the difficulties of english listening skill encountered by employees in the cennos company in viet nam

This study of “An investigation into the difficulties in English listening skillsencountered by employees in the Cennos Company” was conducted to analyzespecific listening English skills

This study of “An investigation into the difficulties in English listening skillsencountered by employees in the Cennos Company” was conducted to analyzespecific listening English skills required by the employees, to investigate the needs

of the employees on English communication in their careers And it is special onEnglish listening skills and their difficulties of English listening, then todetermining the English training needs to improve listening skills

The research instrument used in the survey is a questionnaire consisting of fiveparts: background information of the respondent, English background of therespondent, the necessity of using English listening skills in their career, the needs

of listening skills for English communication skills improvement, the difficultieswhen learning the listening skills and the respondent’s opinions and suggestions.The sample group used in this research consisted of 50 Vietnamese employeesworking in Competitive Intelligence English team at the Phuong Chi softwarelimited company (PCSC), which is the agency of Cennos company in Viet Nam.The questionnaire was distributed to the employees of the team that were the mostrelevant to this study during February 2018, and the data were collected andanalyzed by using SPSS

The results of the study indicated that English listening skills and thedifficulties of the listening skills were problems faced by Vietnamese employees atthe Cennos, individually the listening skills in English communications situation atworkplace Therefore, the respondents need to improve all communication skills,particularly in the listening skills The organization should give the employees thetraining courses focusing on all communication skills, especially the listening skillsand the content of the subject that makes them more efficient, productive, andincentive to improving listening skills of the employees by themselves

This study could not have been accomplished without the encouragement andassistance of many help of many people I would like to take this opportunity toexpress my deepest gratitude to all who have made great contributions to this study

I would like to express my deep gratitude to my teacher MA Pham Thi ToLoan for her guidance, enthusiastic encouragement and useful critiques of thisresearch work I would also like to thank my roommate for her advice andassistance in keeping my progress on schedule

I wish to thank various people for their contribution to this study

Special thanks should be given to member of Competitive Intelligence English(CIE) team who help in collecting the data all the technicians who helped inhanding the instruments I would also like to thank them who were the respondents

in my study, for their kind cooperation in answering the questionnaires

To my Quality Assurance - M.s Hue and my leader- M.s My, thanks for all oftheir whole-hearted support, and encouragement

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT i

TABLE OF CONTENTS iii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS v

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES vi

CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY 1

1.1 Rationale 1

1.2 Previous studies 2

1.3 Aims of the study 5

1.4 Scope of the study 5

1.5 Research methodology 5

1.6 Organization of the study 6

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 7

2.1 Overview of listening skill 7

2.1.1 Definition of listening skill 7

2.1.2 The relationship between listening and other language skills in International English Language 8

2.1.3 The importance of listening skill 9

2.1.4 The importance of English and listening in English at workplace 12

2.1.5 Types of listening skills 13

2.2 The difficulties of English listening skill 15

2.2.1 The difficulties of using English listening strategies 15

2.2.2 Factors that affect learning English listening skills 18

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH FINDINGS 21

3.1 Data collection instruments 21

3.1.2 Data collection procedures 21

3.2 Data analysis and discussion 22

3.2.1 Employees’ real situations of learning English listening skill in working environment 22

CHAPTER 4 SUGGESTIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 30

CONCLUSION 33 REFERENCE

QUESTIONNAIRE IN ENGLISH

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

CIE Competitive Intelligence English

QAS Quality Assurance Specialist

SPSS the Statistical Package for Social Sciences ESL English as a Second language

EFL English as a Foreign Language

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

CHARTS

Table 1 Gender 22

Chart 1 Age 23

Chart 2 Level of education 23

Chart 3 Working position 24

Chart 4 Period of working in the company 24

Chart 5 English proficiency 25

Chart 6 Point for what necessity of listening English Skills 27

Chart 7 The frequency of some common problems 28

CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY

1.1 Rationale

Language is a communication tool that is important and necessary, especiallyEnglish Nowadays, English is the most popular language tool in the world As aglobal language, English is used in many countries like their mother tongue andtheir second or foreign language Communication by English is very important to allorganizations or business as well as Cennos Company in Viet Nam A businesscannot offer a good service if it does not communicate efficiently in English Andabsolutely, everything is meaningless when they could not understand what theircustomer are saying, and do not understand their needs

When learning English, most people learn reading and writing first Thenlearning listening and speaking skills are so difficult, especially employees whohave big used communicate skills necessary but without time to learns In Cennos, it

is a limited software company which situated in Dublin, California, USA and theagency in 22- Thanh Cong- Ba Dinh -Ha Noi Cennos provides a complete solutionfor customer’s e- commerce business, including management and analytics of theirpay-per-click advertising campaigns Co-operate with the foreign customer,example is some shopping online web in USA, the EU, or in the world, likeWayfair.com, Amazon.com, Walmart.com, etc It is the most important thing foremployees to fluently use English, especially listening skills to communicate withthem

Having three-month internship in Competitive Intelligence English (CIE)team, the author realized that the biggest problem of practicing English in theworkplace is listening skills Because employees cannot understand the customers,they cannot speak anything to introduce about the products for them understand.Employees have good email writing skills but the face- to- face communication isnot able to do They show their confusion, shyness This is the reason why thecompany misses many opportunities in business And the author chose the topic:

“the difficulties of English listening skill encountered by employees in the Cennoscompany in Viet Nam” Up to this point, the author hopes that this study can help

deal with problems that employees have with listening and improve their listeningskill as well as communication skill in English.

1.2 Previous studies

“A study of needs of staff’s English communication skills: a case study of anelectronic company” by Chiyanasit from Srinakharinwirot University Thailand.Following this study, those in the roles of Buyer, Planner, and ProgramAdministration Management frequently use English communication skills in theirworkplace, when interacting with both staff in other departments and English-speaking customers The most common deficits they had noticed in terms of Englishcommunication skill were listening problems, especially understanding foreignaccents; speaking problems, particularly the use of broken English and word-for-word translations, etc The staff in production office agreed that the most difficultiesskill to learning was listening Listening skill is listened what customers’ needs Inaddition, they also revealed their lacks of English communication skills that themost lack English communication was listening skills For lack of listening skills,they encountered with listening English conversation via phone They could notunderstand so speaking is difficult

This study showed that the similarities between staffs’ and managers’perception for English communication lack understanding English conversation viaphone, negotiating for mutual understanding, understanding customer forecasts, andwriting business letters in appropriate formats in English In term the differencesbetween staff’s and managers’ perception among necessities, lacks, and learningneeds, staffs proposed that the English course should be emphasized onconversation, while mangers believed that the English course should be the equallyemphasized on four skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing

With study: “Many Malaysians difficulty communicating in English in theworkplace, especially when it comes to business-related matters” (Aniza-2016) Hepointed out that perception on oral communication skills play a crucial role at theworkplace in Malaysia And the perception of the workers clearly reported that theyoften face problems speaking fluently and speaking in front of an audience.Moreover, he said that the ability to listen was the most important of all

communication skills in any organization and states It is problems involving thelistening skill at workplaces All of that because of tendency at times for sameexecutives, supervisors and workers to talk more and fail to listen and notcomprehend the notions of listening and hearing is That’s all right in Viet Nam Weare ESL worker together And he suggested that when it came to business-relatedmatter, as a worker we had to face and overcome a few obstacles within ourselveswhich is called insecurity in believing one’s ability, it improve the difficultycommunicating in English in the workplace.

“Needs analysis for English communication skills of employees at HSBC inThailand” by Sirikanya Luankanokrat of Thammasat University Bangkok, Thailand(March 2011)

The results of the study indicated that every language skill: listening,speaking, reading, and writing were problems faced by Thai employees at HSBC,especially the listening skills The most necessary skill that the respondents used intheir career was reading and the least essential skill was listening and speaking.Therefore, the respondents need to improve all communication skills Over a billionpeople speak English at least a basic level In Thailand, English has been accepted

as an international or foreign language And Viet Nam is too The success in careersdepends more or less on the capacity of English Differences in background may beone of the most difficult communication barriers to overcome Age, gender,education, social status, economic position, temperament, religion, popularity andpolitical belief can separate one person from another and make understandingdifficult According to the study, most of the respondents thought their listeningskill is the most serious problem (40%), followed by speaking (30%), writing(26,7%) and reading (3,3) And the causes of their listening problems were the mostserious problem in listening in their career (61,3%), followed by the inability tounderstand technical terms (45,3%), the inability to remember the entireinformation (46,6%), the inability to understand slang, idiomatic expressions, orcolloquialisms (44%) and the incapability of translating words or sentences (20%).And the authors showed that the level of listening skills necessary is 89 %,very necessary level, talking with customers and meeting in English is moderately

necessary About 50.7% of the respondents would like to improve their listeningskill in pronunciation, followed by 47.3% in comprehension The rest ofrespondents would like to improve in vocabulary (45.3%) and grammar (30%)respectively From the finding, the author showed that unfamiliarity with foreignaccents and pronunciation was the major difficulty that caused their Englishlistening problems The second problem was that were unable to understandtechnical terms and unable to remember the entire information The respondentsthought that they were incapable of translating words and sentences

A competitive employment market requires good communication skills inworkplaces Workplaces need good communication skills especially in Englishlanguage as it plays an essential role in all over the world Competence in theEnglish language often becomes as a decisive factor in securing a wellpaid job(Casale & Posel, 2011) Carliner (2000) and Leslie and Lindley (2001) reveal thatweak grasp in the language may lead to loss in an organization Thus, it is apparentthat good proficiency is needed for one to secure a job, especially in themanagement team

Needs Analysis on the Importance of English Language Skills for Workplace:Trainee Architects (P Thivilojana, 2015) Proficiency in English therefore, is vitalfor future employees in order to move forward in both local and internationalcompanies and to develop their technical knowledge and skills It offers afoundation for problem-solving and critical thinking skills that are essential to copewith the swiftly changing environment of the global workplace, one where Englishplays a vital role as highlighted by Ornstein & Hunkins (1993) One interestingfinding of this study is that it highlights the discrepancy between students’perception of their language competency and of their instructor However, thestudents also mentioned the importance of English language, particularly speakingand listening, in their daily communication and workplace tasks These skills canspecifically assist them in writing reports, giving presentations confidently,avoiding miscommunication, making them more eligible for jobs, socializing withothers and getting more friends Thus, language courses should put more emphasis

on oral and aural skills in order for the university to be able to make these trainees

more marketable Based on observations and instructors’ feedback, it can beconcluded that these architect trainees require English language proficiency to carryout their official tasks efficiently As reflected in the findings, English isindisputably the medium of communication in the field of architecture Theseresults appear to be an echo of the architect trainees at a private higher learninginstitution have accepted about their abilities and lacks They are not only conscious

of their proficiency in the language, but they are also capable to identify necessaryoutcomes about their capability of usage of English language at work place.Therefore, we are in a position to claim that the Architect trainees are still to be inneed for more training in the language so as to improve their ability in speaking,writing and listening The architect trainees consequently must heighten theirlanguage abilities and skills not only to provide excellent service but also be able tocompete globally as English is an international language

1.3 Aims of the study

The study aims to help employees of the competitive intelligence English(CIE) team in Cennos company improving their English listening skills, havingbetter English communication skills The author shows difficulties in Englishlistening skills encountered by employees in the CIE team

In this study, the author suggested some solutions to help the employees havebetter listening skills and more confidence in the workplace Moreover, the author hopes that the employees will have more promotion opportunities in their career by

English skills fluently.

1.4 Scope of the study

This study focuses on finding the difficulties in English listening skillsencountered by 50 employees in Competitive Intelligence English team who work

on 5th floor the first facility in 22 Thanh Cong-Ba Dinh - Ha Noi of the Cennoscompany

1.5 Research methodology

To get the finally findings for this study, the author used some followingresearch methors:

- The questionnaire: included 23 questions about some personal informationand their difficulties when learning and using English listening skills in theworkplace.

- The research object: 50 members of CIE team of Cennos company

- The research subject: the difficulties of English listening skills encountered

by 50 employees in CIE team

- The researchers distribute questionnaire for staff and leader team After that,the questionnaires were revised based on comments and suggestions from experts inEnglish Then the results from questionnaires were checked for reliability utilizing.The questionnaires were edited to fit the actual test before used

1.6 Organization of the study

The study consists of four parts: Overview of the study, Literature review,Research findings, Recommendations and Suggestions

- Chapter I: Overview of the study: Included introduce the rationale, Previousstudies, Arms of the study, Scope of the study, Research methodology andorganization of the study

- Chapter II: Literature review: Some literature knowledge about listeningskills and difficulty of English listening skills:

- Chapter III: Research findings: Finding out the difficulties of listening skillsencountered by employees in working and communicate with the customers andtheir American supervisors This chapter presents the results of the study Thesection reports the findings of the questionnaire of listening difficulties

- Chapter IV: Recommendations and Suggestions: Give out some suggestions

to help improve listening skills for employees in CIE team, and more are allemployees in the Cennos company

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Overview of listening skill

2.1.1 Definition of listening skill

Listening is the act of hearing attentively In workplace, we spend 45% of ourtime on listening, after reading and before speaking, writing skills Thomlison(1984) defined as, “Active listening, which is very important for effectivecommunication”, “More than just hearing and to understand and interpret themeaning of a conversation” Listening skill get you a successful in workplace,family and in the society Good listening skill is the main factor to get into aprofession in communications, management, planning, sales, etc Listening skill isthe understanding ability and good body language

Followed L.Worthington , we know that listening is to give one’s attention tosound or action Listening involves complex affective, cognitive, and behavioralinclude the motivation to attend to others; cognitive processes include attending to,understanding, receiving, and interpreting content and relational messages; andbehavioral processes include responding with verbal and nonverbal feedback.” And

we can see that listening differs from obeying A person who receives andunderstands information or an instruction, and then chooses not to comply with it or

to agree to it, has listening to the speaker, even though the result is not what thespeaker wanted Listening is a term in which the listener listens to the one whoproduced the sound to the listened

And from Tuck (1925), an analysis of the impressions results fromconcentration where an effort of will is required Rankin (1926) said that listening isthe ability to understand spoken language And Bostrom (1989) showed that theprocess of receiving, attending to, and assigning meaning to aural stimuli was hislistening definitions

According to Stephen, Lucas, listening doesn’t mean we do not hearing, theysaid that: “It involves the vibration of sound ware on our eardrums and the firing ofelectro-chemical impulses from the inner ear to the central auditory system of the

brain, but listening involves paying close attention to, and making sense of, what wehear.” (Stephen, Lucas, 1998,56)

With Hamilton, 1999, he said that: “Hearing is with the ears, listening is withthe mind” Hearing is just hear the sound by your ears, but listening is understoodthe meaning of sense through words and contexts

The early history of the listening field and the drive to develop a single,mutually agreeable definition influenced the nature and type of research that wasconducted by scholars

Individuals’ views about listening and their barriers to attending to others canhave profound effects on comprehension and understanding as well as successes forpersonal, professional, and relational success Listening behaviors are actions such

as eye contact and asking questions that it pay attention and interest to others

2.1.2 The relationship between listening and other language skills in International English Language.

Listening is the basic bricks and mortar of a language acquisition Thecorrelation between audio skill with other language systems – speaking, reading andwriting as well as overall test of 4 skills performance is significant Despite a closerelationship between aural/oral skills in nature, the correlation between listening andreading, however, was stronger than listening and speaking skill performance.Writing is the last skill learned by first and second language learners However, thecorrelation between listening and writing performance is very close to that of thecorrelation between listening and speaking Thus, reading, due to its commoncomprehension features with listening had the highest correlation score

Given that I found many studies showing the multiple influences of listening

in primary and secondary language learning, the outcome of this study points outthat listening performance have a large correlation with EFL proficiency.Emphasizing the relationship between listening and writing skill – one startsacquiring listening at birth but writing acquisition starts at school age in firstlanguage, the EFL test result confirms the core of a study discussion about theimpact of listening skill instruction on writing development The multiplecorrelations in the current study focused on one dependent variable – listening and

three independent variables – speaking, reading and writing as well as overallperformance accounting for interrelationship of the independent variables Thisresult is remarkably high to consider the importance of listening skill in EFLclassrooms Researcher suggested three essential roles listening plays to improvespeaking skill Rost maintained that spoken language provides a means ofinteraction for the learner This is because learners must interact to achieveunderstanding, and access to speakers of the language is essential

Totally, we have the relationship between listening and other EFL skills –speaking, reading and writing as well as overall performance in the InternationalEnglish Language Testing System The significant positive correlations I foundbetween listening and other language skills are particularly strong within the context

of EFL providing evidence that listening skill matters even in situation whereEnglish is not the primary language Closely aligned with the finding, there is a verystrong body of support for syllabus designers and English language instructors toframe the domain of listening skill attention in the classroom instruction Eventhough this study provided a focus on EFL listening relationship with otherlanguage skills without examining the impact of EFL listening skill instruction, theresults are strong enough to guarantee further research looking at the impact oflearning strategy on EFL language proficiency

2.1.3 The importance of listening skill

Listening skill is a technique used for understanding, what is being said, how

is showed by body language, what is it meaning A person who controls is mind andpractices attentive listening will be successful in life and his career It is a skill thateveryone needs to work at harder than others skills To have a fluently Englishspeaker, you need to develop strong listening skills Good listening skill is not onlyhelpful to you understand what people are saying, but also help you to speak clearlylike native speaker And it helps you learn how to pronounce words properly, how

to use intonation, where to place stress in words and sentences, and whatever youlearn in reading, writing skills After that, using all of what you learned intospeaking action Listening is ability to identify and understand the sentences

through understanding your accent, pronunciation, grammar and meeting itsmeaning.

According to Rost (1994), he showed a particular list of components to masterwhen dealing with listening skill: discriminating between sounds, recognizingwords, identifying stressed words and grouping of words, identifying functions(such as apologizing ) in conversations, connecting linguistic cues to paralinguisticcues (intonation and stress) and to non-linguistic cues (gestures and relevant objects

in the situation) in order to construct meaning, using background knowledge andcontext to predict and then to confirm meaning, giving appropriate feed back to thespeaker, reformulate what the speaker has said

Listening is one of the most fundamental pieces of learning and teachingEnglish In order to be successful in listening, learners should come up with somestrategies such as taking notes during listening, making practice, or having methodsfor feeling themselves relaxed during listening Some reports that listening comesthrough four variables; the message, the speaker, the listener and the physicalsetting That’s why when there is listening in problems, we may seem hard to findout the real factors as there are a lot of factors which can easily affect theperformance of listening

Listening is vital not only in language learning but also in dailycommunication You know that listening skill is very important but you do notknow the reason why it is The first reason, listening is an active process Even you

do not say anything, you are so tired when you go home after a social event inanother language One solution is to employ active listening techniques, to remindyourself and others that you are involved in the conversation even if you do notspeak so much In every time when you make eye contact with the person who’stalking, lean forward slightly to show interest, nod your head slightly to show youare understanding, make agreeing noise and nod your head if you agree withsomething you are heard, and do not look distracted by fidgeting, playing with yourphone or looking off into the distance, it is show that you are actively listening.And the second reason, do you know about the “Silent Period”? The problemwith trying to speak from the beginning is that a period of silent listening can

actually the huge beneficial As beginners, we are thinking so much about what weshould say next that we do not fully experience what the other person has said.Allowing yourself to be silent lets you get the most from listening With silentperiod, we can benefit both the motivation of speaking and the listening benefits.

The third reason, our brain is a foreign language goldfish Reports said that

“When we listen to someone talking, our brain starts processing the information by

“segmenting” it into small chunks to store in our short-term memory It splits them

up based on our knowledge of the “rules” for how the language is spoken Instead

of storing the actual words “a green goldfish,” our brain would maybe convert thosewords into an image of a green goldfish for storage” Therefor listening helps usbecome familiar with those segmentation rules and improve our speaking in thelanguage It will be easier to learn them when we get lots of listening practice.The fourth reason, our listening strategies are upside-down When beginning

to learn a language, we often listened to a tape and then translated what we hadheard It is called a bottom-up listening strategy When learning by bottom-uplistening, we carefully listen to each word, pronoun and sentence structure to workout what has been said But in real situation in workplace, it is very difficult to do.And we have top-down listening strategies focus on concepts By top-downlistening, we just need understand of what’s being said

Top-down listening strategies focus on concepts Bottom-up listeningstrategies focus on words Both are necessary to be an effective listener

It basically means that you learn a little about the spoken topic beforehand.Here are a few suggestions for implementing a top-down listening strategy for somecommon activities:

If you’re going to see a movie or theater played in a foreign language, read thestory first Read up on the topic before going to see a presentation Try readingabout or predicting the content of an audio passage before you listen to it This willget your brain focusing on concepts and not just specific words Hang about with afriend who repeats the same anecdote when with different people You alreadyknow the story, so your comprehension will go up dramatically It’s also a greatway to make a potentially annoying situation into a useful learning exercise

2.1.4 The importance of English and listening in English at workplace.

Advances in technology, including vastly improved telecommunications andthe rapid expansion of online resources, have cemented the unique role of English

as an international language Even where nonnative speakers of English outnumbernative speakers, English is most often used as an efficient means to communicate.Furthermore, in the global workplace, English has become an essentialcommunication tool in conducting business transactions

Good communication, of course, involves both give and take or in the words

of language experts both productive and receptive language skills Today, teaching approaches focus on building the learner’s ability to engage in real-lifesituations and tasks in the target language The English speaker must be able to bothtake a phone call and answer the speaker; to write an e-mail and understand thereply; to conduct research and recommend a course of action; in short, to integratelistening, reading, speaking and writing, in any combination, in order tocommunicate successfully It is time for us to look more closely at the day-to-dayneeds of our English-language learners the need to understand and use English ineveryday activities, to carry out routine social interactions, and to develop career-related communication skills

language-In some cases, the situation may require only two language skills onereceptive (listening or reading) and one productive (speaking or writing) In mostothers, the English user must integrate all four skills of speaking, listening, writingand reading Only rarely are skills used in isolation

The manual explicitly remarks that graduate engineers should be equippedwith “the ability to communicate effectively” thus showing that communication isone of the key attributes to be attained by engineering undergraduates in order tobecome successful engineers

And in his opinion, this is especially important in spelling Vocabulary should

be consistent, but with the influence of television and varied sources of learningEnglish, it can be forgiven if you’re writing in British English and you say

‘highway’ instead of ‘motorway’ However, spelling is a bit more important andnoticeable, so don’t go mixing ‘colours’ and ‘colors’, or ‘analysing’

and ‘analyzing’ He suggested that it would come across as unsure and unchecked.

If you’re unsure, a very quick internet search will iron out any doubts But youshould not do it any times, the better thing is which listening an example of wordsand spelling followed it After that, let try to use more and more as you can incommunication

2.1.5 Types of listening skills

In our daily lives we are faced with many different situations which requiredifferent types of listening skills Then, we have so many different ways to classifylistening into different types of listening practice Following to ESOL teachers, wehave intensive listening, extensive listening, selective listening, interactive listening,responsive listening, and autonomous listening Another person, Evdokia Karavas,Copyright National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, thought that having 2types of listening: participatory listening, non-participatory listening Participatorylistening is included interactional (for the purpose of engaging in social rituals), andtransactional (for the purpose exchanging information) Another type of listening isnon-participatory listening It includes listening to live conversations without takingpart, listening to announcements to extract information, listening to or watchingfilms, plays, radio and songs where the purpose is enjoyment, following instructions

in order to carry out a task efficiently, attending a lecture or following a lesson,listening to someone give a public address

And more details, Target study Education Knowledge Career, the researchersdivided into 12 types of listening Firstly, active listening, it is a type of listeningwherein the listener is attentive towards what the speaker is saying It helps thelistener understand the emotions, which the words are expressing Active listening

is not only listening to what is being said, but also listening to what is unspoken.When the speaker is not comfortable in taking a direct manner, active listeninghelps us understand some cues without words

Next, appreciative listening is a type of listening where one accepts andappreciates the other person through what they say For examples, you are listening

to something for pleasure, such as music

Then, casual listening is listening without showing much attention This type

is not to particular purpose We do not pay much attention to the information, notlisten carefully Everything that we hear is very hard to remember for details all ofthe content We just remember a part which is interested us And comprehension oflistening, or some other names are content listening, informative listening or fulllistening In this type, listeners just remember important words and remove lessimportant words from a long speech

With critical listening, a listening performed to evaluate, judge, form opinionabout what is being said The key is to try to understand the person beforeevaluating

And dialogic listening, a type of listening where a listener hears a conversationand engages in interchange of ideas and information in order to learn more aboutthe person and how they think

About discriminative listening, when the listener discriminates betweendifferent sound and sights, it is a type of listening skill that listener is trying to hearsomething specific As a person from one country finds out that it is difficult tospeak another language perfectly The learner can see the changes of speaker’s rate,volume, force, pitch, and emphasis, and even nuances of difference in meaning.Another type is empathetic listening It is a type of listening where listenerunderstands the speaker’s concern or loss with a rational approach This kind oflistening is often used in customer service where profits for the business andacknowledge the customer’s emotions is noticed

Sympathetic listening and listening skill used to show care for the speaker andacknowledging his sorrows in a sympathetic way This type of listening skill is used

in sympathetic conversations, and police communicate situation It is the importantsocial skills

Last, it is therapeutic listening Therapeutic listening means that the listenerhas a purpose of not only empathizing with the speaker but also to use this deepconnection in order to help the speaker understand, change or develop in some way

We can meet this kind of listening be used by sellers, marketing sellers, medical

personnel, coaches, the psychologist, and when we listen to our friends or otherrelationships.

Listening skill have many types We use a different type of listening in asituation which it is needed

2.2 The difficulties of English listening skill.

2.2.1 The difficulties of using English listening strategies.

Listening ability is one of the important skills in foreign language learning.Among four language skills, researches show that listening skill is employed mostfrequently Therefore, strategies for listening and the ability to use them effectivelyare particularly significant in language learning

The findings indicated that most learners were still unable to apply thestrategies properly in EFL listening and needed guidance from instructors

About pre-listening planning Strategies, well-prepared pre-listening strategiescan help build up confidence and facilitate listening comprehension Andpreviewing the questions before the text was helpful to the learner’s comprehension.However, for learners, their lack of knowledge of grammar and vocabulary woulddefinitely affect their listening comprehension, and thus reduced their confidence.You need list the new vocabulary on the board and offered the pictures to help thelearners predict the listing questions Nevertheless, researchers considered that pre-teaching vocabulary before listening might negatively influenced the learner’sstrategy using because the learners might focus on clues and not pay attention tounderstand the whole content

And while listening, most learners were aware that they did not concentrate onlistening, and correct it immediately However, the speakers’ accent, stress andspeed would influence their mind Most of the listeners confused about what theyheard because of speakers’ accents There were 66.25% of learners influenced bythe contents In Vietnam, majority of the listening materials are recorded inAmerican accents; however, as English is an international language used by variety

of nations around the world Comparatively, learners showed low interests if theywere willing to check the parts they didn’t understand and did not often checkagain their answers when they finished the test either As different types of

materials can cause different barriers for variety of listeners, 87.5% of learnersthought news was the most difficult listening materials while 85% of learnerssuppose short conversation was somewhat easier In this statement, learners werenot used to look over their answers again Some possible explanation might resultfrom their losing patience, out of time etc Yet, researchers suggested that teachersshould provide “a variety of text, tasks, strategies, and overt practices in order tohelp listeners develop that unique compound that is most effective for them asindividuals.”

In the post-listening Evaluation Strategies, the results demonstrated that mostlearners found out the problems by checking the key words and contents Theydidn’t understand However, for the further study of looking up the words in thedictionary, we found that learners showed their conservative attitude in it

For, post-listening evaluation strategies, having a large lexicon could helpEFL learners improve their listening comprehension Most of the listeners hadproblems of poor vocabulary When they heard some words they could not figureout, they would feel confused How to expand the vocabulary was an importantissue in language learning In research, it indicated that most subjects looked up theunknown vocabulary in the dictionary Yet, almost half of the subjects did not look

up the unknown vocabulary in the dictionary Actually, many people are used to theways of acquiring information from teachers instead of self-searching It is essentialfor instructors to stimulate learners’ learning autonomy in problem-solving whiledesigning instruction

Cognitive formal practicing strategies, in this category of evaluating learners’cognitive translation, most learners can utilize the new words, phrases, or grammar

to comprehend the content in the article and they like to translate words orsentences into Vietnamese in order to understand However, while asking learnerts

if they will practice actively in daily lives, not so many persons show their strongmotivation in learning listening comprehension The data indicated that 86.4% ofthem accessed their listening ability by their teachers’ pronunciation of vocabulary,and phrases or oral reading of sentences and passages, and only 28.7% of thelearners practiced listening through audiotapes The result illustrated that most

learners only studied in the English classroom, and were lack of passion to utilizeany facilities around them to improve their listening comprehension Learners coulduse the authentic text to practice their listening skill, and build their confidence infuture real conversation with foreigners Nevertheless, the authentic materials such

as the real dialogues in videos are different from reading textbooks used in theclassroom They usually talk in faster speed, linking sounds, different accents andfull of words with different meanings Learners tended to be panic in listened thereal materials since authentic materials were faster in speaking speed After all,instead of giving listening tests, the instructor might consider to create an authenticand friendly listening environment for promoting learners’ learning motivation.And, the bottom-up strategies tend to understand the details such as words orphrases of the content It seems that listeners like to put details together tounderstand what the sentences mean, especially notice the information of who, how,when, where, and what , piece things together from the details , try to understandeach word , judge the meaning based on the speaker’s stress, intonation and pitch However, the skills of repeating words or phrases softly or mentally arecomparatively not used by most learners Actually, for applying of bottom-upprocessing, it is necessary to learn how to break the content down into itscomponents and combine together However, learners need a large vocabulary andgood working knowledge of sentence structure to process texts bottom-up.Traditionally, the exercises of dictation, cloze listening, the use of multiple-choicequestions after the texts etc are applied to process the bottom-up strategy Richards(2008) pointed out that the recognition of key words, transition in a discourse,grammatical relationships between elements in sentences, and use stress, intonation

to identify word and sentence functions were the essential elements in processingbottom-up strategy

Moreover, about top-down strategies, top-down skills are also essentialstrategies in listening comprehension The results indicated that most learners weregood at applying guessing the meaning based on the context but not familiar withtrying to think in English instead of Vietnamese Other top-down skills were applied

by learners in improving their listening comprehension For example, predicting or