A study on factors affecting listening comprehension of the eleventh grade students at a high school in bac ninh province

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES  NGUYỄN THỊ HẢI A STUDY ON FACTORS AFFECTING LISTENING COMPREH

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES



NGUYỄN THỊ HẢI

A STUDY ON FACTORS AFFECTING LISTENING COMPREHENSION

OF THE ELEVENTH GRADE STUDENTS

AT A HIGH SCHOOL IN BAC NINH PROVINCE

(NGHIÊN CỨU NHỮNG YẾU TỐ ẢNH HƯỞNG TỚI KHẢ NĂNG NGHE HIỂU CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP 11 TẠI MỘT TRƯỜNG THPT

TẠI TỈNH BẮC NINH)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 8140231.01

Hanoi - 2018

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES



NGUYỄN THỊ HẢI

A STUDY ON FACTORS AFFECTING LISTENING

COMPREHENSION OF THE ELEVENTH GRADE STUDENTS

AT A HIGH SCHOOL IN BAC NINH PROVINCE

(Nghiên cứu những yếu tố ảnh hưởng tới khả năng nghe hiểu của học sinh lớp

11 tại một trường THPT tại tỉnh Bắc Ninh)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 8140231.01

Supervisor: Mai Thị Loan, PhD

Hanoi - 2018

DECLARATION

I certify that the minor thesis entitled “A study on factors affecting listening comprehension of the eleventh grade students at a high school in Bac Ninh province” is the result of my own work and has not been submitted

in any form for another degree or diploma at any universities or other

institutions

Hanoi, 2018

Student

Nguyễn Thị Hải

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to acknowledge my truthful gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Mai Thi Loan for her thorough reading, critical comments, invaluable guidance and precious corrections of the thesis It was her acute guidance that has enabled me to find the right way to complete this study

I also would like to express my sincere thanks to my colleagues at the school, who have been willing to answer my interviews

I appreciate the assistance and cooperation of the students in classes from the eleventh grade at the chosen school

My special words of thanks are sent to my family, especially my husband who has given me constant encouragement and support throughout my research work

Hanoi, 2018

ABSTRACT

The study is concerned with factors affecting listening comprehension encountered by the eleventh students at a high school in Bac Ninh province The main purposes of the study are to find out the factors affecting students‟ listening comprehension and to offer some solutions to help students overcome their affective factors The instruments used in the study were questionnaire and interviews The questionnaire was designed for 100 students and the interviews were carried out with both three teachers and 10 out of the 100 students at the chosen school The results showed that learners encountered various kinds of affective factors on listening problems which were divided into four categories: factors related to the listening text, factors related to the speakers, factors related to the listener, and factors related to physical settings From the findings of the research, some suggestions were proposed for teachers to help their students overcome those affective factors such as designing suitable listening materials, encouraging students to use top- down strategies and encouraging prediction

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLE viii

ABBREVIATIONS ix

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale of the study 1

2 Aims and objectives of the study 2

3 Research questions 2

4 Scope of the study 2

5 Method of the study 2

6 Significance of the study 3

7 Organization of the study 3

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 5

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1.1 Listening skill 5

1.1.1 Definition of listening 5

1.1.2 Importance of listening 6

1.2 Listening comprehension 8

1.2.1Definitions of listening comprehension 8

1.2.2 Process of listening comprehension 9

1.3 Listening strategies 10

1.3.1 Definition of listening strategies 10

1.3.2 Classification of listening strategies 11

1.4 Potential affective factors on listening comprehension 12

1.5 Solutions to overcome affective factors on listening comprehension 14

1.5.1 Helping students with vocabulary 14

1.5.2 Helping students get familiar with different accents 15

1.5.3 Using visuals 15

1.5.4 Using the tapes and radios with good quality 15

1.5.5 Activating background knowledge 16

1.5.6 Combining “intensive listening” with “extensive listening”; focusing on listening 16

1.5.7 Combining listening with other skills 16

1.5.8 Evaluate listening effectiveness regularly and further improve listening approaches 17

1.6 Review of previous related studies 17

1.6.1 Previous studies overseas 17

1.6.2 Previous studies in Viet Nam 19

1.7 Summary 21

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY 22

2.1 Restatement of research questions 22

2.2 The setting of the study 22

2.3 Participants 23

2.3.1 Students 23

2.3.2 Teachers 23

2.4 Data collection instruments 24

2.4.1 Questionnaire 24

2.4.2 Interviews 25

2.5 Data collection procedures 26

2.6 Analysis of data 26

2.7 Summary 27

CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS 28

3.1 Data analysis 28

3.1.1 Questionnaire for the students 28

3.1.1.1 Learners’ perceptions of factors related to listening text 28

3.1.1.2 Learners’ perceptions of factors related to listeners 30

3.1.1.3 Learners’ perceptions of factors related to speakers 31

3.1.1.4 Learners’ perceptions of factors related to physical settings 32

3.1.1.5 Learners’ opinions of solutions to overcome those factors 33

3.1.2 Interview with the students 34

3.1.2.1 Students’ answers about factors on the students’ listening comprehension 35

3.1.2.2 The students’ suggested solutions to overcome those factors 36

3.1.3 Interview with the teachers 37

3.1.3.1Teachers’ answers about factors on the students’ listening comprehension 37

3.1.3.2 Teachers’ suggested solutions to overcome those factors 38

3.2 Findings and discussion 39

3.3 Implications 42

3.3.1 Designing suitable listening materials 42

3.3.2 Arousing interest and motivating students to attend to the spoken message 42

3.3.3 Using pictures and visual aids 42

3.3.4 Encouraging students to use top-down strategies 42

3.3.5 Encouraging cooperative listening 42

3.3.6 Encouraging students’ accurate pronunciation 43

3.3.7 Encouraging prediction 43

3.4 Summary 43

PART C: CONCLUSION 44

1 Recapitulation 44

2 Concluding remarks 44

3 Limitations of the study 46

4 Suggestions for the further research 46

REFERENCES 47 APPENDIX 1 I

APPENDIX 2 IIIAPPENDIX 3 V APPENDIX 4 VI APPENDIX 5 VII APPENDIX 6 VIII

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLE

Figure 1: Learners‟ perceptions of affective factors related to listening text 27

Figure 2: Learners‟ perceptions of affective factors related to listeners 29

Figure 3: Learners‟ perceptions of affective factors related to speakers 30

Figure 4: Learners‟ perceptions of affective factors from physical settings 31

Table: Learners‟ opinions about solutions to overcome those affective factors 32

ABBREVIATIONS

L2: Second Language

EFL: English as a Foreign Language

ESP: English for Special Purposes

PART A: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale of the study

Nowadays, English has become an international language and it is used in communicating with people all over the world Therefore, learning English has been regarded as a vital demand for a huge number of people in Vietnam in particular and for millions of people in the world in general

In language learning, listening, together with speaking, writing and reading is one of the four language skills Listening relates to any communicative activities of human Conversations will take place only when we understand our interlocutor says Undeniably, listening is very important in man‟s interaction Gilakjani and Ahmadi (2011) are also among the writers who early noticed the importance of listening Gilakjani and Ahmadi (2011) reported data on how people spend their communicative time: of the total time devoted to communication, 40-50% is spent

on listening, 20-30% on speaking, 11-16% of reading, and 9% on writing From the data given above, it can be understood that listening skill plays a great role in the process of communication In spite of the fact that listening is now well recognized

as a critical dimension in language learning, it still remains one of the least understood processes When the amount of research done in all four skills and the curricula of most foreign language programs are considered, listening skill has attracted the least attention According to (Morley, 2001), during many decades, researchers used to regard listening as a passive skill However, since the 1980s, it has been accepted as an active skill Throughout the 1990s, attention to listening in language instruction increased dramatically

Although people pay more attention to listening, it is still regarded as the most difficult for learners, especially for second language learners The current researcher has taken some surveys on the ability of listening and affective factors on listening comprehension among the eleventh students at a high school in Bac Ninh province and has found that these students have many troubles in their listening skill Many students perform poorly and some of them seem uninterested in

listening lessons and unwilling to listen to the recordings The question arises here

is what affective factors the students face while they study listening skills Therefore, in my point of view, it is necessary to find out the factors affecting students‟ listening and provide them with listening strategies completely and systematically so that their listening comprehension will make much progress From these reasons, this research would be carried out to investigate affective factors on students‟ listening comprehension, and offer some solutions to overcome those factors

2 Aims and objectives of the study

The study aims at investigating the affective factors on listening

comprehension among the eleventh students at a high school in Bac Ninh province

The objectives of this study are:

- To find out the factors affecting listening comprehension of the eleventh students;

- To offer some suggested solutions to overcome those affective factors

3 Research questions

The present study focuses on answering the following questions:

1 What are the factors that affect the eleventh students‟ listening comprehension?

2 What solutions can be suggested to overcome those affective factors?

4 Scope of the study

Listening which consists of many sub- skills is paid a lot of attention by many researchers This study is not an exception; however, the current study is concerned with only factors affecting listening comprehension, not other sub- skills

It is conducted at a high school in Bac Ninh province The participants taking part

in the study are 100 eleventh grade students, not all the students of the school

5 Method of the study

The study was carried out by some steps as follows:

First, the questionnaire for students was employed to find out the factors affecting listening comprehension of the eleventh grade students Moreover, the

students‟ opinions of the solutions that they and their teachers can do to overcome the factors were also revealed through the questionnaire

Second, interviews with both teachers and students were conducted to help the researcher gain deep information about the affective factors and the reasons behind them

After all, the data was collected, sorted, and analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively to obtain realized results

To end with, from data collected, recommendations for the solutions to overcome the affective factors were drawn out

6 Significance of the study

The current study will help students identify the factors influencing their listening comprehension Moreover, some recommendations will help the students choose the most suitable methods to learn listening and get over the affective factors to improve their listening ability

7 Organization of the study

The study is divided into three parts:

Part A: Introduction, the researcher states the problem of the study, aims of the study, significance of the study, and scope of the study

Part B: Development There are three chapters in this part

Chapter 1: Literature review, the researcher reviews the literature related to listening skill including definition of listening, importance of listening and process

of listening, some theories about listening strategies in terms of definition and classification of listening strategies, affective factors on listening comprehension, and some previous studies on affective factors on listening comprehension

Chapter 2: Methodology, the researcher mentions the issues of methodology consisting of research questions, study design, participants, and data collection instruments consisting of questionnaire and interview, data collection procedures, and data analysis

Chapter 3: Data analysis and findings, the researcher gives a detailed presentation

of data and detailed description of data analysis This focuses on presenting, analyzing and discussing the results obtained from the study based on the questionnaire and interview questions Besides, the chapter also presents some discussion and interpretations of the findings of the study, and then gives suggestions for the teachers and the students in learning listening at the school The implications of the study are also given in this chapter

Part C: Conclusion, the researcher summarizes the key points in the study, provides implications of the study, discusses limitation, and gives suggestion for further research

PART B: DEVELOPMENT

This part consists of four chapters The first chapter presents the basic theories related to listening and listening comprehension, a brief review of affective factors on listening comprehension and solutions to overcome the factors The next chapter is about methodology which the current researcher applies to conduct the research Data analysis and discussion of the major findings are presented in chapter three The last chapter deals with discussions and recommendations

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Listening skill

Moreover, listening to spoken language has been knowledged theoretical to consist of active and complex process which determines the level and content of comprehension Listeners engage in a variety of mental process in an effort to comprehend information from oral texts According to Conaway‟s findings (1982), poor listening skills were main factors in college failure than the other factors, such

as poor reading skills or low academic aptitude His opinion can be understood that students can not learn anything if they can not understand the listening message

In addition, according to McDonough (1995), listening involves attention to

a continuous stream of speech which is not under the timing control of the listener Listeners themselves must punctuate a flow of speech by recognizing irregular pausing, false, hesitations, stress, and intonation pattern

From another angle, Rubin (1995) conceives listening as an active process in which listeners interpret information which comes from auditory and visual cues in order to define what is going on and what the speakers are trying to express

Another definition of listening indicated by Flowerdew & Miller (2005) is that listening is considered as an important component in the process of L2 acquisition Listening helps students gain the acquired knowledge and understand the input of the lessons Furthermore, Rost (2002) defined listening as a process of receiving what the speaker actually says, constructing and representing meaning, negotiating meaning with the speaker and responding, and creating meaning through involvement, imagination and empathy To listen well, listeners must have the ability to decode the message, the ability to apply a variety of strategies and interactive processes to make meaning, and the ability to respond to what is said in

a variety of ways, depending on the purpose of the communication Listening involves listening for thoughts, feelings, and intentions According to Rost (1991), listening really means students remember and understand the meaning of the listening message immediately when they listen

From these above definitions of listening, the researcher holds the same opinion that listening is discriminating the sounds, recognizing words, identifying grammatical groupings and words, identifying expression and sets of utterances that act to create the meaning, connecting linguistic cues to non-linguistic and para-linguistic cues, and using background knowledge to predict and confirm meaning and recalling important words and ideas

1.1.2 Importance of listening

It can‟t be denied that listening plays a vital role in our daily lives People listen for different purposes such as entertainment, academic purposes or obtaining necessary information

Rivers (1981) stated that listening is a critical element in the competent language performance of adult second language learners, whether they are communicating at school, at work, or in the community Through the normal course

of a day, listening is used nearly twice as much as speaking and four to five times as much as reading and writing In a recent study of Fortune 500 Corporations, Wolvin and Coakley (1991) found that listening was perceived to be crucial for communication at work with regards to entry-level employment, job success, general career competence, managerial competency, and effectiveness of relationships between supervisors and subordinates

The importance of the listening skill can not be denied, however, different scholars give their own views about how it is important

Some practitioners believe that language learning is a linear process, starting with the spoken language medium (listening and speaking) and then moving to the written medium (reading and writing) Listening is the means to initiate oral production, which tends to be an imitation of spoken texts The second view places listening along with the other three language modalities (speaking, reading and writing) in an intersectative mode All four modalities should be thought simultaneously, so that practice in one area can reinforce and develop the other forms of communication (Rivers, 1987)

A third view emphasizes listening as the primary source of linguistic input, which activates the language learning process According to Rost (1994), listening plays an important role in second language instruction for several reasons Language learning depends on listening since it provides the aural input that serves

as the basis for language acquisition and enables learners to interact in spoken communication Without understanding input appropriately, learning simply can not get any improvement In addition, without listening skill, no communication can be achieved

Though different linguists give a number of views about the importance of listening, they all claim that listening play a vital role in communication and in learning a language Listening is essential not only as receptive skill but also to the development of spoken language prophecy

From these above ideas, it can be clearly seen that listening skill is extremely important in communication Given the importance of listening in language learning and teaching, it is essential for language teachers to help students become active and effective listeners In the communicative approach of language learning, it is necessary for students to identify the factors affecting their listening comprehension and be provided with the solutions to solve these difficulties in order to improve their listening skill In addition, students should spend more time self-studying listening at home and learn how to use listening strategies appropriately and effectively

1.2 Listening comprehension

1.2.1Definitions of listening comprehension

The term “listening comprehension” has been defined by different authors The following are some representative definitions of listening comprehension

Dirven and Oakeshott-Taylor (1984) defined listening comprehension as the product of teaching methodology and is matched by terms such as speech understanding, spoken language understanding, speech recognition, and speech perception

From another angle, Rubin (1995) conceives listening comprehension as an active process in which listeners interpret information which comes from auditory and visual cues in order to define what is going on and what the speakers are trying

to express

Vandergrift (1999) has a more detailed definition of listening comprehension According to him, listening comprehension is an active process in which the listener must discriminate between sounds, understand vocabulary and grammatical structures, interpret stress and intonation, retain what was gathered in all of the above, and interpret it within the socio-cultural context of the utterance

Rost (2002) and Hamouda (2013) defined listening comprehension as an interactive process in which listeners are involved in constructing meaning Listeners comprehend the oral input through sound discrimination, previous

knowledge, grammatical structures, stress and intonation, and the other linguistic or non-linguistic clues

According to Nadig (2013), listening comprehension is the various processes

of understanding and making sense of spoken language These involve knowing speech sounds, comprehending the meaning of individual words, and understanding the syntax of sentences

To summarize, each definition reflects its author‟s own point of view However, all definitions share the same idea is that listening comprehension is a complex process; it requires a number of sub-skills that the listeners must have in order to acquire the overall understanding of the listening text

1.2.2 Process of listening comprehension

It is also necessary to have recognition of the process of listening comprehension in language learning approach

Listening is an invisible mental process, which makes it difficult to describe However, it is recognized by Wipf (1984) that listeners must discriminate between sounds, understand vocabulary and grammar structures, interpret stress and intonation, and retain and interpret this within the immediate as well as the larger socio-cultural context of the utterance

Anderson (1983) divided the listening comprehension process into three stages: perceptual, parsing, and utilization During the perceptional process, listeners focus their attention on the oral text and preserve the sound in echoic memory In the next stage, the parsing process, listeners constructed meaningful mental representations by using words and message They reorganized the information into a meaningful unit that could be stored in short-term memory In the utilization stage, listeners utilized long-term memory in order to link the incoming message to their existing knowledge He stated that when the new input and background knowledge matched, comprehension would appear

Another opinion, five stages of listening comprehension, was proposed by Wolin and Coakley (1986) First of all, listeners were motivated to listen to certain

aural input Second, listeners received the non-verbal message from speakers including facial expressions, gestures, voices, and movements Next, the received message must be attended to the short-term memory system At the same time listeners were influenced by their background knowledge and prior experiences Then, listeners matched the received message to the appropriate prior information Unlike these above researchers, Nunan (2002) explained both the bottom-up and top-down processes Bottom-up process refers to acquiring the meaning of message by basing on the incoming language data from sounds, to words, to grammatical relationships, and ultimately to the meaning The meaning itself was derived as the last step in the process On the other hand, top-down process refers

to utilizing the schemata which was known as learners‟ background knowledge and global understanding to deduce the meaning from the message In addition, listening comprehension is neither top-down nor bottom-up processing “It is an interactive, interpretive process where listeners employ both prior knowledge and linguistic knowledge to make sense of the incoming message (Nunan, 2002) It is clear that Nunan‟s (2002) explanation mentioned all aspects of listening process including the combination of personal knowledge and linguistics information

As discussed above, Nunan‟s (2002) division provided deep insights into listening process Hence, the researcher chooses Nunan‟s (2002) idea to conduct the study

1.3 Listening strategies

1.3.1 Definition of listening strategies

Listening effectively is difficult because people vary in their communication skills and in how clearly they express themselves and often have different needs, wants, and purposes for interacting As a listener, people attempt to use the listening strategies which “are efforts to compensate for uncertainties in understanding, and could include making inferences, realizing where misunderstandings have occurred, and asking for clarification” (White, 1998)

Rubin (1987) states listening strategies are techniques or activities which contribute directly to the comprehension and recall of listening input This definition seems to stress that students use listening strategies as crucial tools to get the meaning of listening message

According to Young (1997, p.1) listening strategies are steps taken by learners to help them acquire, store, retrieve, and/ or use information Namely, listening strategies are helpful tools which help the learners listen effectively so that they could communicate easily

From these points, the researcher may conclude that listening strategies are several techniques used by listeners consciously while listening to help understanding Listeners become more strategic in listening if they learn to use listening strategies effectively To listen effectively, listeners have to choose one kind of listening strategies which is most suitable for each of them

1.3.2 Classification of listening strategies

Listening is the receptive skill in the oral model There are two kinds of listening situations in which people find themselves: interactive listening situation and non-interactive listening situation Interactive listening situation include face-to-face conversation and telephone calls, in which people are alternately listening and speaking and in which they have a chance to ask for clarification, repetition or slower speech from their interlocutor Several non- interactive listening situations are listening to the radio television, films, lectures, tapes and so on In such situations they usually do not have the opportunity to give feedback

According to O‟Malley and Chamot (2001) language listening strategies are divided into four categories: management strategies, cognitive strategies, social strategies and affective strategies

However, Hedge (2000) indicated that listening strategies contain top-down strategies, bottom-up strategies, and cognitive strategies

Top-down strategies are listeners based; the listeners tap into background knowledge of the topic, the situation or context, the type of context, and the

language This background knowledge activates a set of expectations that help the listeners to interpret what is heard and anticipate what will come next Put in other words, listeners use “top-down” process when they use prior knowledge to understand the meaning of a message Top-down strategies include:

+ Listening for the main idea

+ Listening for specific details

+ Recognizing cognates

+ Recognizing word-order patterns

In addition, students use cognitive strategies when they listen Cognitive strategies are used to study the specific learning tasks and involve the manipulation and transformation of the listening materials Repetition, translation, note-taking, recombination, contextualization, inference are among the most important cognitive strategies

As can be clearly seen from this classification, there is a combination of personal knowledge, the text‟s characteristics, the linguistic knowledge, and the cognitive techniques This combination motivates students to analyze and understand the input at the same time they listen Therefore the researcher agreed with the classification given by Hedge (2000) including top-down strategies, bottom-up strategies, and cognitive strategies

1.4 Potential affective factors on listening comprehension

This section focuses on several ideas of prior researchers about problems which affect students‟ listening

The first view identified by Faerch and Kasper (1986) is that there are three internal factors in second language listeners‟ comprehension They are: learners‟ knowledge of the second language linguistic code, the degree of socio – cultural competence, and strategic competence

After reviewing over 130 students, Rubin (1994) synthesizes the existing research on factors influencing listening process and identifies five major factors: (1) text characteristics, (2) interlocutor characteristics, (3) task characteristics, (4) listener characteristics and (5) process characteristics

In Yao‟s (1995) study, she found that the speaker‟s speed, accent, vocabulary, the listeners‟ background knowledge, and listeners‟ interest affected listening The students found that clear pronunciation and speech were important to their comprehension

Goh (1998) listed five most common factors that influence students‟ listening comprehension They are: text, speaker, listener, task and environment Text comprises three features: acoustic features, discourse features and influence Speaker comprises accent, fluency, standard or non-standard usage, gender Listener comprises language proficiency, gender, memory, interest, purpose, prior knowledge, attention, concentration, accuracy of pronunciation, physical and psychological states, knowledge of context, topic familiarity, and established learning habits Task comprises types of questions, the amount of time available for processing information, and the repetition of information Environment comprises the quality of tape, quality of equipments and surrounding environment

Teacher decides what and when to repeat listening passages; however, it is hard for the teacher to judge whether or not the students have understood any particular section of what they have hear (Underwood, 1989) Underwood (1989) offers seven conceivable causes of obstacles to efficient listening comprehension, most of which are related to what was already mentioned: speed of delivery, repetition, lack of vocabulary, fail to recognize signals, interpretation ability, concentration, and perfectionism

In the current study, the researcher selects the ideas of Rubin (1994), Yao (1995), Goh (1998), and Underwood (1989) to conduct this study From these researchers‟ views, it can be indicated that affective factors on listening comprehension can be classified into four categories:

- Problems from listeners include making prediction what speaker talks about, lacking background knowledge, failing to recognize the main points, lacking vocabulary, and lacking listening strategies

- Problems from speakers include variety of accents, speed of delivery, and numbers

of speakers

- Problems from listening materials include unfamiliar words, difficult grammar structures, complex sentences, long listening text, uninteresting information and unfamiliar topics

- Problems from physical settings (or environment) include noises and equipment‟s poor quality

1.5 Solutions to overcome affective factors on listening comprehension

This part presents some solutions to potential affective factors on learning listening comprehension The solutions are suggested by the researchers: Naizhao Guo & Robin Wills (2005), Sáu (2013), and Stephanie Díaz-Galaz (2014)

1.5.1 Helping students with vocabulary

Teachers can provide students with key vocabulary in the listening text before doing the real task Students also need to build up a large vocabulary for

themselves by using some vocabulary books for self-practice For example, Boost your vocabulary by Christ Barker is a good choice This vocabulary book series

includes four volumes The first two books of this series are the most appropriate for first-year students They cover the most important words and phrases needed by elementary and pre-intermediate level students These books consist of a wide variety of enjoyable practice activities, revision sections after every four units to check progress, space to write in translations, and detachable answer keys

Another useful source for practice is English vocabulary in use series by

Michael McCarthy and Felicity O‟Dell It includes four levels from elementary to advanced Supplementary tests are available at each level The items of vocabulary selected are current, useful, up-to-date, and presented in natural contexts The series have been designed for self-study with full answer key at the end of each book

1.5.2 Helping students get familiar with different accents

Different accent is another cause of difficulties for language learners However, it is impossible for teachers to teach their students all the existing accents

in the world What teachers can do is to give them a familiarity with the two most useful English accents – the British and American standard varieties – and then let them have a taste of some others simply to open their eyes to the possibilities and give them some practice to coping with them (Ur, 1984)

be of different kinds such as pictures or real objects

Another way to provide visual aids to the listener is using video As Underwood (1989) suggested, the use of video enables teachers to point out many visual clues which can help listeners to understand what they hear Students can see whether the speakers are young or old, happy or angry, requesting or complaining They can also see the facial expressions and gestures and even the reactions of the people who the speaker is talking to

1.5.4 Using the tapes and radios with good quality

It has been a common belief in L2 teaching that a slower rate of speech would facilitate listening comprehension Moreover, English listening proficiency

of the high school students is rather low so the teacher should choose the tape with a slower rate of speech It will be better if the speaker in the tape is a native one so

that the students can listen to accurate pronunciation Besides, radios used must have a good quality in order that the students will be able to listen to clear sounds without noise from them

1.5.5 Activating background knowledge

The teacher should encourage the learners to think about and discuss the topic they are going to listen to Teachers can also provide the background information needed for them to understand the text, and it can help them pay attention to what to listen for Consequently, students begin to predict what they might hear and make connections with what they already know, increasing the relevance of the information

1.5.6 Combining “intensive listening” with “extensive listening”; focusing on listening

In listening teaching, both intensive and extensive listening should be combined with cultivating students‟ basic skills, the development of the productive listening habits of active thinking and the ability to understand the text Therefore, teachers must encourage students to engage in intensive listening in class, requiring students

to understand the general meaning and also to become familiarized with English pronunciation, intonation and the changes in language flow In activities outside the class students need to engage in extensive listening; listening to many different variety of language phenomena and gaining more knowledge through television programs, radio, the Internet and as many other kinds of exposure to listening training they can find

1.5.7 Combining listening with other skills

According to language acquisition theory, human capacity for discrimination between language intention and language content is a crucial step in the language acquisition process Thus listening comprehensive ability plays an important role in acquisition and improvement of language skills Therefore, in listening teaching, there is a need to combine the development of listening ability with the development of other skills such as reading In order to improve listening ability it

is necessary to listen frequently to a teacher reading well, since it is very difficult to generate a high quality output without appropriate input Secondly, students need to practice reading aloud amongst themselves By such activity students will learn to combine the act of listening with reading Students must be actively engaged in producing language of high quality if they are to improve their English proficiency levels Similarly, by combining listening with writing, teachers can divide the work into two parts First, students might answer teachers‟ questions in written English after listening to spoken language 14 material It is also important to remember that good listening entails recalling the essence of the material rather than the precise detail Thirdly, teachers should combine listening activities with speaking in ways that bring out the basics of oral communication Inevitably, listeners will lose the information resources without speaking; speaking will lose its objective without careful listening and, as a result, speaking ability will not be acquired Listening and speaking rely on each other and regulate each other

1.5.8 Evaluate listening effectiveness regularly and further improve listening approaches

When teaching listening skills, teachers should also evaluate students‟ listening effectiveness regularly in order to improve their own listening teaching approaches Teachers need to discuss the content and approaches of their teaching with students regularly, and they should make adjustments in response to students‟ feedback

1.6 Review of previous related studies

The topic “factors affecting listening comprehension” is paid attention to by many researchers This part briefly reviews some studies relating the topic in both Viet Nam and overseas

1.6.1 Previous studies overseas

In this part, the researcher presents the studies conducted in some countries where English is taught as a foreign language They are the studies by Chiang & Dunkle (1992), Goh (2000), Hasan (2000), and Sitti Asriati (2017)

Chiang & Dunkle (1992) carried out a study on factors affecting listening comprehension They focus on three factors, namely, listener, speaker, and the content of the message The study was an attempt to investigate the English listening comprehension of 388 high-intermediate listening proficiency and low-intermediate listening proficiency Chinese students These students listened to a lecture, the discourse of which was (1) familiar-unmodified, (2) familiar-modified, (3) unfamiliar-unmodified, or (4) unfamiliar-modified The modified discourse contained information redundancies and elaborations After the lecture, students were required to present the acquired information in the lecture From those results, the factors were found It is clear that Chiang & Dunkle (1992) pointed out listener, speaker, and content of the message as the factors affecting students‟ listening comprehension However, they did not mention the influence of poor quality equipments and environment on students‟ listening comprehension

Goh (2000) identified real-time listening difficulties faced by 40 second language learners who learn English in preparation for undergraduate studies and examined the difficulties The instruments were learners' self-reports through the procedures of learner diaries, small group interviews and immediate retrospective verbalizations From the study, he found that factors can be separated into personal knowledge and task knowledge The obstacles of personal knowledge are limited vocabulary or academic terms, phonological modification, particular types of accents, idiomatic expressions, and type of inputs, memory, and fast speed The problems of task knowledge are interest in topic, speech rate, existing knowledge or experience, physical factors, emotional states, and length and structure of sentences Nevertheless, he did not identify the role of grammar and physical settings on students‟ listening ability

Hasan (2000) studied learners‟ perceptions of listening comprehension problems encountered in the EFL classroom in the ESP Centre at Damascus University, as reported by the learners themselves The participants were 81 native speakers of Arabic learning English as a foreign language The results of the study

showed that EFL learners experienced a range of listening problems The factors related to the speaker‟s speed, the learners‟ proficiency in listening comprehension and the physical settings To overcome them, various techniques which helped learners to utilize effective strategies to confront problems of listening comprehension were discussed and the pedagogic implications His findings focused on speaking rate, learners‟ proficiency and physical setting Yet, he did not notice the importance of listening materials‟ characteristics such as vocabulary, grammar, type of topics, and so on

The study by Sitti Asriati (2017) identified the factors affecting the students' listening comprehension achievement and which factor that was dominant, conducted at the Muhammadiyah University of Makassar The instrument used in this research was a questionnaire which then distributed to the sample to be filled The data showed that there were 25 aspects from listener and speaker affected the students' listening comprehension achievement However, the factors related to listening environment were not mentioned

In summary, it can be clearly seen that affective factors on students‟ listening skill proposed by these researchers contribute to provide understandings to help students improve their listening ability However, each of them has some certain limitation mentioned above, which reveals a gap for this study Thus, the researcher hopes that the current study will give more complete understanding on factors that affect students‟ listening comprehension

1.6.2 Previous studies in Viet Nam

The study by Thanh Hoa (2010) is concerned with sources of listening comprehension problems of the second year English students at Nghe An junior teachers training college It was conducted with quantitative method on the basis of two questionnaires to find out kinds of listening comprehension problems and factors affecting learners‟ difficulties The results showed that learners encounter various kinds of listening problems which were divided into 5 categories: learners‟ strategies use, characteristics of listening text, characteristics of listening tasks and

activities, characteristics of listeners and teachers‟ methodology From the findings

of the research, some suggestions on strategies were proposed for students and teachers to ameliorate listening comprehension problems The limited scope of the study was that she could not examine teachers‟ views of teaching listening comprehension Therefore, this called for further researches which investigate teachers‟ opinions about the students‟ listening difficulties

The study by Hồng Loan (2012) investigated sources of listening comprehension problems encountered by first-year students at Vietnam Maritime University It was conducted with quantitative method on the basis of two questionnaires to find out kinds of listening comprehension problems and factors affecting learners‟ difficulties The results showed that learners encountered various kinds of listening problems which were divided into four categories: students‟ linguistic difficulties in learning listening, students‟ listening difficulties related to the listening text, factors related to the speakers, and factors related to the listener From the findings of the study, some solutions to overcome listening difficulties were proposed This study is a further contribution to the investigation of English language listening comprehension problems However, she used only one kind of data collection method that is questionnaire, so the information may not be accurate enough It would be better to include interviews to obtain more specific ideas on the subject matter Besides, subjects of the study were college students, who are totally different from students at high schools in terms of classroom setting, linguistic competence, as well as the material and methodology exploited by teachers This fact leaves a gap for the current researcher to conduct an investigation into factors affecting listening comprehension of the eleventh grade students at a high school in Bac Ninh province

The study by Quỳnh Trang (2013) explored difficulties 10-grade students at Thang Long High School, Ha Noi face through their listening learning process with the textbook “Tieng Anh 10” The subjects of the study are 100 10-grade students

of Thang Long High School in the school year 2012 - 2013 The data have been collected via questionnaires The findings exhibit that even though almost all of the

students have an awareness of the importance of listening skills, they have performed poorly in listening classes The study confirms that students encounter listening difficulties whenever they are engaged in listening activities Based on the findings, the researcher proposes some recommendations for teachers and students

to solve the problems

The studies by Thanh Hoa (2010), Hồng Loan (2012) and Quỳnh Trang (2013) identified a lot of listening problems which students in our country have faced with Therefore, I personally think that it is necessary to carry out a study to investigate factors affecting students‟ listening problems and recommend some solutions to overcome those affective factors This study focuses on factors causing difficulties to students in learning listening comprehension and solutions to problems

1.7 Summary

In this chapter, the researcher provided background literature that was used

as the useful bases for the present study The first section discussed listening comprehension including some definitions o f listening comprehension provided by previous researchers, and processes of listening The second section focused on listening strategies consisting of their definitions and classification The third section concerned potential factors that affect students‟ listening comprehension The fourth section presented solutions to affecting factors in learning listening comprehension skill The last one mentioned several previous studies on affective factors on listening comprehension

CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

In this chapter, the methodology of the present study will be introduced The research setting, the sample of the study will be described In addition, the data

collection and analysis procedures will also be described

2.1 Restatement of research questions

The current study aims at investigating affective factors on listening comprehension of the eleventh students at a high school in Bac Ninh province Particularly, the researcher attempts to find the answers for the following questions:

1 What are the factors that affect the eleventh students‟ listening comprehension?

2 What solutions can be suggested to overcome those affective factors?

2.2 The setting of the study

The study was conducted at Yen Phong number 2, which was established in

2005 in Yen Phong district, Bac Ninh province

There are currently 57 teachers in the school, most of whom are young (from the age of 23 to 35) with 1-13 years of teaching experiences Among them, there are

7 English teachers, graduating from different universities in the country, and being well- trained and qualified; however, they still lack teaching experience These teachers of English are in charge of 24 classes with 3 periods of English per week in each class Every year, they often attend summer training courses organized by Bac Ninh education and training bureau to learn new English teaching methods or how

to raise the quality of teaching English

Classes at the school are very crowded with from 42 to 48 students in each class In addition, the desks are often arranged traditionally with rows of four desks with a narrow isle in the middle and two narrower on the sides There is no other empty space left where teachers and students can move to and from if they conduct different interaction activities Also, unavoidable noise in a big class usually has bad effects on students‟ concentration and sound quality

Though the school has a library, a laboratory, and two computer rooms, not many teachers make full use of them

Like in other schools, students at the chosen school are taught all the subjects, one of which is English English is taught in classrooms with five parts: listening, speaking, reading, writing and language focus (including grammar and structures) within 40 weeks

of them had had approximately a low intermediate level of English, especially in listening In addition, they stated that there were a large number of factors influencing their listening ability

The reason why the researcher did not choose the 10th grade students as the subjects of the study because the researcher was not in charge of teaching the 10th grade students so that it might be more difficult for her to carry out the study The researcher did not also choose the 12th grade students because the 12th grade students were busy preparing for their graduation and entrance exam to universities,

so they could not take part in the study enthusiastically

2.3.2 Teachers

The second subjects in this study are three teachers of English who are teaching the students how to listen They are female aged from 28 to 39 and have been teaching listening for over five years They are directly teaching listening for the first participants; therefore, they know clearly her students‟ listening ability,