-year students in learning listening skills?

- What factors have an impact on the listening skills of freshmen at Faculty of English - Hanoi Open University

- What are feasible suggestions to assist first-year students at Faculty of English- Hanoi Open University to reinforce listening skills?

5 Methods of study

In the research, the theoretical foundation is based on the knowledge which I have collected through materials and my supervisor’s support To achieve the aforementioned aims, a great number of research methods are implemented and a questionnaire is designed as a means for research and to collect data The questionnaire is handed to the first-year students at Faculty of English - Hanoi Open University in order to figure out their difficulties when they learn listening skills

Based on the final result of the survey, data analysis was done to indicate some problems of the first-year students at Faculty of English - Hanoi Open University and solutions to boost English listening skills

6 Design of the study

The study consists of three main parts: introduction, development and conclusion

Part A, “INTRODUCTION” presents the fundamental information such as the rationale, the aims and objectives, the research question, the scope, the methods and also the design of the study

Part B, “DEVELOPMENT” consists of three chapters:

- Chapter one, literature review, presents contrastive views of listening skills, the important of listening, the classification of listening, sub-skills involved in listening skills, listening stages, as well as difficulties in learning listening skills

- Chapter two, data collection, deals with analysis on general learning situation of first-year students at Faculty of English - Hanoi Open University Also, in this chapter, there is a focus on data analysis, finding and discussion

- Chapter three suggests some feasible solutions to help the first-year students

at Faculty of English - Hanoi Open University to enhance listening skills Part C, “CONCLUSION” summarizes the key issues in the study, point out some limitations and recommendations for further study

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Listening skills

1.1.1 Definitions of listening skills

Listening is considered one of the most important parts of the oral communication The term is used in order to make oral communication effective There was an idea that “Students spend 20 percent of all school related hours just listening If television watching and one-half of conversation are included, students spend approximately 50 percent of their walking hour just listening For those hours spent in the classroom, the amount of listening can be almost 100 percent “Obviously, it is believed that listening is a significant and essential are

of development in a native language and in a second language; therefore, there have been numerous definition of listening and listening skill According to Howatt and Dakin (1974), listening is ability to identify and understand what others are saying This process involves understanding a speaker’s accent and pronunciation, the speaker’s grammar and vocabulary and comprehension of meaning An able listener is capable of doing these four things simultaneously

In addition, Lesley Barker (2001) states that: “ Listening, however, is more than just being able to hear and understand what someone else say, listening skills involve etiquette, asking for clarification, showing empathy and providing an appropriate response.” According to Bulletin (1952), listening is one of the fundamental language skills It’s a medium through which children, young people and adult gain a large portion of their education-their information, their understanding of the world and of human affairs, their ideals, sense of values,

and their appreciation Rubin (1991) defined listening as “the active and dynamic process of attending, perceiving, interpreting, remembering and responding to the 5 expressed verbal and non-verbal needs, concerns and information offered

by the human beings” Carol (1993) described listening as a set of activities that involve “the individual’s capacity to apprehend, recognize, discriminate or even ignore.” Wolvin and Coakley (1985) pointed out that listening is “the process of receiving, attending to and assigning to aural stimuli” This definition suggests that listening is a complex, problem-solving skill The task of listening is more than perception of sound This view of listening is in accordance with second-language theory which considers listening to spoken language as an active and complex process in which listeners focus on selected aspects of aural input, construct meaning, and relate what they hear to existing knowledge (O’Malley &

Chamot, 1989; by, 1984; Richards, 1985; Holand, 1983

Also, Underwood (1989) simplifies that the definition of listening to “the activity of paying attention to and trying to get meaning from something we hear” Mendelsohn (1994) defines listening comprehension as “The ability to understand the spoken language of native speakers”

Moreover, O’Malley, Chamot, and Kupper (1989) offer a useful and more extensive definition that “listening comprehension is an active and conscious process in which the listener constructs the meaning by using cues from contextual information and fro existing knowledge, while replying upon multiple strategies resources to fulfill the task requirements”

Mendelsohn (1994) points out that, in listening to spoken language, the ability to decipher the speaker’s intention is required of a competent listener, in addition to other abilities such as processing the linguistic forms like speech

speed and fillers, coping with listening in an interaction, understanding the whole message contained in the discourse, comprehending the message without understanding every word, and recognizing different genres Listeners must also know how to process and how to judge what the illocutionary force of an utterances is – that is, what this string of the sounds is intended to mean in a particular setting, under a particular set of circumstances – as an act of real communication (Mendelsohn, 1994)

Purdy (1997) states that “ the active and dynamic process of attending, perceiving, interpreting, remembering, and responding to the expressed (verbal and nonverbal), needs, concerns, and information offered by other human beings” Listening comprehension is in inferential (Rost, 2002) Linguistic knowledge and world knowledge interact as listeners create a mental representation of what they hear Bottom and top down processes are applied to get to this mental representation and achieve comprehension To put it briefly, it

is widely admitted that listening comprehension is not merely the process of an undirectional receiving of audible symbols, but an interactive process (Brown, 2007)

There are several distinctions of listening, and there is little argument about which is the best, nor should not be there Each definition represents a different perspective of listening, and with many approaches to listening there are bound to be a number of definitions Ethel Glenn (1989) in the Six journal of the International Listening Association lists fifty different ways of describing listening This list is not exhaustive It indicates; however, that listening is conceived differently depending upon how people intend to apply the definition Glenn’s content analysis of the fifty definitions found that concepts most often

included in the listening were: perception, attention, interpretation, response, and spoken and visual cues

Throughout the Western history, we assumed listening was automatic and needed no attention We did not concern ourselves with study and training in the art of listening Listening, however, is not automatic To be better listeners, we need to understand and work with the components of the listening process Listening is the process of making sense out of what we hear Listening is an active process of receiving, processing, and interpreting aural stimuli Firstly, listening involves taking in meaningful sounds and noises and in some ways, retaining and using them Just as we speak for different purposes We listen for enjoyment, information and evaluation

Frank Tyger said that “Hearing is one of the body’s five senses, but listening is an art.”

Listening is a part of transactional process of communication The recipients’ responses have an impact on the direction of the conversation Listening is a habit that requires knowledge, skills, and desires Knowledge plays

a role similar to that of methods and theories by describing what to do and why

to do it Skills represent how to do it

1.1.2 Traditional point of view on listening skills

There are some conventional viewpoints that listening is regarded as a passive language along with the reading skills, which means learners are almost passive in practicing the listening activities in classroom

Listeners just hear what they are to listen without paying much attention in the discourse such as background knowledge of the speakers as well as their intention, attitude, implication and other shades of meaning The listeners mainly

hear the message, and they only try to elicit the meaning from the individual syntactic and sematic components of an utterance and the manner in which it is spoken This leads to the result that it is hard for listeners to communicate Having this attitude, the teachers often conducts the lessons as “tested” listening comprehension rather than teaching it It is the fact that the learners are not provided enough information and methods about what they are going to hear before the tape plays Consequently, a certain amount of pressure is released, which impairs listener’s attention and triggers anxiety As a result, they cannot get any listening experience from that exercises

1.1.3 Current point of view on listening skills

For the past few years, some present studies on listening skills have to come to another view in which the role of listeners is believed to be active, not passive anymore Listening skills is a receptive skill together reading skills

Being active a must if listeners want to master listening skills since it always requires listeners to have foundation knowledge According to Littlewood (1981), listening demands active involvement from the hearers In order to construct the message that the speaker intends, the hearers must actively contribute knowledge from both linguistic and nonlinguistic sources

From the point of view of Broughton (1978), listening was divided into intensive and extensive listening Extensive listening is related to the freers, more general listening to natural listening, not necessarily under the direct guidance of the teachers while intensive listening is much more concern with just one or two specific points

Until now, there are many discussions on the division of listening stages Some think that there are only three stages, other claim four, and even more In

which, the author Mary Underwood (1989) divides the aural process into three stages and Clark (1977) divides it into four stages but in general, they have the same idea There are two level activities of the aural process The level two of this activity are recognition and selection The first one is the structure and the relationship between syntax and phonology of language are recognized And the second one, the listeners select what they find most interesting, important or comprehensible in the utterance

Yet, there are several contrastive opinions on listening skills The two authors, Anderson and Lynch (1995) considered the listener as active model builder They said that to listen successfully, we have to construct our own

“coherent interpretation” of any spoken message Both part of this term are crucial

In short, to be successful in listening, we should remember that:

“Listening comprehension is not a skill which can be mastered once and for all and then ignored whereas other skills developed There must be regular practice with increasingly difficult materials.” (Rivers Wilga, 1986, P.157)

1.2 Classification of listening skills

1.2.1 Real-life listening

1.2.1.1 Types of real-life listening

According to Doff (1995) notes that in real-life, there are two kinds of listening:

- Casual listening: in daily life, we sometimes listen with no particular purpose and often without much attention This kind of listening is called “casual” listening For instance, many students have the habit of listening to radio while studying or watching television or doing

something else This result is that we do not listen attentively and carefully; thus, we may not remember much of what we hear or nothing remains in our mind

- “Focused” listening: when we listen to something on purpose to get the information we need, it is named “focused” listening In this case, we often listen with concentration For example, we really want to know the answer to that question, we will ask and expect to hear a relevant response This leads us to our “listening out” for certain key words or phrases When the question such as “where are you off to?” is posed Then we will listen out for the expectation of the place If the answer

is, for example, “Well, to the library because I am going to have a History exam at the end of next week.” Thus, we only pay attention to the first two words If we listen to the news, it is the desire to know what is happening in the world, and we shall anticipate to hear about certain subjects of current interest in certain kind of languages Even when listening to entertainments, we also have purposes Thus, there is

an association among listener’s expectation, purpose, and comprehension

1.2.1.2 Characteristics of real-life listening

In the book “Teaching listening comprehension” (1995, P.9), the author Penny Ur, indicates some characteristics of real-life listening:

- We listen on purpose with certain expectation

- We make prompt 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, therefore, it differs from formal spoken prose in the amount of redundancy, noise and colloquialism and

in its auditory character

Some particular situation may lack one or more of these characteristics For example when watching television we are not normally expected to respond or when listening to the lecture we may have to hear uninterrupted speech for a very long time indeed – but it is very rare that none of them present

at all We seldom listen to stretches of “disembodied” discourse of any length

1.2.3 Classroom listening

1.2.3.1 Intensive listening

Michael Rost states that “Intensive listening refers to listening closely – for precise sounds, words, phrases, grammatical units and pragmatic units” (2002, p.182)

Intensive listening is the careful, focused listening a short passage for detailed information or for full comprehension such as listening to the announcement, the instruction and weather forecast There may be much concrete information for this kind of listening and the leaners often find it learners to develop their listening skills or knowledge of the language in their effort to do exercises or other activities The passage should be short so that the learners can have chances to get to grips with the content, have several tries at difficult parts and to be fitted with the time allowed of a lesson Therefore, they often listen with a great concentration and stretching effort

1.2.3.2 Extensive listening

Extensive listening is free and general listening to natural language for general idea, not for particular details The listening passage for extensive listening can be long (stories) or shots (jokes, poems) The language that is used

in this kind of listening exercise, is often within student’s current ability so that the learners find it pleasing and interesting The learners feel satisfied as they can understand the passage well They are not asked to do any language and they can

do their listening freely without any pressure Moreover, the topics are various and entertaining It; therefore, motivates the learners develop their listening skills

as well as expose them to the valuable extra contract with spoken language

Furthermore, Rob Waring, one of the original proponents of extensive listening, believes that an extensive listening program can be effective from immediate level He provides background and resources for guiding students into

an extensive listening program, with helpful troubleshooting tips for keeping students focused It means that the people, who are not good at English, also have extensive listening

1.3 Sub-skills involved in listening skills

According to Martin Parrott (1993), depending on the different range of

“sub-skills” may be involved The following lists some of the sub-skills which may be involved in efficient listening The ability to:

- Recognize the communicative function of the text (stretch of speech or writing) or part of the text Examples of communicative function are invitation, commiseration, persuasion, etc (note that a text or part of a text may express more than one function, and the function(s) may be more easily identifiable in certain texts than in others)

- Obtain the gist (main ideas) from the text

- Identify the specific details

- Distinguish main ideas from supporting details

- Recognize the speaker’s (writer’s) attitude towards the topic and toward the listeners or readers

- Infer ideas and information not explicitly stated

- Anticipate or predict the “content” of the text or the development of the discourse

- Recognize the familiar words

- Infer the context of the discourse

- Use the context to understand the meaning of unfamiliar words

1.4 Listening phases

1.4.1 Pre-listening

*Purposes of pre-listening stages

It is undeniable that learners will find it extremely difficult to do the listening lesson when they have no idea of what they are going to hear Even if the sounds of the words they hear familiar, they may still unable to interpret as they lack certain kinds of knowledge of the subjects, setting or the relationship between speakers Hence, the listeners’ expectation and purpose should be taken into account These will make listeners feel as in real-life listening situation in their native language Teachers can help their students to arouse their expectation and see the purposes before the listening lesson

“It would be seen as a good idea when presenting a listening passage in class to give students some information the content, situation, speakers before they start listening.” (Penny Ur, 1992, P.4)

Also Marry Underwood said: “Pre-listening can be done in a variety of ways and often occur quite naturally when listening forms part an integrated skilled course When planning lessons, time must be allocated for pre-listening activities and these activities should not be rushed.” (1989, P.31)

*Types of pre-listening activities

1 The teachers introduce the listening’s topic, give background information

2 The students read something relevant

3 The students look at pictures, read through the questions if asked

4 The students discuss the topic situation

5 The students consider how the while-listening activities will be done

Each of the above types will help students focus on the main point of the listening passage But it is very important to remember that the amount of the types of pre-listening activities may vary according to each class, the level of difficulties of material, and the students’ language ability Therefore, the teachers should select the most efficient activities to help their students get the purpose of listening required

*Factors affecting the choices of pre-listening activities

1 The availability of time

2 The availability of materials

3 The interest of the class

4 The interest of the teacher

5 The place where the work is carried out

6 The nurture and content of the listening itself

1.4.2 While-listening

*Purpose of the while-listening stage

The while-listening stages involved activities those students are asked to

do during the time they are listening to the text The purpose of while-listening stage is to help learners to develop the skills of eliciting message from spoken language

There are certainly other reasons why students need to listen to the language they are studying The main thing is to recognize how it sounds (the pronunciation, stress, rhythm, intonation)

When developing the listening skills, while-listening stage must be chosen carefully They must vary at different level and in different cases To help non-native listeners to improve their listening skills, the teachers need to have while-listening stage which gives prediction, matching and interpretation

“Good while-listening activities help learners find their ways through the listening text and build upon the expectations raised by the pre-listening activities.” (Under Wood, 1990, P.46)

*Characteristics of while-listening stages

- Interest

While-listening activities should be interesting, so that students feel that they want to listen and carry out these activities Part of interest stem from the topic and the content of what is said and listening text should be chosen with the interest of the students in mind

Most learners enjoy trying to complete puzzle or solve the problem and this impact can be exploited in the design of the activities However, it is important that this kind of activities is not too long, laborious and does not involve doing the same thing over and over again

- Level of difficulty

While listening activities should be thought that most people can do Failure may lead to the demotivation, activities with potential “sticking point”, where the students are likely to get into the difficulties, should be used sparingly

in the early stage In time, of course, it will be necessary to include activities which present potential “sticking point” so that students learn not to be put off and preserve in spite of the problem

According to Marry Underwood, the level of difficulties of while-listening stage can be adjusted by giving support Some while-listening activities are successful with groups of varying level of ability and provide a challenge for the more advanced students but not discouraging those who only gain a little

*Factors affecting the choice of while-listening stage

1 The possibilities of varying the level of difficulties if required

2 The inconvenience of carrying out the activities which require individual to give their response orally in the classroom This kind of work is best done in a language laboratory While -listening activities in classroom generally have to be limited to those which can be done without the need for each student to respond

by speaking

3 Whether the work is to be done by the students with the teacher’s presence or whether it is to be done as private study, either in classroom or at home This will influence to the teacher’s choice of activities as she may want to give the students different work according to their level of ability, to provide additional instructions, or to select activities which generates little or no marking

1.4.3 Post-listening

*Definition of the post-listening stage

“The post-listening stage is an opportunity for many kinds of follow-up works-thematic, lexical, grammatical, skill development and so on” (Jo Mc Donough, Christopher Shaw and Hitomi Masuhara, 2013)

According to Underwood (1989), activities in the post-listening stage cover all the work described to a special listening text They are done after the listening is finished

Post-listening activities are the activities which are done after the listening Some post-listening activities are extensions of the work done at the pre-listening and while-listening stages and some relate loosely to the listening itself

*Purpose of the post-listening activities

- To check whether the students have to understand what they need to or not since Cora Lindsay and Paul Knight (2006) said that “After finishing a listening activity by leaners, it is important to check the response.” The teacher should give the responses orally, by pairs checking each other’s responds, by the teacher showing the answer on the overhead blackboard,

by group discussion or by asking the learners to check against responses given in a book.”

- To reflect on why some of learners have missed parts of the message or failed to understand it (Mary Underwood, 1989)

- To give opportunity to the students to consider the speaker’s attitude, manner in the listening text At this stage, learners can attend the attitudes

of the speakers and what it is that has conveyed those attitudes All listening texts do not arrange the chance for this type of activity

- To expand in the topic or language of the message and transfer the learners’ thought to another context

- To make introduction to the planned work

*Factors affecting the post-listening stage

Marry Underwood (1989) said that the attention should be given to the following factors in selecting post-listening activities:

- The amount of language acquisition the teacher wishes to in relation to the particular listening text

- The time which is allowed to do the post-listening stage

- The speaking, reading and writing should be included in the post-listening stage

- The students should work in pair or in groups

- The chosen activities should be made motivation

1.5 Major factors influencing the listening skills

1.5.1 Vocabulary

The English vocabulary is very large and changes every day; therefore, it

is regarded as a huge obstacle of English learners when they listen

Samuels (1984) emphasized that “Knowledge of the vocabulary used by the speaker is another quality for good listening comprehension Some words have many meanings when used in different contexts Most people can only identify the most common meaning of a word In order to become an effective listener, one must understand a broader range of vocabulary.” The listeners’ concentration and thinking are always interrupted when they meet the new words they do not know The listeners have to try to follow the speakers and sometimes they have to guess the meaning of the word or phrase deepening on the context

The listeners often pay much attention to new words, as the result they miss chances of listening to the following part of speech

The teachers, therefore, should help learners to know that there is not equal importance for every new word and there is no need for the learners to understand all the new words when listening Sometimes the listeners understand only a part of what the speaker means but they are generally able to communicate with the interaction and respond to it

1.5.2 Background knowledge

“Background knowledge about a topic is also important variable that can influence listening Even if a person has mastered the skill of analyzing speech accurately and automatically, lack of basic background knowledge can reduce listening comprehension” (Samuels, 1984)

A learner’s background knowledge on a subject affects his listening comprehension For example, when you discuss the natural wonder, a learner with poor listening comprehension may tune out, having no connection to the vocabulary As you begin to discuss the Jurassic period and mention dinosaurs; however, the students may perk up since he begins to construct meaning based

on background knowledge he has obtained from books or movies about dinosaurs Without adequate background knowledge, the learners with poor listening skills tend to struggle to listen and easily to fall behind Thus, preparing the beginners for new or difficult materials by reading a variety of books with wide range of topics, showing videos, and breaking down difficult vocabulary into words they can relate to This is not only helpful for the beginners whose background knowledge is not sufficient but also fortify general understanding of those who already know that topic

1.5.3 Speed speech

In learning English, the greatest difficulty in English listening skill is that the learners are not able to control the speakers’ speed The learner’s often feel that the utterance disappear before they can sort them out or they can get the message

Moreover, the manner in which a teacher speaks may have an effect on listening comprehension If you use a fast rate of speech, the learners with listening comprehension difficulties may have difficulty keeping up with the lesson as they try to deal with unknown subject matter Slowing down and speaking distinctly allows the learners to focus on the content of the lesson without struggling to keep up Writing vocabulary words on the chalkboard as they are introduced helps learners to see the word in print in case they have difficulty understanding new terms Repetition, rewording information and giving examples provides additional support for the learners who struggle with listening comprehension Take this one as a stark example, in a social studies lecture, rewording the concept of intercontinential travel as going from one continent to another, such as going from North America to Europe

“They are so busy working out the meaning of one part of what they hear that they miss the next part Or they simple ignore the whole chunk because they fail to sort it all out quickly enough.” (Marry Underwood, 1989, P.16) One of the reasons for this is that the learners cannot keep up with the speed and they often try to understand everything they hear When they fail in sorting out the meaning

of one part, the following will be missed This can lead to ignorance of the whole chunk of discourse Obviously they fail to listen

As in the book “Advance listening strategies” (Berman, 2003) assumed that “Pace is the speed of speech Unimportant points or small details are usually spoken more quickly Important points, such as main ideas, are usually spoken more slowly and clearly”

1.5.4 Phonological aspects

According to Penny Ur (1984, P.11), as a young teacher it too me some time to realize that m students actually did not perceive certain English sounds with any accuracy because they did not exist in their own language The fact is that are a lot of sounds that do not exist in Vietnamese, such as the sound /θ/ as

in “thank” The sound /w/ as in “wink”, etc therefore, a native Vietnamese speaker may not notice the first that it occurs in English Even more difficulty is that the listeners are often able to distinguish between the long sound with the short ones, for instance, the sound /i/ (as in “sit” ) and the sound /i:/ (As in “seat) Hence, learners have problems in perceiving this distinction as significant to meaning in English and it takes a considerable amount of practice before they get used to distinguishing between them Sometimes learners find consonant-clusters particularly difficult to deal with They may get consonant in the wrong order, such as hearing “part” and “past”, or omit one of the sound “ crips” for “crisps”), hear a vowel that is not in fat pronounced

Another reason why sounds may be misheard is that the learners do not focus much more on the stress, intonation patterns of English and as the results these influence both the realization of certain phonemes and the meaning if utterance

“Whether they view the situation as being serious or casual, formal or informal, high personal risk or low personal risk, and their notions of the status

and power of the other people in the social context relative to their own power.” (Samuels, 1984)

The number of homophones and homonyms in English is small, while the number of words which can be confused and misunderstood by accurate perception is relatively large Thus, it is essential for the learners to achieve familiarity with common phonemes of the target language as soon as possible If the listeners learn to pronounce the sound accurately himself, it will be much easier for them to listening English efficiently

1.5.5 Physical conditions

Physical settings are considered one of the most primary factors influencing the quality of the listening lessons It the listening task is carried out with noise around, it is for sure that they will not gain good result in listening Firstly, listeners are easily distracted by the noise around the no matter how hard they try to concentrate on the task Otherwise, the noise makes a complex of sounds instead of the solo recording being played This impairs the students from hearing ans focusing on the task The problems also arise from the poor quality

of the audio systems, such as the tapes or disks For example, the cassette may be recorded while there are noises around or the CD player is used for such a long time so the quality is worn out The poor equipment is somehow an obstacle to learners in listening For example, in listening comprehension, it is best place for the learners to do listening in the laboratory room This somehow will bring out the better result for the noise outside cannot get through the lab room A good cassette recorder or a CD player may give them the better rather than that of the

old one

1.5.6 Summary

This chapter has addressed some major issues in term of listening skills The writer has introduced the overview of listening skills and the methods to approach the second language listening research Firstly, the definition of listening can be defined in various ways There are also several distinctions between conventional point of view and current ones on listening skills Additionally, listening skills are divided into two primary kinds, the real-life listening and classroom one Secondly, the types of listening sub-skills and listening stages have been presented Ultimately, the author emphasizes on the obstacles in learning listening skills, which includes vocabulary, background knowledge, speech rate, phonological aspect and physical settings

CHAPTER 2: DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS

The purpose of this chapter is to present the findings of the study and to discuss the significance within the research environment This chapter deals with questionnaires to obtain valid data and analysis The findings in the surveys also gather with the description and the real current situation The chapter commences with the presentations of the subject and data collection methodology of the study, which is quantitative and quatilative and then the collected data are analyzed to figure out problematic areas and give some recommendation

2.1 Research procedures

2.1.1 Participants

The survey was carried out with the participation of 50 learners, including

22 male and 28 female students who are currently studying at first year at Faculty of English - Hanoi Open University and have a common in English ability These students would be required to state their attitude towards their listening and need of improving their skills

2.1.2 Instrumentations

The author use questionnaires as a main means of valid data collection The aim of using questionnaires was to investigate the attitude of students toward listening skills The questionnaires were chosen to collect data from students in a short period of time and the analysis of the answer to closed questions is straightforward Also, they were accomplished with the participation

of 50 first-year students at Faculty of English - Hanoi Open University The

method allows the author to collect data needed in “quantitative form”, it is

rather easy to summarize, analyze and report the collected data as all informants submit the answer to the same questions Thus, it denotes the attitudes of leaners towards learning English accurately and freely since their personal information is ensured in the strictest confidence According to Gillham (2000), the respondents are not put under pressure of time i.e they answer the questions in their own time and at their own pace, and in an anonymous style of responding, they undoubtedly feel free and comfortable to answer and give reliable responses Therefore, questionnaires were chosen as a data collection instrument in this survey as the information collected was reliable and objective

2.1.3 Survey questionnaires

Questionnaires (see Appendix) made up of seven questions were for the students They were designed to identify the students’ problems when listening, students’ attitude toward listening skills Question 1 aims to find out student’s attitude to listening Question 2 is to figure out student’s opinion on the importance of listening skills compared to other skills Question 3 looks for the sub-listening skills that students often apply while learning listening Question 4 shows some crucial factors that have influence on the listening comprehension of students Question 5 indicates how to engage students in listening practice Question 6 and question 7 focus on the frequency and methods of practicing English listening skills outside classroom environment.de

2.2 Findings and discussion

This section presents and analyses the result of data obtained from the methodology of data collection Then, the existing problem in language learning will be under discussion Finally, many solutions are proposed to improve the listening skills

2.2.1 First-year student’s attitude towards listening skills

Table 1:

Question 1 What do you think about listening skills Answer (%)

B It is a little bit difficult to learn 23

C It is as difficult as other skills (speaking,

reading and writing)

16

Based on this data, it can be said that 56% of first-year students find listening skills very difficult, 35% little bit difficult, 16% feel it as difficult as other skills and only 5% easy to learn This means that the first-year students consider listening skills a challenge to control The great part of students said that listening is the most difficult skills of the four fundamental English language skills (reading, writing and speaking) Being aware of the difficulties and the importance of listening skills will enable students to boost their listening skills

Table 2: Student’s opinions on the importance of listening skills

Question 2 How do you rate the importance of listening