(Luận văn thạc sĩ) Những yếu tố ảnh hưởng đến khả năng nghe hiểu của học sinh lớp 8 tại một trường Trung học cơ sở Thái Nguyên

(Luận văn thạc sĩ) Những yếu tố ảnh hưởng đến khả năng nghe hiểu của học sinh lớp 8 tại một trường Trung học cơ sở Thái Nguyên(Luận văn thạc sĩ) Những yếu tố ảnh hưởng đến khả năng nghe hiểu của học sinh lớp 8 tại một trường Trung học cơ sở Thái Nguyên(Luận văn thạc sĩ) Những yếu tố ảnh hưởng đến khả năng nghe hiểu của học sinh lớp 8 tại một trường Trung học cơ sở Thái Nguyên(Luận văn thạc sĩ) Những yếu tố ảnh hưởng đến khả năng nghe hiểu của học sinh lớp 8 tại một trường Trung học cơ sở Thái Nguyên(Luận văn thạc sĩ) Những yếu tố ảnh hưởng đến khả năng nghe hiểu của học sinh lớp 8 tại một trường Trung học cơ sở Thái Nguyên(Luận văn thạc sĩ) Những yếu tố ảnh hưởng đến khả năng nghe hiểu của học sinh lớp 8 tại một trường Trung học cơ sở Thái Nguyên(Luận văn thạc sĩ) Những yếu tố ảnh hưởng đến khả năng nghe hiểu của học sinh lớp 8 tại một trường Trung học cơ sở Thái Nguyên(Luận văn thạc sĩ) Những yếu tố ảnh hưởng đến khả năng nghe hiểu của học sinh lớp 8 tại một trường Trung học cơ sở Thái Nguyên(Luận văn thạc sĩ) Những yếu tố ảnh hưởng đến khả năng nghe hiểu của học sinh lớp 8 tại một trường Trung học cơ sở Thái Nguyên(Luận văn thạc sĩ) Những yếu tố ảnh hưởng đến khả năng nghe hiểu của học sinh lớp 8 tại một trường Trung học cơ sở Thái Nguyên

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Số hóa bởi Trung tâm Học liệu và Công nghệ thông tin – ĐHTN http://lrc.tnu.edu.vn

THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

DANG THI LE THUY

FACTORS AFFECTING LISTENING COMPREHENSION

OF THE 8TH GRADE STUDENTS AT A JUNIOR

HIGH SCHOOL IN THAI NGUYEN CITY

(Những yếu tố ảnh hưởng đến khả năng nghe hiểu

của học sinh lớp 8 tại một trường Trung học cơ sở ở

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THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

DANG THI LE THUY

FACTORS AFFECTING LISTENING COMPREHENSION

OF THE 8TH GRADE STUDENTS AT A JUNIOR

HIGH SCHOOL IN THAI NGUYEN CITY

(Những yếu tố ảnh hưởng đến khả năng nghe hiểu

của học sinh lớp 8 tại một trường Trung học cơ sở ở

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DECLARATION

I certify that this thesis paper is the result of my own research and the substance

of the research has not been submitted for a degree to any other university or institution

I assure that all references and citations to ensure the correctness, accuracy and honesty

Thai Nguyen, July 2019

Author’s signature

Dang Thi Le Thuy

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I would also like to express my sincere thanks to all the lecturers of the School

of Foreign Languages, Thai Nguyen University for their interesting lectures and suggestions for the topic of my study

Thanks are also due to my students grade 8 and my colleagues at a Junior High School, Thai Nguyen City for their assistance and cooperation in completing the questionnaires and interviews

Last but not least, I would like to give my deepest gratitude to my parents, my husband and my friends for their moral support and encouragement throughout my training course

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ABSTRACT

The aim of the study was to discover the factors affecting the listening comprehension of 8th-grade students at a junior high school in Thai Nguyen The participants of the study included 90 grade 8 students from classes 8A1, 8A2, 8A3 and 5 teachers of English at Nha Trang junior high school in Thai Nguyen In this article, researchers had looked at the terms listening, listening comprehension, factors that affect listening comprehension After conducting the research steps, the researcher discovered factors that more or less affected the listening comprehension

of grade 8 students such as, process, task, listener, input, affect, and context Among these factors, it was found that specific problems that affected students' listening comprehension were: grammar, structure and vocabulary, accents, speaking speech, unfamiliar topics and poor listening equipment The finding of the research indicated that when teachers were aware of the factors that affected students’ listening comprehension, they could help their students develop effective listening strategies and ultimately solve those difficulties in listening and improved listening comprehension

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGMENT ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF TABLES vi

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale for the study 1

1.2 Aims of the study 2

1.3 Significance of the study 2

1.4 Scope of the study 3

1.5 Organization 3

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

2.1 Listening comprehension 4

2.1.1 Definition 4

2.1.2 Listening comprehension process 5

2.2 Factors affecting listening comprehension 6

2.2.1 Definition 6

2.2.2 Taxonomy of factors affecting listening comprehension 7

2.3 Previous studies on factors affecting listening comprehension 9

2.4 Summary 12

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 13

3.1 Subjects of the study 13

3.2 Data collection instruments 13

3.2.1 Questionnaire (see Appendix 1) 13

3.2.2 Interview 15

3.3 Procedures of data collection 16

3.4 Data analysis 17

3.5 Summary 17

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CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 18

4.1 Findings 18

4.1.1 Findings of the questionnaire 18

4.1.2 Findings of the interview 26

4.2 Discussion 27

4.3 Summary 30

CHAPTER 5: IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSION 31

5.1 Implications 32

5.1.1 For teachers 32

5.1.2 For students 35

5.2 Limitations of the study 37

5.3 Suggestions for future research 37

5.4 Conclusion 38

REFERENCES 38

APPENDIX 43

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Students' choices about factors that affected their listening comprehension 18

Table 2: Process factor 20

Table 3: Task Factor 21

Table 4: Input Factor 22

Table 5: Listener Factor 23

Table 6: Affect Factor 24

Table 7: Context Factor 25

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Rationale for the study

Listening is an important language skill to develop in second language learning Despite its significance, language learners consider listening as the most difficult language skill to learn Moreover, listening is the most important skill in language learning because it is the most widely used language skill in normal daily life Listening has an important role not only in daily life but also in the classroom environment Most people believe that being able to write and speak in a second language means that they know the language However, if they do not have efficient listening skills, it is impossible to communicate effectively That is, listening is the basic skill in language learning Listening is vital in the language classroom because

it provides input for the learner Without understanding input on the right level, any learning simply cannot start

A lot of research has been done on this issue (Chang & Roebl, 2011, Kutlu

&Aslanolub, 2009) The results of previous studies have largely supported the difficulty of listening to new languages from the text, listeners, speakers, and tasks Almost all previous studies in listening skills and listening comprehension skills have identified important factors affecting the ability of the learner’s listening comprehension such as process, input, listener, task, affect and context factors However, the subjects of those studies were often high school and university students

in Vietnam or other non-English speaking countries

In Vietnamese schools, especially in Nha Trang junior high schools in Thai Nguyen, most students thought that learning the listening skills was the hardest, and some students thought the listening skills were relatively new, even though the students experienced the least English learning 3 years in primary school and in grade

6, 7 Meanwhile, the period of training at junior high school according to the distribution of each semester was more than 50 periods (3 periods/ week), in 18 weeks

in a semester, the amount of time spent on listening comprehension was too little

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Less time was spent on self-study, and fewer students could practice listening at home from 1 to 2 hours a week Another worry thing was that most students read the typescript before practicing their listening skills Hence, it was a bad habit that made the listening process not meet the requirements and goals of the curriculum

Therefore, identifying the factors that directly or indirectly affected the listening skills of 8th graders was very important These factors would help students realize their own difficulties, and they could find the best solution to overcome these factors, and also help teachers to look more about the factors that affect their students' listening comprehension to give solutions and teaching listening, toward a goal that all students can listen in the best way

With the current situation relating to the students’ poor listening comprehension competence at Nha Trang junior high school, the researcher conducted this study to find out factors that affected the 8th-grade students’ listening comprehension at Nha Trang junior high school in Thai Nguyen It was hoped that the findings of this paper could provide good views for the teaching and learning of listening comprehension

at school

1.2 Aims of the study

The purpose of this study was to identify factors that affected the listening skills of eighth graders This helped students identify the importance of listening skills and develop it better

In this study, the following research question was answered:

- What factors affect the listening comprehension of the 8th-graders?

1.3 Significance of the study

The findings of this study brought a lot of meaning to teachers, students as well as researchers First, for English teachers, this study was able to provide more in-depth information so that teachers could actively help students improve their listening skills Besides, this study was able to provide suggestions and

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recommendations for English teachers to prepare English listening lessons more effectively, enabling students to improve listening comprehension as well as daily language communication Second, this study also played an important role for students to be aware of their listen ability They could recognize the factors that affected their learning to listen skills so that they could find ways to improve their listening ability Last but not least, for other researchers who would carry out a similar study, the results of this study were considered a reference and contributed more information to solve the same problem

1.4 Scope of the study

The research was conducted on 90 students of 8th-grade and 5 English teachers from Nha Trang junior high school in Thai Nguyen city It focused on the factors that affected the student’s listening comprehension

1.5 Organization

The study included five main chapters: introduction, literature review, methodology, findings and discussion, implications and conclusion

Chapter 1: Introduction, presented basic information such as theoretical basis,

purpose, research questions, meanings, scope, significance as well as the design of the study

Chapter 2: Literature review, considered different views on listening

comprehension, listening processes, factors affecting listening comprehension, classification of influencing factors as well as previous studies about factors affecting students' listening skills

Chapter 3: Methodology, mentioned the method of conducting research including,

research topics, research questions, data collection tools (questionnaires and interviews), data collection steps and data analysis

Chapter 4: Findings and discussion, presented research findings and discussed

research questions

Chapter 5: Implication and conclusion, pointed out the implications of the study,

some limitations and made research conclusions

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CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter discussed the theory and previous research on areas that form the basis of this research The first section provided an overview of listening comprehension and common listening processes The second part provided a definition of the factors affecting the listening process and the classification of previous researchers on those factors The final part was an assessment of previous relevant studies conducted by researchers

2.1 Listening comprehension

2.1.1 Definition

There have been different definitions of the term “listening comprehension.” Rost (2002) and Hamouda (2013) defined listening comprehension is an interactive process in which listeners engage in building meaning The listener understands oral input through sound distinction, previous knowledge, grammatical structure, stress and intonation and other linguistic or nonverbal clues (as cited in Pourhosein Gilak camera & Sabouri, 2016)

Listening is not a passive skill, but an active, receptive skill It requires a lot of attention and mental activity like speaking And listening comprehension is an act of understanding an oral message Listening is an extremely complex operation (Buck, 2001) requires more than simple perception of audio signals

It involves speech decoding and comprehending Listening comprehension is not something that happens because of what the speaker speaks, but follow Anderson & Lynch(1988: 6) the listener plays an important role in the listening process, by activating various types of knowledge and by applying what listener knows to what listener hears and trying to understand what the speaker speaks

Nadig (2013) defined listening comprehension is different processes to understand and make sense of spoken language These involve knowing speech sounds, understanding the meaning of individual words and understanding the syntax of

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sentences (as cited in Pourhosein Gilakjani & Sabouri, 2016) According to Brown and Yule (1983) and Hamouda (2013), listening comprehension is a personal understanding of what he has listened and that is the possibility that the listener can repeat the text despite the fact that the listener can repeat the sound without real understanding

Therefore, listening comprehension might be defined as understanding what the speaker had said Listeners play a particularly important role in the listening process

by using their own knowledge to listen and understand what the listeners listen so that they can understand the speech of the speaker

2.1.2 Listening comprehension process

Listening comprehension is the ability of one individual perceiving another based

on sense, (specifically aural) organs, having meaning to the message and comprehending it According to Steinberg (2007), listening is more complicated than just hearing This process consists of four stages: feeling and attending, understanding and explaining, remembering, and answering The stages happen in sequence, but we often don't know them

Schemata are instructional structures during listening comprehension A schema is

a data structure to display common concepts stored in memory Schema means an abstract text structure that listeners use to understand the text Listeners use language signals and situations on new inputs to extract schemata When a schema is extracted,

it becomes a guiding structure in listening comprehension If there is a harmony between the incoming information and the schema, the listener will understand the text Schema leads to three basic information processing modes: bottom-up process, top-down process and interactive process (Pourhosein Gilak camera & Ahmadi, 2011)

Bottom-up process

The listener uses their knowledge of the language and their ability to process acoustic signals to make sense of the sounds that speech presents to them

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he uses his background knowledge to make predictions proved by new inputs If the content of the text sounds unfamiliar to the listener, he can only use his linguistic knowledge, especially vocabulary knowledge and syntax to understand information (Pourhosein Gilak camera & Ahmadi, 2011) Understanding includes awareness, parsing and use Perceptual processing is the coding of auditory messages or text messages and it includes chunking phonemes from continuous speech

To sum up, based on the schemata structure, there were three basic modes of information processing: bottom-up process, top-down process, and interactive process In each processing, learners might have different difficulties For example,

in bottom-up processing, learners might not know how to make links between the spoken message and various types of prior knowledge they learned In top-down processing, they might lack ability to process acoustic signals Besides, in the interactive processing, top-down and bottom-up listening processing should be combined with each other to increase listening comprehension Therefore, it is important to find out the factors that affect the listening process

2.2 Factors affecting listening comprehension

2.2.1 Definition

Goh in Hamouda (2013) defined listening difficulties are all the internal and external characteristics that interrupt the understanding process directly related to cognitive procedures at various stages of listening comprehension It can be stated

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that listening difficulties are the characteristic that disturbing the listener in comprehending the information

Therefore, factors affecting listening comprehension might be defined as all internal and external factors, subjective or objective, which directly affected the perception during the listening process

2.2.2 Taxonomy of factors affecting listening comprehension

There were various factors affected the listening comprehension in the listening process Alderson et al (2006), Bridley and Slatyer (2002), Kostin (2004), Ying-hui (2006), Wagner (2010), Rost (2011) and others have synthesized several factors that were likely to influence performance and interpretation of test results Rubin (1994) was the first to classify listening factors into five categories, including text, interlocutor, task, listener and process factors Based on Jamieson et al.‘s (2000) learner process models during listening tests, Rost (2011) added a number of variables that might affect listeners‘ test performance during each stage These variables included the stimulus variable, listener variable, and item variable

Kutlu and Aslanolub (2009), conducted research on the factors affecting listening skills, and they found that “number of juvenile books at home”, “number of books at home”, “time spent reading books”, “time spent reading newspaper” and “time spent listening to radio” have significant effect on fifth grade students’ success in their listening comprehension

Unlike previous studies, Lotfi (2012) conducted a discovery factor analysis of the answers of a sample of Iranian EFL learners and then divided into six distinct factors: process, input, listener, task, affect, and context by designed a questionnaire to assess EFL learners’ beliefs about the English listening comprehension problems they may encounter in unidirectional listening

The first factor or process factor reflected the problems that learners often have to deal with different aspects of the listening process The process here refers to “the way in which learners use different kinds of signals to interpret what they hear” In

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fact, items loaded on this factor described learners' beliefs about problems related to two types of processing identified by Rubin (2009), that was, using cognitive and metacognitive strategies while listening Some items dealt with the difficulties learners believe they had in applying cognitive strategies of between-parts inferencing, prediction, personal elaboration, linguistic inferencing, summarization, contextualization and listen for the main idea Some other items dealt with the difficulties learners believe they had in using metacognitive strategies of planning, monitoring and evaluation

Besides, input factor represented learners' beliefs on problems related to different aspects of the audio input The input here was defined as the system that provides linguistic data to the learner's hearing during listening.The factor contained problems related to such input characteristics as vocabulary, speech clarity, the grammatical structure of the text speech rate, prosodic features, accent, pause, and text length

Moreover, the factor listener reflected learners' beliefs about listeners' characteristics identified as having a considerable effect on second language learners' listening comprehension and contained learners' problems associated with characteristics, such as attention, attitude, and memory

The fourth factor, labeled task, includes three items about problems associated with characteristics of listening tasks as task type, type of responses demanded when answering global and local questions

The fifth factor labeled affect consisted of learners effective responses to instances

of comprehension failure are reflected and regarded the level of anxiety they experience in listening

The last factor, context factor, reflected learners’ beliefs about unfavorable characteristics of the learning context affecting listening comprehension The factor included problems about the adverse effect of distracters available in the learning context on their listening comprehension

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After studying the taxonomies of the factors that affected the ability of students listening comprehension, the researcher felt that Lotfi’s taxonomy (2012) was very relevant to this research because, among all taxonomies of listening difficulties, Lofti’s taxonomy was one of the most comprehensive classifications Besides, his taxonomy showed the most specific factors that affected the listening comprehension

of the students Therefore, the researcher chose his taxonomy as a basic of data collection instrument in the present study

2.3 Previous studies on factors affecting listening comprehension

In the past, there was a great deal of research on the listening area of students of all ages and especially about the factors that affected students' listening comprehension

In the last decades, many studies on the effect of specific factors on the learner‘s listening comprehension was pointed out (e.g Boyle, 1984; Brown, 1995; Chang & Roebl, 2011; Chiang & Dunkel, 1992; Lotfi, 2012; Rubin, 1994; Rubin & Thompson, 1994; Teng, 2002; Yagang, 1993)

Boyle (1984) in his study has elaborated the factors that affecting listening comprehension into two characteristics: speaker and listener This Hong Kong study began with a survey of the factors most frequently mentioned in the literature on listening comprehension Then a cross-section of teachers working at secondary and tertiary levels was consulted Finally, a sample of students who had just finished their secondary education was questioned He pointed out the speakers characteristic into

4 items: language ability of the speaker speak production; pronunciation, accent, variation, voice, etc speed of delivery, and prestige and personality of the speaker Meanwhile, he classified the listener factors into two, general and specific

The research of Janet Yu-gi Chao (2013) was conducted with the aim to investigate non-English majors‘English listening performance and listening problems Seventy-five college students participated in the study The instruments comprised of a General English Proficiency Test (GEPT) at the intermediate level and a Listening

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Comprehension Problem Questionnaire (LCPQ) The results showed that the

listening problems met by the subjects were mainly from the input factor, followed

by the listener factor and the task factor Most frequently encountered listening

problems included easily forgetting the content, long listening texts, not knowing

which strategy to use, unclear pronunciation, and unfamiliar intonation patterns The

proficient listeners identified their main problem as easily forgetting the content when

hearing new words as the foremost problem The less proficient listeners identified

difficulty to focus on the text while having trouble understanding as the major

obstacle Finally, significant differences existed in listening problems encountered by

students from different colleges

Asriati (2017) conducted research about listening comprehension in

Muhammadiyah University of Makassar, South Sulawesi This research aimed to

identify the factors affecting the students' listening comprehension achievement and

to identify which factor was dominant, conducted at the Muhammadiyah University

of Makassar This research was restricted into listener and speaker factors that caused

difficulties The method of this research was descriptive research The result of this

research showed that there were 25 factors from the listener and speaker that affected

the students' listening comprehension achievement Moreover, among those 25

factors, there were 5 factors classified to be the most dominant ones They were:

inability to acknowledge the colloquial words and slang, inability to understand the

reduced word, inability to answer the question of which required the long answer,

focus loss resulted from looking for the answer to the question and the speed of the

speech delivery

In Vietnam, studies on this issue had also been done a lot, including a research

about factors in learning the listening skills by Kieu Thi Thu Huong (2014) This study was conducted to understand the current status of listening comprehension

skills English for International Relations of Foreign Officers, detecting factors that

make it difficult to learn and suggest some corrective measures This study used

qualitative and quantitative methods To make sure the validity and reliability of the

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study, the researcher used questionnaires, interviews and observations to collect data The factors that obstruct the learner's English ability to learn can be classified into two major categories Subjective causes include five subgroups: (i) language knowledge, (ii) listening strategies, (iii) background knowledge and cultural knowledge, (iv) psychology and health, and (v) learner Objective causes include (i) message quality, (ii) facilities, (iii) trainers, and (iv) learning materials

Another research was undertaken by Nguyen Ngoc An (2015) This study aimed

to investigate the non-specialized students’ listening comprehension in order to have suitable solutions in learning and teaching Based on the results of the questionnaires, the factors that affected the learning of listening as well as the training of listening skills of students are the limited time of learning listening skills in the classroom, the uneven condition of the class or psychological student anxiety The lack of cultural knowledge of the student and the impact of equipment also affected the students’ listening

According to the study, listening comprehension was very important in learning foreign languages The studies mentioned above explored specific factors that affect the comprehension of students of different ages However, there were some limitations that existed in the studies mentioned Although some researchers have done their research with previous studies, but the factors affecting the 8th graders’ age were unclear while their listening comprehension could be said that limited It could be said that findings from previous studies had provided good evidence of the factors that affected students' ability to listening and support the problem in this study

To fill this gap, the researcher decided to conduct a study to discover clearly the factors that might affect the listening comprehension of the 8th-grade students in Nha Trang junior high school in Thai Nguyen city The study would also highlight the finding of factors that directly and indirectly might affect students' daily listening comprehension It was hoped that this research would contribute to a better understanding of junior high schools students as well as in Vietnam to help to teach

and learning English listening better

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2.4 Summary

Chapter 2 had described the background used as the foundation of the present study Firstly, listening comprehension skill in language learning was discussed Next, there were factors that might affect students’ listening comprehension ability Finally, previous studies conducted on factors affecting listening comprehension of different ages were addressed The review indicated that from these studies, it had been shown that listening comprehension skills played a very important role in learning to communicate in this language In this regard, previous studies also presented many different factors that affected students' ability to comprehend and they also offered deep suggestions and recommendations to help students improve their listening skill better

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CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY

This chapter presents the research methodology including the description of the

participants, tools used to collect data, procedures for data collection and data analysis

3.1 Subjects of the study

Participants in this study included 90 students in the 8th-grade at Nha Trang junior high school in Thai Nguyen city 90 students were at the age of 14, including 45 males and 45 females, currently studying in 8A1, 8A2 and 8A3 They studied based on the new curriculum textbook Each class was taught 3 hours a week, and the English level

of all students was roughly equivalent at pre-intermediate level At this age, the English level of students was quite good They had mastered basic knowledge, accumulated good vocabulary, and needed to improve as well as to raise listening comprehension to be confident to prepare for the final exam

The number of teachers who participated in the study was 5 teachers of English, including 2 males and 3 females from Nha Trang junior high school in Thai Nguyen city, aged from 30 to 50-year-olds The highest level was the master’s degree in linguistics and the lowest was the university degree

3.2 Data collection instruments

This thesis employed simultaneously a combination of the two data collection instruments:

- Questionnaire

- Interview

The combination of the two tools was to ensure a clearer insight into the different factors affecting the listening skills of students of 8th grade and help them improve their listening ability

3.2.1 Questionnaire (see Appendix 1)

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Justification:

Questionnaires are one of the most widely used means of collecting data, and many novice researchers in business and management and other areas of the social sciences associate research with questionnaires ( Jenny, 2014) Therefore, the questionnaire was used as the first data collection instrument The purpose of the questionnaire in this study was to collect information about the factors affecting students’ process of listening

6 factors The researcher used the questionnaire to collect information about the current situation of students’ listening skill, the students’ evaluation, and their feelings and examine the factors that affected the students’ listening skills This questionnaire contained 40 questions in total The questionnaire was comprised of listening comprehension problems

The listening comprehension problems included six factors: Process Factor consisted of 12 items (item 1 to 12) and reflected the problems that learners often had

to deal with different aspects of the listening process Task Factor consisted of three items (item 13 to 15) and reflected issues related to the characteristics of the learner's listening tasks The characteristics of the listening tasks referred to the change in the purpose of listening and the listening of the learners The items in this factor represent learners with listening tasks and the type of answer required when answering from general to private Input Factor consisted of nine items (item 16 to 24) and represented

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student’s problems related to different aspects of aural input This factor included student’s problems about input characteristics as vocabulary, clearly speech, the grammatical structure of the text, speech rate, features prosperity, accent, pause, and length of text Listener Factor included 10 items (item 25 to 34) that revolved around the listeners' problems about their own characteristics Therefore, this factor contained the characteristics of the listener such as attention, attitude and memory Affect Factor, consisted of 4 items (item 35 to 38) and reflected the learner's response

to the factors affecting listening comprehension In particular, it meant that how students would react when they have an incomprehensible situation or the level of anxiety student face during listening These items made concentration become difficult and the result of listening becomes worse Finally, Context Factor consisted

of 2 items (item 39 to item 40), reflected how the condition of the context affects students' listening skills

Responses to each item were on a six-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 for ―strongly disagree to 6 for ―strongly agree It meant that students were asked

to indicate the extent to which they disagreed or agreed with these items by marking

in the column of the responses ranging from 1 to 6 Then frequency counts and percentage of responses were used for data analysis This questionnaire was proved

to be reliable and practicable because it had been tested the internal consistency reliability in the research of Janet Yu-Gi Chao (2013) Due to the students’ limited English competence, the researcher translated the questionnaire into Vietnamese

3.2.2 Interview

Justification:

In the field of social science research, the usefulness of interviews has long been recognized That is, as qualitative researchers tend to provide detailed descriptions of individuals and events in their natural settings, interviewing has ‘usually’ been thought of as a key factor in research design (Weiss, 1994) In this study, the researcher used face-to-face interviews with the teachers to gain information about

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their own opinions about listening comprehension process of their students After the interview, the researcher gained more useful information to analyze the factors directly and indirectly affected the listening comprehension of students

Details:

This interview included 5 questions in total Question 1 was designed to ask about the roles of the teachers in their listening performance The researcher asked the participants about the way in which they teach the listening skills into the class Then, question 2 was designed to ask about the attitudes and concentration of students whenever they gave a listening assignment to students In question 3, the researcher asked the participants about the possible difficulties that their students faced have when they have listening comprehension activities The fourth question asked about the factors that most affected the students’ listening skills The final question was designed to asked the teachers about possible solutions that could be offered to help their students improve their listening comprehension skills so that their students could

be confident in English listening

3.3 Procedures of data collection

The information collected in stages

Step 1: Questionnaire for students

This questionnaire was conducted immediately after the completion of the student's semester 1 test The questionnaire was conducted with a total of 90 students in class 8A1, 8A2 and 8A3 The questionnaire was given to students in class and they did it for 10 to 15 minutes

Step 2: Interview for English teachers

This interview was conducted after collecting information from the questionnaire The researcher conducted the study with 5 English language teachers at the junior high school The interview results were recorded by taking notes

Step 3: Collecting all the information

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After conducting the questionnaire and interview, the researcher collected the data and conducted data analysis

3.4 Data analysis

In this study, the data were collected and analyzed based on the results of questionnaires and the interviews After collecting the data through the questionnaire, the researcher translated into English and used the percentage to calculate the rate of different factors After gathering data from the interviews by taked notes, the researcher translated into English and analyzed spoken words and put them into different opinion groups and then used the percentage to give the most specific results

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CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

This chapter had reported the research results and presents discussions about findings based on those results The first section showed the data collected for students' questionnaires, showing how the impact of the factors was The second part provided information about data collected from interviews with English teachers The last part discussed the results of the questionnaires and interviews then compared with previous researches on this issue

4.1 Findings

4.1.1 Findings of the questionnaire

To answer the research question, the results of the factors from the student questionnaire and data analysis were conducted to ask about the factors affecting listening skills and potential difficulties Students had encountered these factors and the impact of those factors on their ability to communicate After analyzing the data collected through the questionnaires and calculating the choices of 90 students about their problems when listen, it could be seen that the six factors students encounter had relatively impact rate when listening comprehension process, accounting for a specific ratio as follows:

Table 1 shown students' choices with different levels of consent for each student's personal opinion It could easily see that the factors: process, listener, input had a higher rate than other factors of level 6 (strongly agree) Specifically, the total number

of students' choice with level 6 (strongly agree) was 1226 number of choices, the process factor had 383 number of choices (about 31,23 %), the listener factor had 292 number of choices (about 23.81 %), and the input factor had 286 number of choices (23,32 %) Meanwhile, the context factor was to have the least number of selections with 62 number of choices (5,05 %) These factors were specifically analyzed below

Table 1: Students' choices about factors that affected their listening

comprehension

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2 (disagree )

3 (neutral)

4 (somewhat agree)

5 (agree)

6 (strongly agree)

Process 10 25 167 278 217 383

Input 9 26 170 129 190 286 Listener 9 32 202 204 161 292

As shown above, there was a total of 383 selected level 6 (strongly agree)in this factor In particular, the item had the highest choice with the selected number of 47/90 students, accounted for 52,2 % that was item 6, the participants almost agreed that

“when listening, it is difficult for them to hear the main idea of the listening text” The next high average was item 1 that said: “It is difficult for me to predict from the visuals what I will hear” With the choice of 46/90 students and accounted for 51,1% Accordingly, the participants agreed with the item10 at 41/90 students, accounted for 45,5% that “while listening, I had difficulty checking my understanding of the text based on what I already know about the topic” For items with the lowest number of

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choices, item 7 cited that “I always find it difficult to focus on the text when I have trouble understanding”, selected at 17/90 students, accounted for 18,8% Then, the participants agreed with item 3 with the choice rate of 19/90 students, accounted for 21,1% which means that “While listening, I always have problems making meaningful personal associations with the new information” Finally, item 2 stated that “It is always difficult for me to relate what I hear with something from an earlier part of the listening text”, it was recorded at the rate of 21/90 students, accounted for 23,3%.( see table 2)

Table 2: Process factor

1 Before listening, it is difficult for me to predict

2 It is difficult for me to relate what I hear with

something from an earlier part of the listening text 1 3 11 32 22 21

3 While listening, I have problems making

meaningful personal associations with the new

information

1 2 22 26 20 19

4 During listening, I have difficulty checking

whether I correctly understand the meaning of the whole

chunks of the listening text

5 I have difficulty with finding out what the main

purpose of the listening task I am going to do is 0 1 7 29 19 34

6 When I listen to texts in English, I experience

difficulty with listening for the main idea of the text 0 1 10 22 10 47

7 I find it challenging to focus on the text when I

8 While listening, I find it difficult to guess the

meaning of unknown words by linking them to known

words

1 3 16 18 19 33

9 I find it difficult to make a mental summary of

information gained through listening 0 3 8 27 26 30

10 While listening, I have difficulty to check my

understanding of the text based on what I already know

about the topic

1 3 13 18 14 41

11 I find it difficult to use the context to guess those

parts of a listening text that I cannot hear clearly 0 2 20 18 16 34

12 After listening, I find it difficult to evaluate the

overall accuracy of my comprehension 1 2 25 16 10 36

b Task factor

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The second factor had been included 3 items that were difficulties that often appeared when students perform different listening tasks such as filling out words, finding information or answering Wh questions Table 3 below gave the specific figures (see table 3)

Table 3: Task Factor

13 I always find it difficult to do listening tasks, such

as filling a grid, for which I need to draw on specific

information from the text

0 4 12 33 20 21

14 I always find it difficult to do listening tasks for

which I need to combine information to make generalization

while listening to the text

In item 15, participants agreed at 38,8%, meaning they found it difficult to answer

Wh questions during a listening task In section 13 with an average value of 23,3%, participants found it difficult to do listening tasks, such as filling a grid, for which I need to draw on specific information from the text The remaining item 14, accounted for 26/90 students, about 28,8%, that was students found it difficult to do listening tasks for which they need to combine information to make generalization while listening to the text

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