nghiên cứu về những khó khăn của sinh viên trong việc học kỹ năng nghe tại trung tâm IQ, hải phòng m a

The results of the study showed that the students dealt with various listening problems which were categorized into two types: learners’ listening difficulties related to texts and learn

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES

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

NGUYỄN THỊ THU HẰNG

A STUDY ON STUDENTS’ DIFFICULTIES IN LEARNING LISTENING SKILL AT IQ CENTER, HAI PHONG (Nghiên cứu về những khó khăn của sinh viên trong viê ̣c ho ̣c kĩ năng

nghe ta ̣i trung tâm IQ, Hải Phòng)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field : English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST - GRADUATE STUDIES

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

NGUYỄN THỊ THU HẰNG

A STUDY ON STUDENTS’ DIFFICULTIES IN LEARNING LISTENING SKILL AT IQ CENTER, HAI PHONG (Nghiên cứu về những khó khăn của sinh viên trong viê ̣c ho ̣c kĩ năng

nghe ta ̣i trung tâm IQ, Hải Phòng)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field : English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

Supervisor: Mai Thi ̣ Loan, PhD

HANOI – 2017

DECLARATION

I, the undersigned, declare that this thesis is the result of my own research and

has not been submitted to any other university or institution partially or wholly Except

where the reference is indicated, no other person’s work has been used without due

acknowledgement in text of the thesis

Hanoi, 2017

Nguyễn Thị Thu Hằng

I would also like to thank all of the lecturers of the Department of Post Graduate Studies, Vietnam National University for their useful lectures and materials which are of great value to my thesis

A special word of thanks goes to all of my colleagues and students at IQ Center for their useful information and support

Last but not least, I owe my gratitude to my family for their support and encouragement

ABSTRACT

Listening skill is appreciated as a key skill in real-life communication as well as language acquisition Therefore, there have been numerous studies of this skill in different aspects The study is concerned with listening comprehension problems which the students at IQ centre have encountered It was conducted on the basis of one questionnaire and interviews The questionnaire was designed for 45 students and the interviews were carried out with both the teachers and the students at IQ centre The results of the study showed that the students dealt with various listening problems which were categorized into two types: learners’ listening difficulties related to texts and learners’ listening difficulties related to listeners Furthermore, the results of the interviews help the researcher have a clearer understanding of the difficulties and then suggest solutions as practical as possible for the students’ better listening learning

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES vii

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale for the study 1

2 Aims and objectives of the study 1

3 Research questions 1

4 Scope of the study 2

5 Methods of the study 2

6 Significance of the study 2

7 Design of the study 2

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 4

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

1.1 Review of previous related studies 4

1.1.1 Previous studies overseas 4

1.1.2 In Vietnam 6

1.2 Definitions of listening comprehension 7

1.3 The importance of listening comprehension 8

1.4 The process of listening comprehension 9

1.5 Potential problems in learning listening comprehension 11

1.5.1 Familiarity of topic 11

1.5.2 Familiarity of vocabulary 11

1.5.3 Difficult grammar structures 11

1.5.4 Pause and hesitation 12

1.5.5 Redundancy 12

1.5.6 Psychological problems 12

1.5.7 Limited memory 12

1.5.8 Predicting 13

1.5.9 Pronunciation, intonation, stress 13

1.5.11 Noise 14

1.6 Solutions to problems in learning listening comprehension skill 14

1.6.3 Building up learners’ vocabulary 15

1.6.4 Providing authentic materials 15

1.6.5 Improving learners’ pronunciation 15

1.6.6 Encouraging prediction 16

1.6.7 Using visual aids 16

1.6.8 Encouraging learners to develop listening strategies 16

1.7 Summary 16

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 17

2.1 Restatement of the research questions 17

2.2 The setting of the study 17

2.3 Participants 17

2.3.1 Students 17

2.3.2 Teachers 18

2.4 Research types 18

2.5 Data collection instruments 18

2.5.1 Questionnaire 18

2.5.2 Interviews 19

2.6 Data collection procedures 19

2.6.1 Questionnaires 19

2.6.2 Interviews 20

2.7 Data analysis methods 20

2.8 Summary 20

CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS 21

3.1 Questionnaire 21

3.1.1 Learners’ perceptions of listening difficulties related to texts 21

3.1.2 Learners’ perceptions of difficulties related to speakers 21

3.1.3 Learners’ perceptions of difficulties related to listeners 22

3.1.4 Learners’ perceptions of difficulties related to physical setting 25

3.1.5 Learners’ opinions of solutions to listening difficulties 26

3.2 Interviews 27

3.2.1 The teachers’ answers about teaching listening 27

3.2.2 The teachers’ and the students’ answers about the listening problems 28

3.2.3 The teachers’ and the students’ suggestions about solutions 31

3.3 Summary 31

CHAPTER 4: DISCUSSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 32

4.2 Recommendations to help the students overcome difficulties in learning listening

comprehension 33

4.2.1 Improving teachers’ performance in their listening lessons 33

4.2.2 Assisting students to build up rich vocabulary 35

4.2.3 Teaching pronunciation with spoken features 35

4.2.4 Developing listening materials 36

4.2.5 Using different kinds of input 37

4.2.6 Training students to become active listeners 37

4.2.7 Encouraging self-study 38

4.3 Summary 38

PART C: CONCLUSION 39

1 Recapitulation 39

2 Conclusions 39

3 Limitations of the study 40

4 Suggestions for further study 40

REFERENCES 41 APPENDIX 1 I APPENDIX 2 V APPENDIX 3 VIII APPENDIX 4 IX APPENDIX 5 X APPENDIX 6 XII

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

Figure 1: Learners’ perceptions of their listening difficulties related to texts

Figure 2: Learners’ perceptions of their listening difficulties related to speakers

Figure 3: Learners’ perceptions of their listening difficulties related to listeners’

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale for the study

It is undeniable that listening plays a vital role in human being’s communication Communication will not take place unless people understand the language to which they are exposed Listening is also the skill which is used most frequently in verbal communication Furthermore, listening skill is of primary importance in foreign language learning and acquisition The development of other language skills can be enhanced through this receptive skill Nevertheless, English teaching in Vietnam has put emphasis on boosting vocabulary and grammar through reading texts for many years This leads to the fact that a great number of English learners cannot listen to native speakers as well as communicate in English The students who join English communication courses at IQ center are no exception Most of them have a great desire to master listening skill for the general purpose of proficiency in communication However, from my own teaching experience as well as my observation of English communication classes at IQ center, it can be found that many students had difficulty in learning listening skill It is my responsibility to help the students at IQ center to overcome those difficulties In addition, the researchers of previous related studies suggest that more listening difficulties should be found out Therefore, it is necessary for me to carry out a study on “The students’ difficulties in learning listening comprehension at IQ Center”

2 Aims and objectives of the study

The aim of the study is to help the students to overcome the difficulties which they have encountered in learning listening comprehension at IQ centre

The objectives of the study are:

- To investigate the difficulties that the students have encountered in learning listening comprehension;

- To suggest some solutions to help the students overcome the difficulties

3 Research questions

The study is intended to explore the difficulties which the students have encountered

in learning listening comprehension and then suggest solutions to these difficulties

The study will find the answers to the following questions:

1 What difficulties have students encountered in learning listening

comprehension at IQ centre?

2 What are the possible solutions to help the students overcome the difficulties in

learning listening comprehension?

4 Scope of the study

The study is concerned with students’ difficulties in learning listening comprehension It is conducted at IQ centre, Hai Phong The students participating in

the study are at pre-intermediate level

5 Methods of the study

The study was carried out by some steps as follows:

First, the survey questionnaire for students was employed to find out their difficulties in learning listening comprehension Besides, the students’ opinions of the solutions that they and their teachers can do to overcome the listening problems was revealed through the questionnaire

Second, personal interviews with both the teachers and the students were conducted to help the researcher gain deep insight into the listening problems and realize the reasons behind them

After that, the data was collected, sorted, and analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively to obtain realistic results

To end with, recommendations for the solutions to the students’ listening problems were proposed based on the results found from all data collection instruments

6 Significance of the study

This study contributed to list out the difficulties encountered by the students at IQ centre in learning listening comprehension The results of the research are believed to assist the students to progress in listening skill and improve the quality of teaching

listening at IQ centre

7 Design of the study

The study is divided into three parts:

Part I - The Introduction presents the rationale for the study, the aims and objectives, the research questions, the scope, the methods, the significance, and the

design of the study

Part II – The Development consists of four chapters Chapter 1 is the literature review which provides an overview of the theoretical background and the previous researches related to the study Chapter 2, the methodology restates the research questions and describes the setting, the participants, and the research methods of the study Chapter 3, data analysis and the findings are shown In chapter 4, the findings are discussed and the recommendations are proposed

Part III – The Conclusion briefly summarizes the study and makes some suggestions for further studies

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

1.1 Review of previous related studies

The topic “difficulties in learning listening comprehension skill” is always the centre of many researchers’ attention The following are some most recent studies of the topic in both Vietnam and overseas All of these studies share a common purpose in discovering the difficulties learners encounter in learning listening comprehension skill and suggesting solutions

1.1.1 Previous studies overseas

In this part, the researcher presents the studies conducted in the countries where English is taught and learnt as a foreign language They are the studies by Tilahun (2008), Hasan (2015), and Nowrouzi et al (2015)

The study by Tilahun (2008) explored the factors that contribute to the problems EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners face in listening skill classrooms at Bahir Dar University in Ethiopia The instruments used in the study were a questionnaire for the students, a semi-structured interview with the students, a structured interview with the listening instructors, observation of listening environment, material analysis, and document analysis The study identified thirty six difficulties which interfered with the learners’ listening comprehension They were related to text, listener, speaker, and environment The study also discovered that the learners’ listening difficulties were due to the defects of the listening materials used in the course and the learners’ lack of exposure to English spoken by native speakers Tilahun (2008) proposed many solutions to help the learners improve their listening comprehension skill In particular, the teachers should provide the learners with pronunciation exercises, activate the learners’ schemata before listening, and encourage them to listen to authentic materials Also, there should be a regular maintenance and a timely repairing of equipments Besides, tasks should be designed

to focus on training not on testing listening comprehension Tilahun (2008) also suggested that more listening difficulties and strategies need to be discovered

The study by Hasan (2015) investigated the difficulties EFL (English as a Foreign Language) students encounter in listening comprehension as perceived by ELC (English Language Centre) students at Arab American University- Jenin The instruments used in this study were a questionnaire for the students and a semi-structure interview with the students The study found six factors that posed difficulties to learners’ listening comprehension They were unfamiliarity of topics, noises, quality of equipment, fast rate of speech, and limited vocabulary Hasan (2015) suggested a lot of recommendations for the teachers, the ministry of education, and future researchers The teachers should give the learners more instructions on how to listen, use English inside classrooms, get the learners get acquainted with the prosody

of English, and give the learners opportunities to use English in authentic situations The ministry of education can include listening skill into governmental exams and more listening exercises need to be designed in curriculum He also recommended that more researches on how to improve listening skill have to be conducted with large samples

The study by Nowrouzi et al (2015) discovered Iranian EFL (English as a Foreign Language) students’ listening comprehension problems The instruments used

in this study was a questionnaire for the students The results of the study indicated that the students experienced the listening problems which could be categorized into three types in relation to the three phases of listening process: perception, parsing, and utilization There were three most dominant problems The first one was missing or misperceiving sounds and words related to perception, chunking sentence The second one was forgetting concerned with parsing The last one was confusion about the main idea pertaining to utilization. Nowrouzi et al (2015) also recommended that material developers, syllabus designers and the teachers should pay particular attention to learners’ utilization problems because learners may fail to recognize their own pragmatic and discourse problems Further researches were hoped to explore the strategies that learners employ in dealing with their listening problems.

In spite of the researchers’ various solutions contributed to the area of listening comprehension, they hoped that more listening problems and strategies would be

discovered by future researchers My study aims to seek more listening problems learners face and solutions

1.1.2 In Vietnam

Recently, in our country, the area of listening comprehension have received the attention of a number of researchers Some most recent studies which are presented in this part are the studies by Lê Thị Hồng Loan (2012), Trịnh Vinh Hiển (2013), and Phạm Thị Phượng (2014)

The study by Lê Thị Hồng Loan (2012) is concerned with the difficulties in learning listening skill experienced by the first-year students at Vietnam Maritime University in Hai Phong city The instruments used in this study were a questionnaire for the students and a questionnaire for the teachers The results of the study identified various kinds of listening problems which were divided into four categories: students’ difficulties related to linguistic features, ones related to listening texts, ones related to speakers, and ones related to listeners The causes of these difficulties are the students’ poor pronunciation, lack of knowledge of characteristics of spoken language, inexperience in listening, and bad habit in learning listening From the findings of the study, some suggestions were proposed In particular, the teachers should improve their teaching method and help the students improve their English proficiency Besides, the students should study by themselves outside class She also recommended that further studies should be carried out to find out the difficulties experienced by teachers

The study by Trịnh Vinh Hiển (2013) explored the difficulties encountered by the first year- English major students at Lac Hong University The instruments used in this study was a questionnaire for the students The problems in learning listening comprehension revealed from the results of the study are limited amount of time spent

on self-study, the inappropriate strategies of the students, the listening material and the physical settings He suggested that the students should be exposed to a variety of listening and learn tips or strategies through each of their learning themselves The teachers should teach the learners the strategies and how to apply them to listening

tasks He also recommended that further studies should be conducted to find out more difficulties and listening strategies

The study by Phạm Thị Phượng (2014) investigated the problems experienced

by non- major students of English at Hai Phong Foreign Language Center The instruments used in the study were a questionnaire for the students and a semi-structured interview with the teachers The results of the study showed that the students’ limited vocabulary, poor pronunciation, anxiety, and speakers’ fast speech rate were the listening problems the students encountered She suggested solutions in the order of the stages of teaching listening skill According to her, the teachers should motivate the learners flexibly She also expected other researchers to discover more listening problems as well as realistic solutions

The studies by Lê Thị Hồng Loan (2012), Trịnh Vinh Hiển (2013), and Phạm Thị Phượng (2014) identified a number of listening problems which students in our country have encountered Also, a lot of solutions were proposed Nevertheless, the researchers believed that there would be more listening problems which needed to be discovered by future researchers This is the purpose of my study

In summary, the studies both in Vietnam and overseas mentioned above showed students’ listening problems which are related to texts, speakers, listeners, and physical settings As expected by the researchers of these studies, my thesis was conducted for the purpose of exploring more listening difficulties and practical solutions

1.2 Definitions of listening comprehension

There have been a number of definitions of listening comprehension skill and each

of which reflects its author’s own point of view The following are some representative

definitions of listening comprehension

Buck (2001: 31) defined listening comprehension as an active process in which listeners are involved in constructing meaning He emphasizes that both linguistic knowledge and non-linguistic knowledge are used to understand incoming speech by listeners It can be realized from this definition that listening comprehension is more

than hearing because listeners actively interpret what speakers say basing on their linguistic and non- linguistic knowledge

Rost (2002: 3) considered listening comprehension as a cognitive process to represent and form meaning from what speakers say According to him, meaning construction is assisted by contextual factors Moreover, listening comprehension involves establishing a negotiation in meaning (with the speaker), and giving responses Thus, listening comprehension is one integral part of communication skill

in which context plays an important role in identifying speakers’ intention

Jeon (2007: 50) stated that listening comprehension requires listeners’ capacity to

“apprehend, recognize, discriminate, or even ignore certain information” He also pointed out the factors which are necessary for listening comprehension: linguistic knowledge, personal expectation, cognitive processing skills, world knowledge and prior experience which listeners have Thus, listening comprehension depends on a variety of listeners’ sub-skills, knowledge, and experience

Nadig (2013: 1743) simply defined listening comprehension as the various processes of interpreting spoken language According to him, the processes are based

on listeners’ perception of speech sounds, comprehension of the meaning of individual words and the syntax of sentences

It can be concluded from the definitions mentioned above that listening comprehension is an active and purposeful process in which listeners try to interpret speakers’ intention and respond In other words, listening is an important skill in communication It may include interrelated activities such as receiving aural stimuli, attaching meaning to aural symbols, remembering and responding to oral communication The factors which are necessary for listening comprehension are linguistic knowledge, personal expectation, cognitive processing skills, and world knowledge

1.3 The importance of listening comprehension

Before 1960s, the role of listening comprehension in language learning was taken for granted, so teaching of listening comprehension was completely neglected Nevertheless, with a new wave of interest in the development of communicative

competence in language teaching, there came an increasing awareness of the significant role of listening Through a great number of researches, listening comprehension has been proved to play a very crucial role in human being’s communication, language learning, and second language acquisition

According to Devine (1982: 7), listening is “the primary means by which incoming ideas and information are taken in” Thus, it is obvious that listening is a receptive skill and an integral part of human being’s communication Furthermore, listening is the skill used most frequently in verbal communication In general, successful listening may involve successful communication

Hasan (2000: 138) pointed out that listening comprehension provides the right conditions for language acquisition and the development of other language skills The proficiency in speaking and pronunciation can only be perfectly achieved through listening skill

All in all, the significant role of listening comprehension skill in human being’s communication, language learning, and second language acquisition is undeniable This is the reason why teaching and learning listening comprehension skill have received more and more attention of researchers, teachers, and learners over the world

1.4 The process of listening comprehension

Prior to 1960s, listening comprehension is labeled as a passive skill However, this opinion has changed since 1980s Listening comprehension is considered as an active

and complex process which is illustrated by Anderson’s model

Anderson (1995) divided listening comprehension into three interrelated cognitive processes: perception, parsing and utilization Perceptual processing is the encoding of the acoustic or written message In particular, a person pays close attention to input and the sounds are stored in echoic memory Simultaneously, some initial analysis of the language code may start, and encoding processes may transform some of the input into meaningful representations In the second process - parsing, words are converted into a mental representation of the combined meaning of these words which can be stored in short- term memory The basic unit of the process is a proposition The third process, utilization, is composed of associating a mental

representation of the auditory meaning with existing knowledge to form schemata whose role is guiding the comprehension process If the incoming information is compatible with the schema, then the listener have succeeded in comprehending the text By contrast, either the information or the schema will be discarded or modified

In the model of Anderson (1995), the first two steps belong to bottom-up process while the third step is of top-down process

Bottom-up processing which is suitable to the way of thinking of almost people takes place in a definite order from the lowest level to the highest level In particular, phonemic units are first decoded and connected together to complete words, words are connected together to construct phrases, phrases are connected together to construct utterances, and utterances are connected together to construct a complete, meaningful text This process is closely associated with the listeners’ linguistic knowledge In fact, the processing of different types of knowledge does not occur in a fixed sequence It is quite possible to understand the meaning of a word before decoding its sounds thanks

to the knowledge of the world around us and our expectation to incoming information Top-down processing is defined as using background knowledge in comprehending the meaning of a message The listener employs prior knowledge of the context and situation within which the listening occurs to understand what he/she hears Context and situation involve things such as knowledge of the topic at hand, the speakers, and their correlation with the situation, as well as with each other and previous events However, if the information the listener hears is unfamiliar to him, it cannot evoke his schemata and he can only depend heavily on his linguistic knowledge Besides, even though the listener can trigger a schema, he might not have the suitable schema expected by the speaker Thus, only relying on top-down processing may result in the failure of comprehension

It is clear that both bottom-up process and top-down process have downsides This is the reason why another model which is interactive process is proposed When the content of the material is familiar to the listener, he will employ his background knowledge to make predictions which will be proved by the new input By contrast, if the listener is unfamiliar with the content of the listening text, he can only depend on

his linguistic knowledge, especially the lexical and syntactical knowledge to make sense of the information

In summary, listening comprehension is a very complex process in which both bottom-up and top-down process play a crucial part The researcher is quite in favor of the opinion that listening comprehension is an interactive process

1.5 Potential problems in learning listening comprehension

Listening comprehension is a challenging skill, but most foreign language learners want to acquire it Therefore, a great number of studies have been conducted to discover potential problems in learning listening comprehension This part presents some outstanding problems drawn from the researches of Ur (1984), Underwood (1989), Hung (1998), Goh (1999), Hasan (2000), Anderson and Lynch (2003), Field (2003), Vandergrift (2007), Bloomfield et al (2010), and Walker (2014)

is quite necessary

1.5.2 Familiarity of vocabulary

The research by Goh (1999) indicates that new words can interrupt learners’ listening comprehension Hung (1998) also stresses that texts with familiar words are easier for students to comprehend, even if the content is unfamiliar to them According

to him, the using of words familiar to listeners might enhance their learning interest and result in a positive effect in teaching listening

1.5.3 Difficult grammar structures

The research by Hasan (2000) reveals that difficult grammar structures cause problems for learners’ listening comprehension Listeners have difficulty in forming a mental representation from words heard Therefore, providing listeners with difficult grammar structures before listening is quite necessary

1.5.4 Pause and hesitation

Goh (1999) claims that pause is one of the features of spoken language which may pose serious problems to EFL (English as a foreign language) listeners According to Underwood (1989: 13), pauses give listeners time to think about what has been just said and to relate it to what has gone before However, long pauses which are often filled with sounds or expressions such as “Er”, “Erm” can embarrass learners

1.5.5 Redundancy

Redundancy may take the form of repititions, false starts, re-phrasings, self corrections and apparently meaningless additions such as “I mean”, “you know” Ur (1984) states that redundant phrases help listeners have extra information and time to think, so they can follow speakers Therefore, learners may have troubles with listening comprehension if speakers do not use redundant phrases

1.5.6 Psychological problems

It is undeniable that psychological factors may either facilitate or interfere with learners’ listening comprehension Some popular psychological problems in listening are: fatigue, anxiety, focus loss, uninterestedness All of these problems make listeners lose their attention which can seriously impede their comprehension (Underwood, 1989: 19)

There is a fact that learners can not concentrate when they feel tired or exhausted Some learners feel unconfident in their listening ability, thus, they become

so anxious before listening and this often makes them miss the beginning part of the text Learners also lose their concentration when they have a problem while listening

It is because they often try to understand everything they listen and feel discouraged

by their lack of success Uninteresting topics are difficult to attract listeners’ attention

1.5.7 Limited memory

Fodor, Bever, and Garette (1974) claims that listeners can hold foreign language input or words in short-term memory only long enough to organize them into clauses and to infer the meaning that they convey As a result of this, as soon as listeners have interpreted the clauses, the elements that made them up are purged from

memory to make room for incoming sounds This shows that although students are able to recognize the words, they are not able to hold them long enough in their memory and subsequently write them down

Moreover, in regard to aural process, “the sounds first go into and remain in a sensory store for a very short time” (Underwood, 1989: 2) However, because learners’ pronunciation is different from recording, it takes a lot of time for them to recognize a word while another word is arriving Therefore, they quickly forget the words or the phrases they have just heard

from the context

1.5.9 Pronunciation, intonation, stress

Bloomfield et al (2010) and Walker (2014) expressed that learners have difficulty in recognizing familiar words because the pronunciation of words in spoken language is different from one in written language

According to Vandergrift (2007) and Walker (2014), prosodic features of spoken language like weak forms and strong forms of words, stress, and intonation also impede the comprehension of oral texts

Field (2003: 329) suggests various problems in word recognition such as

"reduction, assimilation, elision, resyllabification, and cliticisation"

It can be concluded that if learners’ pronunciation, stress, and intonation are limited, it is difficult for them to recognize a familiar word

1.5.10 Failure to recognize the signals

Listeners may fail to recognize the signals, which indicate that the speaker is moving from one point to another, giving an example, or repeating a point

Underwood (1989) points out the signals in both formal and informal situations

In formal situations or lectures, the signals are discourse markers such as

“secondly”, or “then” which are comparatively evident to listeners

In informal situations or spontaneous conversations, the signals are more vague such as pauses, gestures, increased loudness, a clear change of pitch, or different intonation patterns These signals can easily be missed especially by less proficient listeners

1.5.11 Noise

Noise may be caused not only by some outside disturbance, but also by a temporary lack of attention on the part of the listener, or by the fact that a word or phrase was not understood because it was mispronounced or misused or because the listener simply do not know it (Underwood, 1989)

1.5.12 Visual clues

enhance listening comprehension They are extremely good for enhancing listeners' motivation and listeners' interests, attracting listeners' attention, organizing the input and providing predictions

1.6 Solutions to problems in learning listening comprehension skill

This part presents some solutions to potential problems in learning listening comprehension indicated in the last part The solutions are suggested by the researchers: Van Duzer (1997: 5), Hamouda (2013: 147-150), and Pourhosein & Sabouri (2016: 128-129)

1.6.1 Using schema theory in teaching listening to EFL students

Schema is a data structure for showing the general concepts stored in memory (Richards, 1990) Activating schema before listening arises learners’ expectation and specifically helps them familiarize with unfamiliar topics In order to activate learners’ schemata, teachers should provide students with the knowledge of content, situation, and speakers of the listening text Besides, learners should be told what they are going

to do based on the listening text and required to discuss what is going to be heard This not only activates learners’ schemata but also creates purpose for their listening comprehension Also, activating schemata helps our learners predict what speakers are

going to say Preliminary elicitations such as “What do you know about this topic?”,

“What could the passage be about?” are helpful for learners to make predictions

1.6.2 Pre-teaching and activating vocabulary

Pre-teaching vocabulary before listening and working on the skill of guessing vocabulary from context can help learners overcome the difficulty caused by unfamiliar words It is noticeable that learners should practice guessing meaning with the words that can actually be guessed from context Moreover, learners should work

on this skill with reading texts to achieve the much more difficult skill of guessing vocabulary and listening at the same time Pre-teaching vocabulary and guessing vocabulary from context are actually useful because whenever learners are able to relate what they have already known to what they are supposed to listen to, they are likely to listen more effectively

1.6.3 Building up learners’ vocabulary

The research by Hamouda (2013) showed that most of the students reported not

to have sufficient vocabulary in listening comprehension and some of them complained that their vocabulary was too poor to understand In addition to pre-teaching and activating vocabulary, teachers should assist learners to build up their vocabulary Moreover, teaching them how they can do the same in their own time with vocabulary lists, graded readers, monolingual dictionary use is quite necessary This solution helps learners overcome the difficulty caused by unfamiliar words

1.6.4 Providing authentic materials

Teachers should provide learners with authentic listening materials that help them understand better the natural speech spoken by native speakers Authenticity should be evident both in language and in task The language should reflect the features of spoken language such as hesitations, rephrasing, and a variety of accents This is quite difficult for listeners However, level of difficulty can be controlled by the selection of the task The difficulties caused by pauses and hesitations can be solved thanks to this solution

1.6.5 Improving learners’ pronunciation

Teachers should expose learners to the recordings which provide learners with

practices of word level exercises that deal with the practice of different sounds and sound combination which occur within single words Besides, teachers should provide sentence level exercises such as assimilation or elision, contraction, distortion of sounds within common collocations Good pronunciation ensures that learners can recognize the words which they already know

1.6.6 Encouraging prediction

Learners are required to predict what the text is about before listening or what the speaker is going to say In order to encourage learners to imagine and predict what they are going to hear, teachers should tell something about the topic of the listening text or something about the speakers Besides, the signals which indicate that the speaker moves from one point to another need to be taught to assist learners to guess what is coming next Moreover, learners can be asked to predict the grammar structures or the words that may appear in the listening text Prediction not only supports learners’ listening comprehension effectively but also helps them more self-confident and thus listen better

1.6.7 Using visual aids

Visual aids or drawn pictures and diagrams related to the listening topic should

be exploited to assist learners to guess and imagine actively Visual aids are actually effective in drawing learners’ attentions, increasing their motivation on the topic and helping them relate to the content of the text easily

1.6.8 Encouraging learners to develop listening strategies

Teachers should encourage their students to develop listening strategies

Predicting, asking for clarification, and using non-verbal cues are some examples of the strategies that improve learners’ listening comprehension ability

1.7 Summary

In this part, previous related studies and the theoretical framework for the study are presented They were the basis for the researcher to design the questionnaire and the interview questions with which the investigation of the students’ difficulties in learning listening comprehension at IQ centre was carried out

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

2.1 Restatement of the research questions

In order to find out the students’ listening problems as well as solutions to the problems, it is necessary to find the answers to the following questions:

1 What difficulties have the students encountered in learning listening comprehension at IQ centre?

2 What are the possible solutions to help the students overcome the difficulties in learning listening comprehension?

2.2 The setting of the study

The study was conducted at IQ centre which was founded in 2006 It is one of the first- rate centers in Hai Phong city It is famous for the quality of teaching English communication skills and international certificates such as Ielts, Toefl, Toeics Before enrolling in a course, students are requested to do a placement test in order to ensure that they are taught at a suitable level Most of the students joining English communication courses are at pre-intermediate or intermediate level Each class has at least ten and no more than fifteen students

English communication courses focus on teaching listening and speaking skills for students The material used for teaching and learning English communication skills is Straightforward by Philip Kerr (2006) Each lesson lasts for 90 minutes Teachers completely have the right to choose their own teaching methods as long as students feel satisfied with their learning and make progress At the end of each lesson, teachers are required to report the situation of the lesson in an available form and hand in the centre

2.3 Participants

2.3.1 Students

The study was carried out with the participation of 45 students of all three English communication classes at pre-intermediate level at IQ center Some of them are students from different universities, colleges, or vocational schools in and around Hai Phong city Some of them are engineers, businessmen who are working in foreign

companies Some of them are students who will go abroad Therefore, their motivation for learning English is quite great

2.3.2 Teachers

The study was conducted with the participation of 3 female teachers of the three English communication classes All of them have obtained MA degrees in English teaching methodology They have over 5 years of experience in teaching English All

of them are enthusiastic and willing to help students

2.4 Research types

The study employs survey research to explore the difficulties in the students’ listening comprehension and suggest solutions The research goals are achieved by means of both quantitative and qualitative data The qualitative data (interviews with both teachers and students) was obtained after the quantitative data collection to have a more accurate and deeper interpretation of the results

2.5 Data collection instruments

The instruments used in the study were questionnaire for the students and structured interviews with both the teachers and the students

semi-2.5.1 Questionnaire

The survey questionnaire was used to find out the students’ difficulties in learning listening comprehension as well as solutions from their points of view It was designed after a review of the literature (Penny Ur, 1984; Mary Underwood, 1989; Van Duzer, 1997; Hung, 1998; Goh, 1999; Hasan, 2000; Anderson and Lynch, 2003; Field, 2003; Vandergrift, 2007; Bloomfield et al, 2010; Hamouda, 2013; Walker, 2014; and Gilakjani & Sabouri, 2016) In order to avoid unnecessary misunderstanding and confusion from the respondents, the questionnaire was translated into Vietnamese for the students in the most suitable way The researcher used a scale of frequency: “Never”, “Seldom”, “Sometimes”, “Often”, and “Always”

to identify the difficulties which the students have encountered The questionnaire for the students consisted of 20 closed- ended items

Questions 1, 2, 3: survey the students’ perspectives of listening difficulties related to texts

Questions 4, 5: explore the students’ perspectives of listening difficulties related to speakers

Questions 6, 7, 8, 9, 10: define the students’ perspectives of listening difficulties related to listeners’ psychology

Question 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17: recognize the students’ perspectives of listening difficulties related to listeners’ listening competence

Question 18, 19: identify the students’ perspectives of listening difficulties related to physical setting

Question 20: find out the solutions from the students’ points of view

2.5.2 Interviews

In order to find out the root of the students’ listening problems, a list of interview questions for both the teachers and the students was made on the basis of the results of the questionnaire The semi-structured interviews with the students aimed to investigate how the difficulties revealed from the questionnaire affected their listening comprehension and whether there are any other difficulties Also, the interviews with the students helped the researcher explore the reasons behinds their listening problems There were three interview questions for the students The semi-structured interviews with the teachers were carried out to obtain data on the teachers’ listening teaching and find out the reasons behind the difficulties encountered by the students as well as the solutions There were five interview questions for the teachers All of the interviews were carried out in Vietnamese to help the interviewees express their opinions more easily and exactly The interviews were recorded under the permission of the interviewees The interviews were conducted in a following week after processing the questionnaire for the students

2.6 Data collection procedures

2.6.1 Questionnaires

The questionnaire was delivered to 45 students belonging to 3 English communication classes at the centre The data collection procedure from the questionnaire was carried out in the same way in the three classes First, the purpose of the questionnaire and the way of doing it were presented to the students Then, all of

the questions were explained to the students in Vietnamese in case of their misunderstanding of the questions resulting in valueless answers The students listened

to the researcher’s explanation and filled in the questionnaire simultaneously After 20 minutes, the questionnaire was collected by the researcher herself

2.6.2 Interviews

To verify the results of the questionnaire and get better insights into the research questions, the researcher conducted semi-structured interviews with the three teachers of the three classes and ten students randomly selected from these classes Basing on the results of the questionnaire, the researcher drafted the interview questions The one-on-one interviews were carried out at the centre The interviews were recorded with the permission of the interviewees The recordings of the interviews were transcribed for the purpose of analyzing

2.7 Data analysis methods

To avoid inconsistency or possible biases, the data obtained from the questionnaire and the interviews was organized and analyzed by the researcher alone While the data obtained from the questionnaire was analyzed quantitatively, the data

collected from the interviews was analyzed qualitatively The researcher took

advantage of the software Microsoft Excel to calculate the percentages of listening problems and then display the quantitative data in forms of charts and tables The qualitative method was based on the interviews The researcher recorded, transcribed the interviews, then analyzed key words, phrases or main ideas to find out the reasons behind the listening problems as well as solutions

2.8 Summary

This chapter describes the research methods considered as the guidelines for the researcher to follow in order to answer the research questions raised in the first chapter

CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS

3.1 Questionnaire

3.1.1 Learners’ perceptions of listening difficulties related to texts

A listening text with an unfamiliar topic, unfamiliar words, or difficult grammar structures may hamper learners’ listening comprehension The following chart reveals

how these factors interferes with the students’ listening comprehension at IQ centre

Figure 1: Learners’ perceptions of their listening difficulties related to texts

It can be realized from the above chart that unfamiliar topics and unfamiliar words hindered the students’ listening comprehension most Approximately two third

of the students (66.67%) responded that they often or always had troubles with a text whose topic is unfamiliar The great majority of the students (73.81%) reported that unfamiliar words of a text negatively often or always affected their listening comprehension Difficult grammar structures also caused problems for the students, but just less than half of the students (45.23%) admitted this

In general, the above results indicate that the two big problems pertaining to texts which the students have encountered are unfamiliar words and unfamiliar topics

3.1.2 Learners’ perceptions of difficulties related to speakers

Speakers may pose listening problems to learners in the case that they use few redundant phrases such as “I mean”, “you know” or often hesitate and pause The

Figure 2: Learners’ perceptions of their listening difficulties related to speakers

As it can be seen from the above chart, just 23.81% of the students were aware that they often or always had problems with a text which is full of hesitations and pauses This result may be due to the two reasons The first reason is that the students may not have a lot of experiences in listening to a text whose speakers often hesitate and pause Therefore, they did not have not enough perception of this problem The second reason is that this factor actually could not impede the students’ listening comprehension

Similarly, just around one tenth of the students (11,9%) found listening comprehension difficult if a text lacks redundant phrases such as “I mean” or “you know” This means that such redundant phrases hardly support the students’ listening comprehension

In summary, both of the factors pertaining to speakers had little negative influence on students’ listening comprehension

3.1.3 Learners’ perceptions of difficulties related to listeners

A great number of factors related to listeners may hinder students’ listening comprehension These factors may be categorized into the two groups: listening difficulties related to learners’ listening competence and ones related to learners’ psychology