An exploratory study on 10th form students’ listening anxiety at thuong cat high school

ABSTRACT Anxiety is a common feeling that learners have to face when learning a foreign language, especially with a difficult skill like listening.. Factors causing listening anxiety we

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGESAND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST – GRADUTAE STUDIES

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NGUYỄN MINH NGUYỆT

LISTENING ANXIETY AT THUONG CAT HIGH SCHOOL

(MỘT NGHIÊN CỨU THĂM DÒ VỀ SỰ LO LẮNG TRONG VIỆC HỌC

KỸ NĂNG NGHE CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP 10 TRƯỜNG THPT THƯỢNG CÁT)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field : English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

HANOI – 2017

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGESAND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST – GRADUTAE STUDIES

********************

NGUYỄN MINH NGUYỆT

LISTENING ANXIETY AT THUONG CAT HIGH SCHOOL

(MỘT NGHIÊN CỨU THĂM DÒ VỀ SỰ LO LẮNG TRONG VIỆC HỌC

KỸ NĂNG NGHE CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP 10 TRƯỜNG THPT THƯỢNG CÁT)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field : English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

Supervisor: Dr Vũ Thị Thanh Nhã

HANOI – 2017

Secondly, I would like to express my sincere thanks to my respectful professors

of the Faculty of Post-Graduated Department at University of Languages and International Studies for their devotion and their interesting lectures

I also want to give my big thanks to students from three classes 10D1, 10D2, 10D6 who participate in this research

Last but not least, special thanks go to my family who are always by my side and support me during the time I carry out this study

ABSTRACT

Anxiety is a common feeling that learners have to face when learning a foreign language, especially with a difficult skill like listening This study aims at exploring the listening anxiety of grade 10 students at Thuong Cat High school There are 130 students from three classes participated in this survey The researcher used both quantitative and qualitative The survey questionnaire was used to examine the existence of listening anxiety and factors causing students’ anxiety The informal interview further looked at the sources of students listening anxiety and found out some suggested solutions The findings showed that the majority of participants experienced high listening anxiety Factors causing listening anxiety were divided into three categories: factors related to listening process, factors related to listening text and factors related to students’ learning habits From the students’ suggestions

in the interview, some solutions were proposed for both teachers and students.On the part of teachers, they should pay more attention to choose appropriate listening materials, help students raise their language proficiency and teach them listening strategies Students also need to build their self-confidence and have more practice

to reduce listening anxiety and improve their listening comprehension

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF ABBRIVIATION vi

LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS vii

LIST OF APPENDICES viii

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationales of the study 1

1 2 Purpose of the study 2

1 3 Research questions 2

1 4 Significance of the study 2

1 5 Scope of the study 3

1 6 Structure of the study 3

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

2.1 Overview of listening comprehension 4

2.1.1 Definition of listening comprehension 4

2.1.2 The listening comprehension process 5

2.2 Overview of anxiety 6

2.2.1 Definition and types of anxiety 6

2.2.2 Foreign language anxiety 7

2.2 3 Listening anxiety 9

2.2.4 The previous studies of listening anxiety 10

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 13

3.1 Overview of current teaching and learning listening at Thuong Cat High School 13

3.2 Participants 15

3.3 Research method 15

3.4 Data collection instruments 16

3.5 Procedure 17

3.6 Data analysis method 17

CHAPTER 4: THE FINDINGS 19

4.1 Students’ background information 19

4 2 Reliability of the FLLA 22

4 3 Descriptive analysis 22

4 4 Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) 23

4.5 Participants’ suggested solutions for reducing listening anxiety 34

CHAPTER5: CONCLUSION 38

5.1 Summary of the main findings 38

5.2 Implication 40

5.2.1 Recommendation for teachers 40

5.2.2 Recommendations for learners 46

5.3 Limitations and suggestions for further study 47

REFERENCES 48 APPENDICES I

LIST OF ABBRIVIATION

ELT: English Language Teaching

FLA: Foreign language anxiety

FLLA: Foreign language listening anxiety

FLLAS: Foreign language listening anxiety scale

SPSS: Statistical Package for the Social Sciences

LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS

Chart 1: Students’ time of starting learning English……….17

Chart 2: Students’ judgment about listening skill in comparison with other skills…… 18

Chart 3: Student’s level of interest in listening skill………18

Chart 4: Student’s practice outside class……… 19

Table 1: Listening anxiety related to Listening process………22

Table 2: Listening anxiety related to Listening text……….25

Table 3: Listening anxiety related to Student’s learning habits ……….29

LIST OF APPENDICES

APPENDIX 1: ROTATED COMPONENT MATRIX………48 APPENDIX 2: DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS OF FLLAS……….50 APPENDIX 3: THE FOREIGN LANGUAGE LISTENING ANXIETY SCALE 52 APPENDIX 4: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE (Vietnamese version)………54 APPENDIX 5: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE (English version)……… 56 APPENDIX 6: INFORMAL INTERVIEW……….58 APPENDIX 7: TABLE CONTENTS OF TEXTBOOK TIENG ANH 10……….59 APPENDIX 8: UNIT 1- TIENG ANH 10………60

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

This chapter provides the overview of the research The researcher presents the reasons for choosing the topic, research questions, the purpose, scopes, significance and the structure of the study

1.1 Rationales of the study

English has become the international language and it is used in many countries

It is undeniable that the number of people who learns English as a second language

is increasing because of its importance In Vietnam, English is getting more and more popular and it is one of the compulsory subjects in most high schools In recent years, teaching English has changed remarkably from the traditional teaching methods to Communicative Language Teaching Accordingly, learners’ ability to communicate is the first priority When learning English, learners have to master four skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing Listening is one of the most important skills for a student to communicate effectively However, it seems that many Vietnamese learners have difficulty in listening to English One of the most major factors that influence on students’ listening comprehension is the anxiety MacIntyre and Gardner (1991) asserted that “anxiety poses several problems for the students of a foreign language because it can interfere with the acquisition, retention, and production of the new language” (p 86) Every learner experiences anxiety in different degrees Feeling anxious in the classroom makes learners show negative reactions, emotions and behaviors and they are not able to develop their full ability in language learning From the reality in Thuong Cat High School, many students perform poorly and they feel stressful when they learn listening lessons Some of them are very nervous when they are faced with a difficult task Some others have the feeling of tension when they cannot understand the words they hear Students seem afraid of listening to foreign language and unwilling to listen to the records Therefore, it is necessary for teachers to be aware of the factors that cause students’ anxiety in listening lessons and have more appropriate teaching

methods to help students improve their listening ability In fact, learners’ anxiety has been great concern of the researchers and teachers because reducing anxiety is a key to success in foreign or second language learning A lot of research about listening anxiety has been conducted; however most of them are conducted with university students There are few studies about anxiety of high school students

That is motivation for researcher to do the study “An exploratory study on 10 th

form students’ listening anxiety at Thuong Cat High School.”

1 2 Purpose of the study

The purpose of the research is to find out factors causing students’ anxiety in listening English at Thuong Cat High School These factors originate from the listening process, listening texts and students’ learning habits Another aim of this study is to suggest some solutions for teachers and students to help students reduce listening anxiety and improve their listening competence

1 3 Research questions

The study aims at finding out the answers to the following questions:

- What factors cause students‟ listening anxiety at Thuong Cat High School?

- What are possible solutions to reduce students‟ listening anxiety?

1 4 Significance of the study

Awareness of the anxiety that students encounter in listening skills benefits both students and teachers This study will provide teachers’ knowledge of the foreign language anxiety, especially the causes of listening anxiety and give some guidelines for teachers to help their students overcome their anxiety

This research will also help students identify their anxiety in learning listening and from this they can find some ways to manage their anxiety level not only in listening skill but also in other skills when learning a foreign language Hopefully, the findings of this study will be of some help to the improvement of the teaching and learning listening skills of teachers and students in high schools in general and

at Thuong Cat High School in particular

1 5 Scope of the study

In this study, the researcher only focuses on the causes of listening anxiety of

10thform students at Thuong Cat High School and gives some solutions for teachers and students to help students reduce anxiety

1 6 Structure of the study

The study is divided into five chapters

- Chapter 1: Introduction This chapter presents the rationale, the purpose, scope, significance and the structure of the study

- Chapter 2: Literature review This chapter provides the literature review of foreign language anxiety in general and listening anxiety in particular It also gives the theories of listening comprehension

- Chapter 3: Methodology This chapter discusses the participants, method of the study, data collection instruments and data analysis

- Chapter 4: The findings This chapter presents the information about participants, the findings from questionnaires and interview

- Chapter 5: Conclusion This chapter makes a brief summary of the major findings, the implications, limitations and suggestions for further research

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter reviews the literature on anxiety, listening anxiety and listening comprehension The factors causing listening anxiety in previous studies are also mentioned This knowledge, therefore, serves as a basis for further work in the latter chapters

2.1 Overview of listening comprehension

2.1.1 Definition of listening comprehension

Listening has been defined in different ways by many researchers and from different perspectives

In the past years, listening has not received much attention compared with other skills Buck (2001, p 32) notes that “listening is an important skill but due to the practical complexities of providing spoken texts, it is neglected in many language learning situations” (p.32) Field (cited in Richard, 2012) points out that

“In the early days of English language teaching, listening was a way of presenting new grammar through model dialogues” (p.13) According to Richard (2008), listening as comprehension is the traditional way of thinking about the nature of listening and the main function of listening in second language learning is to facilitate understanding of spoken discourse It means that the first appearance of listening was just to interpret and facilitate the message in order to speak However, the view of teaching listening has already changed Listening has changed its role from a passive activity which deserved less class time to an active process through which language acquisition takes place Listeners actively involve themselves in the interpretation of what they hear, bringing their own background knowledge and linguistic knowledge to bear on the information contained in the aural text

According to Anderson and Lynch (1988), successful listening is not only understanding something that happens because of what a speaker says but the listener also 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

Buck (2001) in his definition says that “listening comprehension is an active process of constructing meaning and this is done by applying knowledge to the incoming sound” (p.31) This means that listening is the ability to recognize and realize the meaning of what the speaker is saying, by grasping the meaning and understanding the way of pronouncing the words and language that shows, accent, pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary

Richards and Schmidt (2002) describe listening comprehension as “the process

of understanding speech in a first or second language The study of listening comprehension processes 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 expectations, the situation and context, background knowledge and the topic”(p.313) In other words, listening is a process of understanding a text by activating various kinds of phonology, grammar, background knowledge and experience

In short, listening comprehension is not a passive but an active process in which the listeners construct meaning from what they hear with intended meaning Listeners need to get involve actively in the interpretation of what they hear, bring their own background knowledge and linguistic competence to reach full comprehension of what they hear

2.1.2 The listening comprehension process

The processing of listening is viewed as interactive process including two levels: bottom-up processing and top-down processing

The bottom-up processing involves constructing meaning from the smallest unit

of the spoken language to the largest one in a linear mode (Nunan, 1998) It is

absolutely “text based” process where learners rely on the sounds, words and grammar in the message in order to create meaning (Richard, 2008)

Top- down processing, on the other hand, refers to the use of background knowledge in understanding the meaning of a message This background knowledge activates a set of expectations that help the listener to interpret what is heard and anticipate what will come next (Richards, 2008) In other words, listener employs prior knowledge of the context and situation within which the listening occurs to make sense of the information understand he/she hears

2.2 Overview of anxiety

2.2.1 Definition and types of anxiety

Anxiety has been considered one of the most important effective factors that influence second language acquisition It is defined differently by different researchers Hansen (1977) called anxiety as an experience of general uneasiness, a sense of foreboding, a feeling of tension Scovel (1978) defined that anxiety was associated with the feelings of uneasiness, frustration, sefl-doubt, apprehension or worry Spieberger (1983) gave another definition of anxiety as “the subjective feeling of tension, apprehension, nervousness and worry associated with an arousal

of the automatic nervous systems” (p.482)

Anxiety is usually classified into three types: trait anxiety, state anxiety and situation-specific anxiety

- Trait anxiety is defined as an individual’s likelihood of becoming anxious in any situation (Spielberger, 1983) It is usally viewed as an aspect of personality and “a more permanent predisposition to be anxious” (Scovel,

1978, p.137)

- State anxiety occurs within specific, temporary situations and fades when the threat (or situation) disappears (MacIntyre & Gardner, 1991) It is the type of anxiety that that a person experiences at a particular moment in time as a response to a definite situation

- The situation-specific anxiety is the specific forms of anxiety that occur consistently over time within a given situation (MacIntyre & Gardner, 1991)

It is related to a particular type of situation or event such as public speaking, examinations or class participation

In short, anxiety is a psychological concept which is associated with negative feelings such as uneasiness, frustration, self-doubt, apprehension and tension Anxiety can be experienced at three perspectives: trait anxiety, state anxiety and situation-specific anxiety

2.2.2 Foreign language anxiety

Foreign language anxiety is a situation specific anxiety that is related to foreign language learning Many researchers have considered anxiety as one of the most important factors that influence second language learning

Foreign language anxiety is defined as “a distinct complex of self-perceptions, beliefs, feelings and behaviors related to classroom language learning arising from the uniqueness of the language learning process” ( Horwitz and Cope ,1986, p.128) According to Gardner and MacIntyre (1993), language anxiety is “the apprehension experienced when a situation requires the use of a second language with which the individual is not fully proficient It is, therefore, seen as a stable personality trait referring to the propensity for an individual to react in a nervous manner when speaking, listening, reading, or writing in the second language” (Gardner & Maclntyre, 1993.p.5) Another definition proposed by MacIntyre (1999) confirmed that language anxiety “as the worry and negative emotional reaction aroused when learning or using a second language” (p 27)

Oh (1990) defined that foreign language anxiety is a situation –specific anxiety which students experience in the classroom which is characterized by self-centered thought, feelings of inadequacy, fear of failure, and emotional reactions in the language classroom

Furthermore, Spielberger and his colleagues (2005) state that foreign language anxiety is the panic that a learner feels when he has to routine a second or a foreign language in which he is not totally skillful

Horwitz et al (1986) found that foreign language anxiety included three components: communication apprehension, test anxiety and fear of negative evaluation

- Firstly, Communication apprehension is a type of shyness characterized by fear of anxiety about communicating with people It means that communicatively apprehensive people tend to avoid communicating and interacting with other people or they are reluctant to get involved in conversations

- Secondly, Test anxiety refers to performance anxiety which stems from a fear of failure in an academic setting It is the fear of exams, quizzes, and other assignments used to evaluate students’ performance Many students experience a high level of anxiety when taking tests The unfamiliar test items, the format of the test, different materials and questions types with which leaners are not familiar are generally believed to create anxiety When test anxiety occurs, even students with a great deal of knowledge in a foreign language may perform at a considerably lower level than their true ability

- Finally, the last component of foreign language anxiety is fear of negative evaluation Fear of negative evaluation is defined as “apprehension about other’s evaluations, distress over their negative evaluations, and the expectation that others would evaluate oneself negatively” (Horwitz, 1986, p.128) Fear of negative negation is broader in scope than the test anxiety because it may occur in any social, evaluative situation such as interviewing for a job or speaking in foreign language classes People who fear negative evaluation rarely initiate conversation and interact with other

people Students who experience this anxiety tend to sit passively in the classes and do not participate in learning activities actively

In short, anxiety is a kind of troubled feeling in mind that may cause negative effects for language learners It is a feeling of tension, apprehension and nervousness associated with the situation of learning a foreign language Anxiety has an important role in determining the success or failure of the learners Horwitz (2001) found a significant association between anxiety and poor performance in language learning Learners who have language anxiety may underrate their own abilities, avoid taking part in learning activities and have worse performance than non-anxious studentsand this may lead to poor performance Knowing about language anxiety helps educators understand how students learn language and help students manage the stress that accompanies language anxiety

2.2 3 Listening anxiety

A particular aspect of language anxiety is listening anxiety which refers to the feeling of anxiety of language learners when they are required to listen to English Bekleyen (2009) defined that “foreign language listening anxiety (FLLA) is the type of anxiety experienced by language learners in situations that require listening” (p.665).In another definition, Scarcella and Oxford (1992) pointed out that listening anxiety occurs when students feel they are faced with a task that is too difficult or unfamiliar to them It means that anxiety appears when students have to listen to the tasks which do not match their levels of proficiency Moreover, foreign language listening anxiety can be defined as “the fear of misinterpreting, inadequately processing or not being able to adjust psychologically to message sent

by others” (Wheel, 1975, p.263) In other words, students become anxious while listening English because they are afraid that they cannot understand the message and interpret it correctly

Listening anxiety is caused by many factors According to MacIntyre (1995), the cause of anxiety is that learners often worry about misunderstanding what they

listen to and the fear of being embarrassed by interpreting the message wrongly Young (1992) explained that listening anxiety is caused by many factors, such as insufficient emphasis on listening, immature teaching methodologies, ineffective listening strategies, and students’ lack of vocabulary Vogely (1998) also found that characteristics of input such as the speed or unfamiliarity with the listening input and instructional and personal factors easily produced listening anxiety Moreover, Kim (2000) in her study indicated that characteristics of the text, personal characteristics and process-related characteristics were main factors causing anxiety Hang (2006) divided listening anxiety sources into characteristics of listening comprehension, listening materials and listening tasks, social and instructional factors, foreign language proficiency and listening level In addition, Chang and Read (2008) concluded that low confidence in comprehending spoken English, taking English listening courses as a requirement, and worrying about test difficulty were the three major factors which contributed to listening anxiety Beside, factors such as authenticity of the listening text, incomprehensibility of the listening material and other external environmental factors such as noise and inaudibility can create anxiety among language learners

2.2.4 The previous studies of listening anxiety

Anxiety in listening comprehension is a problem that has received a lot of concerns from many researchers There have been a number of studies about listening anxiety Vogely (1998) carried out a descriptive study with 140 university students of Spanish to investigate the foreign language listening comprehension anxiety in students and offer solutions that might alleviate students’ listening anxiety She found four main sources of listening comprehension (LC) anxiety: (a)

LC anxiety associated with characteristics of foreign language input; (b) LC anxiety associated with processing-related aspects of foreign language: (c) LC anxiety associated with instructional factors; and (d) LC anxiety associated with attributes

of the teacher or learner As to level of input, the speed of delivery was the most frequently reported cause of LC anxiety, followed by bad diction, variety of accents,

and teachers who spoke too quietly As to level of difficulty, exercises that were too complex, unknown vocabulary, difficult syntax and unfamiliar topics were other sources of LC anxiety Students were anxious if they did not know what was required of them in the listening activity or why Some students claimed that they needed the help of some visual aid to help with listening task Students reported feeling anxious if they could only listen to texts twice before having to respond Kim (2000) conducted a study to explore the relationship between listening comprehension and anxiety in 238 Korean university students of English She designed an instrument for measuring foreign language listening anxiety, the Foreign Language Listening Axiety Scale (FLLAS), consisting of 33 items, each with five Likert-type responses (from 1 “strongly disagree” to 5 “strongly agree”) She found that a majority of Korean learners experienced foreign language listening anxiety and listening anxiety contained two factors: Tension and Worry over English Listening and Lack of Self-Confidence in Listening Responses to open-ended questions and in interviews in the same study revealed that learners were nervous about the following: (a) the listening text (speed, pronunciation, intonation, length of a listening text, level of vocabulary), (b) the interlocutors (gender or number of speakers, previous knowledge, learning style of the listener), and (c) the process of listening (the effectiveness or choice of listening strategies)

Elkhafaifi (2005) in an investigation about listening anxiety involving 233 North American university learners of Arabic used a 20-item listening anxiety scale which based on Saito et al.’s Foreign Language Reading Anxiety Scale to ascertain whether listening anxiety was distinct from general anxiety, whether learning anxiety and listening anxiety were related to general language performance, and to listening achievement in the foreign language He found that foreign language listening anxiety and general foreign language anxiety were separated but related phenomenon, and that both anxiety measures were significantly correlated with achievement, with the listening anxiety scale more strongly related to listening grade than the Foreign Language Classroom Anxiety Scale

In the study by Chang (2008), she found from the self-created Listening Anxiety Questionnaire that the college business major students had high levels of listening test anxiety compared to their general listening anxiety, which implied that the learners were more anxious when their language proficiency was being evaluated Three sources of listening anxiety were reported: low confidence in comprehending spoken English, taking a listening course and feeling worried about the difficult of the test

From what has been discussed in this chapter, it is concluded that anxiety is the feeling of uneasiness, apprehension, tension and frustration Anxiety is divided into three types: trait anxiety, state anxiety and situation-specific anxiety Trait anxiety is relatively stable personality characteristic while state anxiety is a social type of anxiety that occurs under certain conditions Situation-specific anxiety is caused by specific situation or event such as public speaking, examinations, or class participation Foreign language anxiety is a situation specific anxiety that is related

to foreign language learning It means the learner feels anxious whenever he learns

a foreign language Three components of language anxiety are identified: communication apprehension, test anxiety, and fear of negative evaluation Communication apprehension is characterized by fear and anxiety in communicating with people Test anxiety is a type of performance anxiety which is caused by fear of failing a test Fear of negative evaluation is the apprehension about other people’s evaluations Foreign language anxiety has different aspects like reading, writing, speaking, and listening anxiety This study only focuses on listening anxiety Listening anxiety refers to the feeling of nervousness when learners are required to listen to English Some previous studies mentioned factors that caused listening anxiety such as poor listening ability, students’ lack of language competence, lack of vocabulary or ineffective listening strategies Besides, characteristics of listening texts, listening tasks and personal characteristics also increase students’ listening anxiety

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY

This chapter presents information about the overview of current teaching and learning listening at Thuong Cat High school, the participant, research method, data

collection instrument, the procedure and the data analysis

3.1 Overview of current teaching and learning listening at Thuong Cat High School

The study was conducted at Thuong Cat High School, Bac Tu Liem District,

Ha Noi The participants for the study consist of 130 students from three classes 10D1, 10D2 and 10D6 Most of the students have been learning English since they were at grade 3 However, with the personal teaching experiences, the researcher realized that at the secondary school, students often learned in a passive way They learnt English structure rules, did grammar exercises and translated reading text Speaking and Listening skills was not paid much attention Moreover, in the last year at secondary school, students mainly focused on preparing for Entrance Exam

to High school, they did not spend much time on studying English Therefore, when they entered High school, they had some difficulties with English at first and many students even did not have basic knowledge about English They have limited vocabulary and poor background knowledge Another problem is that students do not have the habit of learning by themselves, they only learn in class do not spend time studying at home Moreover, like most other students in suburban schools they rarely have opportunities to communicate with English speaking people in both classroom and outside classroom Consequently, their speaking and listening skills are not really good

At the moment, the 10th form students are using the new textbooks “Tieng Anh 10” published in 2006 by Hoang Van Van, Hoang Thi Xuan Hoa, Do Tuan Minh, Nguyen Thu Phuong and Nguyen Quoc Tuan “Tieng Anh 10” is developed based on the new national curriculum The book is claimed to adopt a theme-based syllabus Lessons are arranged according to topics which are true to life, and

familiar with upper-secondary students The book consists of sixteen units; each unit presents a theme which is updated and relevant to many aspects of the daily life: school talks, people’s background, technology, mass media, community, national parks, music, films and cinema, the world cup … This is an important advantage of the textbook as it is relevant to the students’ needs, interests and experience of life; therefore, it motivates students The methodology used in the book is the learner-centered approach and the communicative approach with task-based teaching being the central teaching method Each unit is structured in 5 sections: Reading, Speaking, Listening, Writing and Language Focus with the purpose of developing students’ communicative language skills After every three units, there is a Test Yourself, which provides some exercises for the students to do

in order to test how good they are at English Each section is supposed to be taught

in one period of 45 minutes In this textbook, listening lessons make up 20% of the syllabus Listening section is divided into three stages: Before you listen, While you listen and After you listen Before you listen aims to motivate students, activate their background knowledge and provide vocabulary While you listen activities develop micro-skills such as listening for general understanding, listening for specific or detailed information In this part, students do listening tasks including matching exercise, T-F statements, multiple choice questions and open-ended questions After you listen often includes activities such as text summary, reproduction in oral or written forms and further discussion of the topic

According to the syllabus, students have four English classes a week, so the time for listening skill is one period (45 minutes) about every two weeks As a result, students do not have much time for further practice with other listening materials In addition, students do not have good condition to learn listening because there are no language labs in the school These factors can affect learning listening comprehension and cause anxiety for students at Thuong Cat High School

3.2 Participants

The participants in this study are 130 students chosen from three classes 10D1, 10D2, and 10D6 They were chosen by cluster sampling form ten classes at Thuong Cat High school This means that instead of randomly selecting the individuals, the investigator randomly selected the groups or classes for investigation Although students studied English at secondary school, many of them had low level of English in general and listening skills in particular Through observation and with the experience of teaching 10th form students, I saw that many studentsperformed poorly and some of them seemed uninterested in listening lessons and felt tired or anxious when they had to listen to the recordings When I talked with 10th form students, many of them shared that they had never learned Listening skill before so their listening anxiety level seemed higher than grade 11 and grade 12 students

a broad, generalizable set of findings presented succinctly and parsimoniously However, as O’Malley and Chamot (1995) state, quantitative methods like questionnaires “fail to provide the depth of information yielded in interviews” (p.94) On the other hand, qualitative methods produce a wealth of detailed information about a much smaller number of people and cases This increase the depth of understanding of the cases and situations studied but reduces generalizability (Paton, 2002)

Therefore, in this research study, both quantitative and qualitative methods were used to help researcher get some insights into the issue of students’ listening

anxiety With the multiple data collection procedures, the researcher hoped that the research findings would be more valid and reliable

3.4 Data collection instruments

This study used two instruments to gather data They are survey questionnaire and informal interview

Instrument 1: Survey questionnaire

Survey questionnaire seems to be very popular among educational researchers

in general and ELT research in particular (Cohen & Manion, 1989) Dornyei (2010) believes that questionnaires are especially valuable because they are efficient in terms of “researcher time”, “researcher effort”, and “financial resources” (p.9).Moreover, written questionnaires reduce interviewer bias because there is uniform question presentation (Jahoda, et al., 1962) Unlike in-person interviewing, there are no verbal or visual clues to influence a respondent to answer in a particular way

The questionnaire used in this study consists of two parts Part one aims at gathering personal information about participants such as gender, time of start learning English and their attitudes toward listening skill In part two, researcher used Foreign Language Listening Anxiety Scale (FLLAS) designed by Kim (2000)

to measure the level of anxiety while listening to the foreign language The original scale contains 33 five-point Likert-scale items ranging from “strongly disagree” (1 point) to “strongly agree” (5 points) It means that scale 1 indicates the lowest level

of anxiety while scale 5 indicates the highest level of anxiety Students’ scores on this scale can range from 33 to 165, the higher score, the higher the level of listening comprehension anxiety In the study of listening anxiety of grade 10thstudents at Thuong Cat High School, the researcher used Kim’s FLLAS; however, some items were adapted, added and removed so the original scale was reduced to

25 items for her own research purposes Based on the results from the questionnaires, 10 students were selected to interview

Instrument 2: Interview

While questionnaires can provide evidence of patterns among large populations, qualitative interview data often gather more in-depth insights on participant attitudes, thoughts, and actions (Kendall, 2008) To get a comprehensive view of anxiety in listening, 10 students were invited for an informal interview The data obtained from the informal interviews was transcribed and analyzed so that the author of this study could gain a deep understanding of the problems of students and give possible solutions to help them reduce anxiety

3.5 Procedure

The questionnaires were designed in both English and Vietnamese and delivered to 130 students of 3 classes at the end of the second semesters At the time

of data gathering, students already finished all the listening sections in textbook

“Tieng Anh 10”, therefore, they were possibly aware of the problems they faced in learning listening skill

Teacher came to each class in three chosen classes and gave the survey questionnaires to students Before students did the questionnaires, teacher had introduced briefly about the purpose of the study and explained how to finish the questionnaires After that, students spent 30 minutes completing the questionnaires and handed in to teacher Students were also required to give their names and classes so that researchers can invite them to participate in the interviews

After analyzing data collected from questionnaire, 10 students were chosen randomly for an interview arranged by researcher

3.6 Data analysis method

Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the participants’ background information and responses to the questionnaire as well as the overall levels of anxiety The research used SPSS to analyze means, standard deviations of all the

items in the questionnaire The participants’ low, moderate and high levels of anxiety were measured through their choices in response to the Likert-scale type questions The questionnaire for this study consists of 25 items ranging from

“strongly disagree” (1 point) to “strongly agree” (5 points) When students responded with 1)“Strongly disagree”, they received 1 point, 2)“disagree” was two points; 3) “neither agree nor disagree” was three points ; 4) “agree” was four points

; and 5) “strongly agree” was five points The higher the total points were, the more anxious students were

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was used in this study to group the factors that cause students’ listening anxiety The purpose of exploratory factor analysis is to identify the factor structure or model for a set of variables This often involves determining how many factors exist, as well as the pattern of the factor loadings (Stevens, 1996) The researcher carried out Exploratory Factor Analysis to reduce a larger set of initial variables to a smaller and more compatible number of underlying factors

The data from the interview were transcribed and analyzed qualitatively to help the researcher have a deep understanding of the major factors that causes students’ listening anxiety and give some suggested solutions to help students reduce anxiety

In this chapter, the overview of the current teaching and learning at Thuong Cat High School has been given as the setting of the study In addition, the participants, research methods, data collection instruments, procedure, data analysis method are also presented

CHAPTER 4: THE FINDINGS

This chapter presents the data findings It includes information about the

participants, the findings from questionnaires and interview

4.1 Students’ background information

There are 130 students who participate in this research, including 72 male (55.4%) and 58 female (44.6%) Most of the participants started learning English when they were in grade 3 (93.1%), 5,4 % students stared from grade 1 and only 2

% students from grade 6 It means that the majority of students have learned English for nearly 8 years when they take part in this survey

Chart 1: Students’ time of starting learning English

When being asked about their opinion to listening skill, 55.4 % of the students respond that listening is the most difficult skill It is followed by those consider listening as difficult as other skills (36.2%) There are 6.9% of participants reporting that it is the easiest skill and only 1.5 % think it’s as easy as other skills These statistics show that many students have troubles in learning English and listening skill is really a challenge to most of them

Chart 2: Students’ judgment about listening skill in comparison with other

skills

For the questions “How do you enjoy listening to English?”, among 130 participants, 17 students (13.1%) say that that they enjoy listening English very much and 45 students report that (34.6%) enjoy quite much The number of students who do not like listening English is 57 students (43.8%) enjoy little and 11 students (8.5%) answer that they do not enjoy at all It can be referred that more than half of students are not interested in listening to English

55.4

6.9

36.2

1.5

In your opinion, listening skill is .

the most difficult skill the easiest skill

as difficult as other skills

as easy as other skills

13.1

34.6 43.8

8.5

How do you enjoy listening to English?

very much Quite much Little Not at all

Chart 3: Student’s level of interest in listening skill

For the last question which asks about the frequency of listening outside class

of students, the largest proportion is the students who sometimes listen to English outside classroom (63,8%) It is followed by the number of the students who never listen outside classroom (20.8%) 14,6 % participants report that they often listen to English and there is only 1 person (1%) who say that he/she always listen outside classroom Through the interview with students, the researcher finds out when listening outside classroom they often listen to music for relax, they rarely listen with a view to improving listening skill It can be said that the proportion of student who often practice listening English is quite low

Chart 4: Student’s practice outside class

From the result above, it can be seen that the majority of participants in this study started learning English quite early, from grade 3 They have learned English for nearly 8 years However, they have difficulty in learning English, especially in listening skill More than half of them think that listening is the most difficult skill and they don’t enjoy listening to English Therefore, they don’t practice listening to English regularly Most of them sometimes listen to English songs or watch videos

in order to relax, not to improve their listening skill

4 2 Reliability of the FLLA

Nunnally (1978, cited in Linh, 2011, p.65) claimed that a Cronbach alpha value of 0,70 or above is considered acceptable Besides, Geoge and Mallerry

(2003, cited in Linh, 2011, p.65) aslo presented a standard as follows:

1.0 > α ≥ 0.9 0.9 > α ≥ 0.8 0.8 > α ≥ 0.7 0.7 > α ≥ 0.6 0.6 > α ≥ 0.5 0.5 > α ≥ 0.4

Excellent Good Acceptable Questionable Poor

Unacceptable The FLLA version used in this study has Cronbach alpha value of 0.975 which means that the FLLA scale is reliable

Reliability Statistics

Cronbach's Alpha

a 5-point format, the mean score is 3.75 indicates that students experience slightly high level of listening anxiety

4 4 Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

Exploratory Factor Analysis is used to group items into common factors, interpret each factors according to the items having a high loading on it Loading refers to the measure of association between an item and a factor A factor is a list of items that belong together Related items define the part of the construct that can be grouped together Unrelated items, those that do not belong together, do not define the construct and should be deleted (Munro 2005)

Before EFA was performed, the KMO and Barlett’s tests were computed to check the appropriateness of the data matrix for factor analysis The KMO test showed a value of 0.937 (>0.5) and the Bartlett’s test of Sphericity indicated a significance level of 000 These results suggested that the items were sufficiently correlated and EFA was appropriate

KMO and Bartlett's Test

Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling

Bartlett's Test of Sphericity

After the rotation, three factors were extracted Factor 1 included 10 items (1, 5, 7,

10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 19), Factor 2 included 9 items (3, 13, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25) and Factor 3 included 6 items (2, 4, 6, 8, 9, 17)

The 10 items loaded on Factor 1 were associated with anxiety related to Listening process, the 9 items for Factor 2 reflected the anxiety related to the

characteristic of listening materials and the 6 items for Factor 3 referred to the anxiety related to the learning habits of listeners

TABLE 1 Listening anxiety associated to Listening process

Items Loading Mean

15 I keep thinking that everyone else except me understands

very well what an English speaker is saying .752 2.85

14 When I’m listening to English, I usually end up translating

word by word without understanding the contents .721 3.43

7 When I’m listening to English, I am worried when I can’t

watch the lips or facial expression of a person who is

speaking

.719 3.05

16 When listening to English, I often understand the words

but still can’t quite understand what the speaker means .661 3.45

10 When I’m listening to English, I often get so confused that

I can’t remember what I have heard .661 3.50

19 English stress and intonation seem unfamiliar to me .656 3.65

5 I am nervous when I am listening to English if I am not

familiar with the topic .617 3.49

11 I fear I have inadequate background knowledge of some

topics when listening in English .576 3.95

1 I feel unconfident when I am listening in English .543 3.77

12 My thoughts become jumbled and confused when listening

to important information in English .517 3.65

Factor 1 named “Anxiety related to listening process” includes 10 items The two

highest loadings came from the item 15 “ I keep thinking that everyone else except

me understands very well what an English speaker is saying” and item 14 “When

I‟m listening to English, I usually end up translating word by word without understanding the contents” These items indicated that most items in this factor

focused on the anxiety caused by student’s worry about their low listening ability and their inappropriate listening strategies Items 5, 10, 11, 19 describe the anxiety

of students related to their language proficiency Item 1, 7, 12, 15 shows the worry

of students about their lack of confidence in listening ability Items 14, 16 indicate the anxiety caused by failure in applying listening strategies in listening process Means of Factor 1 items showed that a majority of participants suffered from anxiety related to listening process Of all the items, items 11, 1, 19 and 12 have the highest mean values of 3.95, 3.77 and 3.65 respectively

Item 1(I feel unconfident when I am listening in English) with mean value of 3.77 and item 12 (My thoughts become jumbled and confused when listening to

important information in English) with mean value of 3.65indicates that most of the

participants in this study were unconfident in their listening competence and worried about their poor listening ability Some students explained clearly in the interview:

“My listening skill is really bad so I am very afraid of listening part in English tests I don‟t often get scores in this part.”(Student 1)

“When I listen to the tape scripts, I often wonder what the speakers are saying I totally do not catch any words So, I hate listening classes.” (Student 2)

“I find my listening skill terrible I cannot understand what people say in English.” (Student 3)

Item 11 (I fear I have inadequate background knowledge of some topics when

listening in English) with mean value of 3.95 and item 19 (English stress and intonation seem unfamiliar to me) with mean value of 3.65 show that the

participants in this study suffer relatively high listening anxiety because of their inadequate background knowledge and lack of phonological knowledge Lack of

background knowledge causes students’ failure in guessing the word in context and understanding the message of the listening text It also makes students worry when they listen to unfamiliar topics

Some students remarked in the interview:

“I feel nervous when I have to listen to unfamiliar topic because I don‟t have enough vocabulary and background knowledge related to it.”(Student 4)

“When I hear a topic that I don‟t know anything about it, I often get upset because it‟s too difficult for me to hear any information.” (Student 5)

“If I have much knowledge about a topic, I will feel more confident in listening because I can use this knowledge to guess the content of the listening text and some words that I can‟t hear.”(Student 6)

Lack of phonological knowledge also have great influence on students’ listening Many students in this study were in agreement with item 19(mean = 3.65) that they were not familiar with English stress and intonation As English is stressed-timed, the pronunciation of individual words will change when they link together with each other That causes students problems to recognize the words because they tend

to pronounce the words in isolation Students are not familiar with phonological features such as stressed words, unstressed words, strong form, weak from and connected speech They also do not know how to distinguish rising and falling intonations Therefore, they fail to catch the main ideas and understand the listening

text

Here is what students said in the interview:

“My pronunciation is very bad I don‟t have any ideas about stress and intonation Sometimes, I even don‟t know how to pronounce the words correctly” (Student 2)

“I can‟t recognize separate words in a long sentence.” (Student 7)

“I cannot recognize stressed words and unstressed words” (Student 3)

In addition, students also suffer listening anxiety because they are unable to apply listening strategies The result of items 14 and 16 with mean value of 3.45 and 3.43 indicate that Many students don’t know to guess meaning of the words in context so they try to translate every word they meet in listening, and then they miss important information This makes their listening more difficult and stressful Through the interview, the researcher also know that some students do not know how to employ some strategies during their listening such as guessing in context, note-taking or catching key words

“I spend too much time translating every word I hear so I miss the other parts As a result, I cannot understand the content of the listening passage.”(Student 8)

“When I meet a new word in the text, I don‟t know how to guess it meaning in context I feel very confused then I fail to understand the other parts” (Student 9) “I am not good at note taking I can hear something but I forget it very quickly because I don‟t know how to take not important information while listening” (Student 7)

Moreover, it is interesting to find out that item 12 “I keep thinking that everyone

else except me understands very well what an English speaker is saying” has the

lowest mean value (mean =2.85) It means that many students are not worried about their friends’ listening ability Through the interview, the researcher knew that many students thought that their classmates also suffered from lack of proficiency in English listening and they might experience similar listening anxiety

TABLE 2 Listening anxiety associated with Listening text

Items Loading Mean

24 Long listening texts make me feel tired and anxious 737 4.08

20 I get worried when I do not have enough time to complete

difficult listening tasks .706 4.13

23 I get upset when I cannot understand the text from the first

25 I feel worried when listening to English because I do not

have enough practice .606 3.91

18 I get annoyed when I come across words that I don’t know

while listening to English .603 3.83

21 During English listening test, I get nervous and confused

when I do not understand every word .599 3.97

3 When someone pronounces words differently from the way I

pronounce them, I find it difficult to understand .575 4.00

22 I feel nervous when I encounter new grammar structures in

listening materials Two items having the highest loadings are item 24 (Long

listening texts make me feel tired and anxious) and item 20 (I get worried when I do not have enough time to complete difficult listening task) These two items indicate

the general trend that the long and difficult listening text and task make students worried when listening The other factors describe the characteristics of listening text that cause students’ anxiety in detail such as time to process listening text (item

13, 23), speakers’ pronunciation and accent (item 3) and new vocabulary and grammatical structures ( item 18, 21, 22)

Of all the items in Factor 2, item 20 (I get worried when I do not have enough time

to complete difficult listening task) has the highest mean value of 4.13 It means that

types of listening task influence significantly on students’ anxiety Most of the students worry that they don’t have enough time to finish difficult task Students expressed anxiety and frustration with listening exercises that were too difficult for them Many students sated that some types of tasks made them feel more worried than the others

“Some tasks are really difficult for me such as answering questions or completing a summary Whenever I have to finish these tasks, I feel really stressed” (Student 8) “It is easy to do the multiple choice exercise But for some tasks like the dictation or answering WH-questions, I become scared because I can‟t remember

so long sentences and even write them down exactly.”(Student 7)

The length of the text is another problem that needs to be concerned Item 24

(Long listen texts make me feel tired and anxious) have a high mean value of 4.08

It indicate that long text have great effects on students’ anxiety In fact, long texts lead to losing concentration, feeling tired and not being able to catch up the flow of speech A few students reported that long passages would make them nervous because they could not remember a lot of information in a short time, and thus might miss the specific information.This can be explained more in the interview with students

“Long texts make me quickly feel tired and bored I can‟t concentrate on listening for a long time.” (Student 4)

“I hate the long text because it contains so much information that I can‟t

remember all of them I am afraid that I can‟t process all the information.” (Student 2) “I am nervous when I have to listen to a long lecture or long conversation because it has a lot of new words and complex sentences They are too difficult for

me to understand.” (Student 6)

Item 3 (When someone pronounces words differently from the way I pronounce

them, I find it difficult to understand) also gets quite high mean value( Mean = 4.0)

It shows that the majority of students agree that they had problems with recognizing thewords they knew because of the way they were pronounced This result is also consistent with Ur’s declaration (1984), which states that if a word is pronounced differently from the way it was said when it was learnt, the listener may not

recognize it as the same word, or may even miss its existence completely At this

point, this problem interferes with the learners listening comprehension

Through the interview, the researcher discovered that many students were not familiar with pronunciation of native speakers The natural speech of native speakers with varied accents and full of hesitation and pauses really made students nervous and stressful while listening to English

“I don‟t pronounce the words correctly so I am not able to understand the spoken text Sometimes I can‟t understand even simple words just because I pronounce the words differently from the native speakers.” (Student 5)

“Although I know that word but I can‟t recognized it when I listen.” (Student 9)

“The pause and hesitation really confuse me and disrupt my listening process I feel discouraged and don‟t want to continue listening.” (Student 7)

“British pronunciation is easy to follow while American pronunciation is difficult to understand” (Student 2)

“I prefer American accent then British accent.” (Student 10)

These problems are quite easy to understand because students don’t have many opportunities to practice with native speakers or authentic materials They are familiar with their own teachers’ pronunciation, so they may not recognize the same word pronounced by native speakers Besides, when teaching vocabulary, some teachers only focus on the meaning and the spelling of the words but ignore the