Difficulties in learning english listening skills the case of 10 grade students at thang long high school m a thesis linguistics 60 14 10

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OFPOST-GRADUATE STUDIES VŨ QUỲNH TRANG DIFFICULTES IN LEARNING ENGLISH LISTENING SKILLS: THE

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF

POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

VŨ QUỲNH TRANG

DIFFICULTES IN LEARNING ENGLISH

LISTENING SKILLS: THE CASE OF 10-GRADE STUDENTS AT THANG LONG HIGH SCHOOL

(NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN TRONG VIỆC HỌC KỸ NĂNG NGHE: TRƯỜNG HỢP CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP 10

TRƯỜNG THPT THĂNG LONG)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF

POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

VŨ QUỲNH TRANG

DIFFICULTES IN LEARNING ENGLISH

LISTENING SKILLS: THE CASE OF 10-GRADE STUDENTS AT THANG LONG HIGH SCHOOL

(NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN TRONG VIỆC HỌC KỸ NĂNG NGHE: TRƯỜNG HỢP CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP 10

TRƯỜNG THPT THĂNG LONG)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Supervisor : Kiều Thị Thu Hương, Ph.D

HÀ NỘI- 2013

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION I

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS II

ABSTRACT III

TABLE OF CONTENTS IV

LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS VII ABBREVIATIONS VIII

PART I: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Statement of the problem 1

2 Objectives of the study 2

3 Research questions 2

4 Significance of the study 2

5 Scope of the study 3

6 Design of the study 4

PART II: DEVELOPMENT 5

CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1.1 The nature of listening 5

1.1.1 Definition of listening 5

1.1.2 Classification of listening 6

1.2 Process of listening 7

1.3 Factors affecting EFL listening 8

1.3.1 Text Characteristics 9

1.3.1.1 Length and density of the text 9

1.3.1.2 Quality of the text. 10

1.3.1.3 Conceptual difficulty of the text 10

1.3.1.4 Syntactic complexity of the text 11

1.3.1.5 Complexity of tasks 11

1.3.2 Speaker Characteristics 12

1.3.3 Listener Characteristics 13

1.3.3.1 Background knowledge 13

1.3.3.2 Language proficiency level 15

1.3.3.3 Application of strategies 16

1.3.3.4 Knowledge of vocabulary 16

1.3.4 Listening Environment 16

1.4 Overview of listening section in the English 10 textbook “Tieng Anh 10” 17 1.4.1 Pre-listening stage 18

1.4.2 While-listening stage 18

1.4.3 Post-listening stage 19

1.5 Previous works review 19

CHAPTER II: THE STUDY 21

2.1 Subjects 21

2.2 Data gathering instruments 21

2.3 Procedure 22

2.4 Findings and discussion 23

2.4.1 Students‟ background information 23

2.4.2 Students‟ opinion concerning difficulties they encounter in studying listening skills 26

2.4.2.1 Difficulties related to Text factors 26

2.4.2.2 Difficulties related to Listener factors 29

2.4.2.3 Difficulties related to Speaker factors 34

2.4.2.4 Difficulties related to Listening environment 35

2.4.2.5 Other difficulties 37

2.4.2.6 Summary 37

PART III: CONCLUSION 40

1 Conclusions 40

1.1 Students’ listening performance and how they perceive the importance of listening skills 40

1.2 Difficulties 10-grade students at TLHS encounter when studying listening skills 40

2 Implications 41

2.1 Solutions to Listener factors 41

2.2 Solutions to Text factors 43

2.3 Solutions to Speaker factors 43

2.4 Solutions to Listening environment 44

3 Limitations and suggestions for further studies 45

REFERENCES 46

APPENDICES I

Appendix 1: Questionnaire (English version) I

Appendix 2: Questionnaire (Vietnamese version) V

LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS

Table 1: Difficulties related to Listening factors 26

Table 2: Difficulties related to Listener factors 29

Table 2.1: Learners‟ responses related to the difference between written and spoken language 31 Table 2.2: Students‟ responses related to long questions 32

Table 2.3: Students‟ responses related to their anxiety when they fail to understand the text immediately 33 Table 2.4: Students‟ responses related to their inability to spell words 33

Table 3: Difficulties related to Speaker factors 34

Table 4: Difficulties related to Listening environment 35

Table 5: Other difficulties reported by students 37

Table 6: A summary of listening difficulties faced by students 38

Chart 1.1: Students‟ time experience in learning English 23

Chart 1.2: Students‟ average scores in listening skills last semester 24

Chart 1.3: Students‟ responses related the importance of listening skills 24

Chart 1.4: Students‟ responses related to the difficulty level of listening skills in comparison with other skills 25 Chart 2.1: Students‟ responses related to unfamiliar words, difficult grammatical structures, and complex sentences 27 Chart 2.2: Students‟ responses related to long spoken text 28

Chart 2.3: Students‟ responses related to uninteresting information and unfamiliar topics 28 Chart 2.4: Students‟ responses related to the skills of predicting and getting a general idea of a text 30 Chart 2.5: Students‟ responses related to speakers‟ pronunciation 31 Chart 2.6: Students‟ responses related to the speaker‟ fast speech

and unfamiliar accent 34 Chart 2.7: Students‟ responses related to the visibility of the speaker,

time allowed for listening tasks 35 Chart 2.8: Students‟ responses related to disturbing noise

and poor-quality tape-recorders/ cassette-players 36

PART I INTRODUCTION

1 Statement of the Problem

Recently, listening has gained more and more attention in foreign languagelearning In learning English as a foreign language (EFL), it is suggested that themost important step should begin with an effort to listen Rubin & Thompson state:

Listening, quite possibly, is the most important of the language skills, since

people spend approximately 60% of their time listening… In addition, listening

will give you an opportunity to get a “feel” for the language and will have you

improve your overall ability in it If you don‟t learn to listen effectively, you will

not be able to participate in conservations in the foreign language.

Rubin & Thompson (1994: 85)

Rost (1994:141) emphasizes that listening can be regarded as a necessary skill inthe preparation of foreign language students and can even be considered as a goodpredictor of language achievement Consequently, listening plays a vital role inforeign language learning

Quite recently, listening is incorporated in any English syllabuses used in primary,secondary and high schools of the Vietnamese education system There are moreand more students who set themselves ambitious goals like studying abroad,taking college entrance exams or at least getting good marks at school Therefore,they hope to develop their language abilities

To enter Thang Long High School (TLHS from now on), students must get at least

53,5/ 60 points in the General Certificate of Secondary Education examination(GCSE), thus they are expected to have good performance in all subjects includingEnglish However, most of the students who enroll in TLHS this year seem to havelow levels in listening skills This is especially observable when they take listeningclasses with the textbook “Tieng Anh10” Many students

perform poorly and some of them seem uninterested in listening lessons andunwilling to listen to the recordings The question arises here is what difficultiesthe students face while they study listening skills The purpose of this study is,therefore, to find out the specific listening difficulties 10-grade students at TLHSencounter in listening skills in the textbook “Tieng Anh 10” and suggest somepedagogical implications.

2 Objectives of the Study

The objectives of the study are:

- To identify common difficulties 10-grade students of TLHS encounter when studying listening skills in “Tieng Anh 10”

- To suggest some solutions to help students overcome their difficulties andrecommendations for teachers at TLHS to have possible measures that could contribute toplanning a lesson taking the learners‟ problems into consideration

3 Research questions

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

1 What difficulties do 10-grade students at TLHS encounter in studying listening skills?

2 What solutions are suggested to overcome these difficulties?

4 Significance of the Study

Awareness of the difficulties that students encounter in listening skills would benefit both students and teachers Hopefully, the findings of this study will

provide teachers knowledge of the problematic areas of listening skills, so thatthey can take necessary treatment measures, which are suggested as an implication

of the study Understanding their students‟ listening difficulties will permitteachers to modify their teaching approaches, methods and techniques

The study will also help students to identify their difficulties of listening skills andfind suitable and effective learning strategies When listeners know about theirown problems, they will be able to improve their listening practices and becomebetter listeners

5 Scope of the study

There are two kinds of English textbooks suggested to10-grade students inVietnam The first one entitled “English 10” is for students specializing in Englishand the second one - “Tieng Anh 10” is for students of common classes In spite ofthe similarities in the organization of topics and skills in both textbooks, “English10” involves more advanced knowledge and language practices Both textbooks areofficially used in almost all schools in Hanoi However, due to limited time and thescope of a minor thesis, the research has focused her study on 10-grade students‟difficulties in learning listening skills in the textbook “Tieng Anh 10”, which isused in common classes nationwide

The researcher looks for a better understanding of listening difficulties 10-gradestudents in TLHS encounter Although it is not suggested that students of otherhigh schools in Hanoi face exactly the same listening difficulties, the researchbelieve that they may share some common difficulties It is hoped that futureextensive investigations into listening problems can be conducted in differentcontexts in further studies will provide more exact and reliable answers

6 Design of the study

The study includes three parts:

Part one is the Introduction of the study which states the problem, the research

questions, objectives, scope, significance and the design of the whole paper

Part two is the Development which consists of two chapters Chapter one presents

the theoretical background related to the topic Chapter two includes subjects of

the study, data collection instruments, procedure, analysis of data and the results

Part three is the Conclusion which summarizes major findings of the investigation,

provides implications and suggestions, limitations and suggestions for furtherstudies

PART II DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 The nature of listening

1.1.1 Definition of listening

To define listening, theoreticians distinguish listening and hearing Listeninginvolves an active process, which requires an analysis of sounds, in contrast tohearing that only perceives sounds in a passive way In the same way, Harmer

(1989: 16) expresses that listening is a “receptive skill” where people obtain the

main idea according to what they hear Besides, listening helps learners to beflexible listeners, to know how to listen in order to get the general idea or thespecific information needed to understand the message

Listening is a process in which the listener constructs meaning out of theinformation provided by the speaker This involves understanding a speaker‟saccent or pronunciation, his grammar and his vocabulary, and grasping hismeaning Morley (1972) as cited in Tesfaye (2008) provides a broader definition oflistening states that it includes the process of reauditorizing, extracting vitalinformation, remembering it, and relating it to construct meaning, besides the basicauditory discrimination and aural grammar Therefore, although listening is apassive skill it is very much an active process of selecting and interpretinginformation from auditory and visual clues

Listening is the process that allows the listener to understand a message and getsthem involved in the conversation and be able to achieve successfulcommunication Without listening, the communicator would fail to receive themessage and therefore, unable to respond quickly and effectively Listening plays

an important role in the process of acquiring a language Rost (1994) points out:

Listening is vital in the language classroom because it provides input for the learner Without understanding input at the right level, any learning simply cannot begin.

Rost (1994: 141)

Thus, listening is fundamental to speaking and other skills In conclusion, listeningfosters the learning of a second language because it provides input which is a mainfactor in the learning process In this way, listening is a significant skill during theprocess of acquiring a language

1.1.2 Classification of listening

According to Rubin and Thomson (1994: 85) listening is divided into two typesbasing on the types of situation where the understanding takes place Firstly,

reciprocal or interactive listening happens when the listener is required to take

part in the interaction and alternately listens and speaks Interactive listeningsituations include face-to-face conversations and telephone calls in which thelistener has a chance to ask for clarification, repetition, or slower speech from

his/her conversation partner The second type is non-reciprocal or non-interactive

listening which happens when the listener is engaged in listening passively to a

monologue or speech or even conversation Some non-interactive listeningsituations are listening to the radio, CDs, TV, films, lectures etc and here thelistener doesn‟t usually have the opportunity to ask for clarification, slower speech

or repetition

According to Derrington and Groom (2004), there are five types of listening: (i)

informative, which consists of information retained by the learner; (ii) appreciative, when the learner listens according to his style and feels pleasure

about it; (iii) critical is based on retaining information and analyzing it deeply;

(iv) discriminative in which the listener identifies emotions and inferences through

the tone of voice, (iv) empathic consists on non-verbal behavior of the listener that is

attending to what is said

These nine activities indicate the interaction of two cognitive processes:

bottom-up and top-down In the bottom-bottom-up view:

… [T]hey segment the stream of speech into its constituent sounds, link these together to form words, chain the words together to form clauses and sentences and so on This view is known as the bottom- up approach to listening

(Nunan 1991: 17)

Thus, in this process the learners attempt to understand a spoken discourse bydecoding a number of sounds to form words Next, words are linked to formphrases, which make up sentences These sentences build a complete text, themeaning of which is then constructed by the listener In addition to thegrammatical relationships, such phonemes as stress, rhythm and intonation alsosubstantially contribute to this data-driven processing Learners can be trained toperform this processing, for instance, by activities that require them to discriminatetwo sounds or distinguish rising and falling intonations

The top-down processing, on the other hand, refers to interpreting meaning as

intended by the speakers by means of schemata or structures of knowledge in themind This view emphasizes the prominence of background knowledge alreadypossessed by the learners in making sense of the information they hear The prior

knowledge may facilitate their attempt to grasp the incoming information byrelating the familiar with the new one, and significant lack of such knowledge canruin their efforts to comprehend a particular utterance Successful listeners are

those who can combine both “inside the head” knowledge, which is not directly encoded in words, and “outside the head” knowledge to interpret what they listen

to (Nunan 1991: 18) Anderson and Lynch (1988), cited in Nunan (1991: 18),

contrast the bottom-up view of listener as “tape recorder” with the top-down view

of listener as “model builder” Therefore, it is essential for the listener to ultilise

both bottom-up and top-down knowledge

1.3 Factors affecting EFL listening

In Underwood‟s point of view (1994: 16), there are seven potential difficulties in

EFL listening comprehension: (1) lack of control over the speed at which speakers speak; (2) inability to get things repeated; (3) the listener's limited vocabulary; (4) failure to recognize the signals; (5) problems of interpretation; (6) inability to concentrate; (7) established learning habits Many language learners believe that

the greatest difficulty with listening is that the listener cannot control how quickly aspeaker speaks

Rubin and Thompson (1994: 87) identify three common problems in learning to

listen to a foreign language The first problem is that the speaker talks too fast If

the listener cannot follow the speaker, the listener can let the speaker know about

it He/she can ask for repetition, clarification or rephrase The second problem is

that the listener could not understand the foreign language, for example, in TV and movies It is advisable for the listener to guess or predict what he/she has to listen

to by using visual clues, teachers‟ questions, warm up activities and his/her own

background knowledge The third problem is that the listener tend to stop listening when he/she hears a new word or phrase As a result, he/she can miss portions of

the passage that might help clarify the unfamiliar word or segment The listenershould concentrate on familiar parts and keep listening

In addition, there are other scholars who forwarded factors that are thought toaffect foreign language listening comprehension Rubin (1994: 216) after

reviewing “over 130 studies of which over 115 report directly on research in listening comprehension” identified five factors which affect listening comprehension: text characteristics such as speech rate, pause, stress and rhythm, difference in first and second language, etc; interlocutor characteristics such as gender and language proficiency; task characteristics such as task type; listener characteristics such as language proficiency level, memory, attention, affect, age,

gender, learning disability in first language, and background knowledge; and

process characteristics such as top-down, bottom-up, and parallel processing,

listening strategies, and negotiation of comprehensible input

Yagang (1994) attributes the difficulty of listening comprehension to four sources:

the message, the speaker, the listener and the physical setting The researcher will

focus on the factors proposed by Yagang (1994) and Rubin (1994) The study,

which particularly limited to the listening problems pertinent to the Text, the

Speaker, the Listener, and the Listening Environment The following section

discusses each characteristic

1.3.1 Text Characteristics

One of the major factors that are believed to affect EFL listening is textcharacteristics Text refers to the content of the listening passage, theattractiveness of the topic to generate interest to the learners, conceptual difficulty,syntactic complexity, length and density of a text, etc These factors potentiallyinfluence the success or failure of listening comprehension The details arepresented as follow

1.3.1.1 Length and density of the text

In learning a foreign language, listening and interpreting unfamiliar sounds forlong time are tiring Although successful listeners do not try to understand every

word they hear (in fact, they just listen to key words), they still find it difficult tocatch key words from a relatively long and dense text It may be due to fatigue orstudents‟ inability to concentrate for a long time Moreover, if a message contains

so much information that cannot be stored easily in memory, special listeningstrategies will be possibly inapplicable Short spoken text reduces the complexity

of comprehension by reducing tiredness and lapse of concentration With regard tothe density of the text, many writers (Ur, 2005; Underwood, 1989) claim thatinformation should be less dense in the spoken language than in the writtenlanguage

1.3.1.2 Quality of the text.

It is important to pick topics that will be interesting for students of different ages

An interesting topic generates enjoyment that leads to motivation Thus, learners‟interest should be taken into consideration during selecting or preparing listeningmaterials If the text is interesting, it motivates learners by making the listeningtask enjoyable Also, it catches learners‟ attention and encourages them to actively

engage in the activities Underwood (1989: 19) says: “If students find the topic interesting, they will find concentration easier.” That i s , when the listening topic

is interesting, students find listening tasks very enjoyable, because they aremotivated to attentively follow what they listen to On the contrary, if the topic isnot interesting, students may find the listening activities boring, and this caninterfere with their concentration which is critical to listening activity because

even “the shortest break in attention can seriously impair comprehension”

(Underwood, 1989: 19)

1.3.1.3 Conceptual difficulty of the text

Difficult concepts can negatively affect students‟ listening According to Boyle

(1984: 35), if the concept of a listening passage is difficult “especially if the material is abstract, abstruse, highly specialized or technical, esoteric, lengthy, or

poorly organized”, comprehension of that passage can be difficult During

selecting or preparing listening materials, therefore, we should make sure thatwhether the difficulty level of the concept is suitable for all students in the level.Topics about people, daily life, environment and social issues which containsimple concepts are familiar to students while topics with theoretical conceptsinterfere with the students‟ comprehension If the information of the spoken text isfull of theoretical concepts and if it is beyond learners‟ knowledge, it will makestudents confused and frustrated This is because a difficult concept demands pastexperiences and linguistic abilities that not many students could have

1.3.1.4 Syntactic complexity of the text

According to Brown and Yule (1983: 1), there are a number of differencesbetween spoken discourse and written discourse which are important in learningEFL listening That is, while the spoken language is syntactically simpler, thewritten language is relatively complex Therefore if the listener is unable tosegment and simplify complex sentences and turn them into more basic syntacticunits, they will fail to comprehend the text

1.3.1.5 Complexity of tasks

In real life, the listener has a definite non-linguistic reason for listening forexample to communicate or entertain In listening classrooms, however, the reasonfor listening is purely linguistic and test-focused

A problem arises here, however, when the tasks require responses beyondchecking the students listening skills Penny Ur asserts:

…[T]asks that involve a lot of reading (such as answering multiple-choice questions) or writing (such as taking notes) have one disadvantage that should be noted.

Ur (2005: 26)

Ur also says that even many native speakers find it difficult to do multiple-choicelistening exercises or make note from lecture because this kind of exercises domore for writing skills than listening skills Here if the purpose of the tasks is tocover all language skills other than focus on listening skills, it may be unnecessary

to employ tasks that involve reading, speaking or writing which are tiring anddifficult for students Therefore, Ur (2005) and many authors agree that listeningtasks should requires quick simple responses and should not demand the skills ofreading, speaking and writing at the expense of listening It is advisable that thelistening tasks should be listening- based, rather than reading-, writing-, orspeaking-based

1.3.2 Speaker Characteristics

Speaker factors may include the language ability of the speaker (native or native speaker); speaker’s production (pronunciation, accent, variation, voice, etc); speed of delivery; prestige and personality of the speaker (Boyle 1984: 35).

non-Most students have had little prior exposure to authentic discourse; therefore,listeners have imperfect control of linguistic code Moreover, the differentpronunciations of words across versions of the same language (e.g British, Indian,Canadian, Australian, and regional U.S English) make it difficult to percept thesounds Ur (2005) realizes that many foreign language learners who are used to theaccents of their teachers feel dismayed when they cannot listen to other speakers

They even claim that the speaker‟ accent is inferior or wrong “but there is rarely such a thing as wrong accent” (Ur 2005: 20) Ur also advises teachers to not only

give students familiarity with the two most common English accents - English andAmerican varieties, but introduce them to other accents

The other problem that makes difficult to understand the native speakerEnglish may be the learners past experience of learning Let us now look at howYagang describes it:

Learners tend to be used to their teacher‟s accent or to the standard variety of

British or American English They find it hard to understand speakers with other

accents Spoken prose, as in news broadcasting and reading aloud written texts, is

characterized by an even pace, volume, pitch, and intonation Natural dialogues, on

the other hand, are full of hesitations, pauses, and uneven intonation Students used

to the former kinds of listening material may sometimes find the latter difficult to

understand.

Yagang (1994:190)

This seems the reason why Underwood (1989: 99) criticizes the use of authentic texts instead of the authentic one for the teaching of listening She saysthat using non-authentic texts for listening causes students to pose an additionalproblem of having to try to transfer what they have learned by listening to non-authentic materials to their attempts to understand authentic speech

non-1.3.3 Listener Characteristics

Listener characteristics appear to have considerable impacts on listeningcomprehension Some researchers have sought to identify listener factors thatinfluence listening comprehension in positive and negative ways

information.

From this we can understand that students having varying levels of

prior

knowledge about a subject are more likely to understand, interpret the newinformation in different ways, and these students try to make sense of newinformation; in other words, students try to make sense of what is new by relating

it to what is familiar using their prior knowledge and strategy These concepts oflearning, in general, indicate that listeners' past experiences strongly affect the way

in which the listeners interpret a passage To make the points more clear, we willsee the concept of background knowledge from three different perspectives: topicfamiliarity, authentic speech and culture familiarity

a) Listeners’ awareness to a topic

Boyle (1984: 35) lists “knowledge of the specific topic or subject” as a factor that

affects EFL listening Listening can be seen as an interactive process in which thelistener's knowledge is used to make sense of information provided by the speaker.Current views on listening comprehension agree that prior knowledge of a topiccan affect listening comprehension If communication is to take place, the learnershould have certain things in common with the subject under discussion

It is obvious that students will find it easier to listen to a passage on familiar topicthan on unfamiliar one Moreover, in order to make students familiar to a topic,scholars advise to activate learners‟ background knowledge to prepare the students

to use what they know about a topic, and to facilitate effective comprehension

b) Cultural awareness

Culture plays a significant role not only in comprehension but also in learning aforeign language as a whole It can be inferred that the student with no backgroundknowledge of culture in English, American or other English speaking

countries, is unlikely to understand Anglophone modes of thinking as expressed inthe English language Underwood states:

Students who are unfamiliar with the cultural context may have considerable

difficulty in interpreting the words they hear even if they can understand their

„surface‟ meaning.

Underwood (1989:19)

According to Brown (1994), culture includes the sociolinguistic aspects oflanguage which deal with politeness, formality, metaphor, register, and otherculturally related aspects of language as dialects and figures of speech He addsthat if learners are not familiar with the sociolinguistic aspects of the language,they may misunderstand intended meanings of utterances within the contexts

c) Familiarity with natural feature of spoken English

The spoken features of native speaker English can be difficult for learners who donot have previous exposure Non-native learners who are unfamiliar with authenticfeatures will have difficulty in perceiving aspects of listening such as hearing thesounds, understanding intonation, stress, and redundancy under colloquialvocabulary and understanding different accents

1.3.3.2 Language proficiency level

Rubin (1994: 206) claimed that language proficiency is a major variable thatinfluences EFL listening More advanced learners, with a greater store of linguisticknowledge, and a more sophisticated control over this knowledge, achieve greaterunderstanding of speech But those students at low English proficiency level, with

a lesser store of linguistic knowledge, and less sophisticated control over thisknowledge may encounter problems in understanding speech

1.3.3.3 Application of strategies

Harmer (1991:183) describes these strategies, which he calls “micro skills”, as

follows: predictive skills, extracting specific information, getting the general picture, extracting detailed information, recognizing functions and discourse patterns and deducting meaning from contexts He says that an effective listener is

the one who is capable of employing the appropriate strategies of listeningsimultaneously He advises that EFL listeners should employ these strategies oflistening in order to be successful in listening comprehension because listeners‟success at understanding the content of what they hear depends to a large extent intheir expertise on the micro skills

1.3.3.4 Knowledge of vocabulary

Another area that is claimed to affect students‟ listening comprehension is thestudent's limited lexical knowledge A problem many learners have is having todeal with the multiple meanings of words and in fact, many students know onlythe most common meaning of a word When the word is encountered in one of itsless common uses, students are confused The other problem of listening inrelation to vocabulary is getting words which seem similar in sounds In Englishthere are different words which seem similar in sounds but different in meanings(as ship/sheep, meat/meet, fit/feet, write/right, sight/site, light/light, etc)(Underwood, 1989: 9) When EFL listeners come across such words, they may fail

to distinguish one word from the other with similar sound

Therefore, students should be exposed to such words and need to learn theirdifferences in meaning In addition, students need to learn the expressions that arecommon in spoken English

1.3.4 Listening Environment

Some of these factors that are claimed to affect students‟ EFL listening

comprehension are those concerned with environmental distractions or associated

visual support Yagang (1994) asserts that noise, including both background noises

on the recording and environmental noises, can take the listener‟s mind off thecontent of the listening passage Similarly, environmental variables can disturb andconfuse EFL listeners Environmental distractions, such as, phones ringing, andother voices can affect the learners‟ listening comprehension The distractionoriginates from the listening environment or from the listening equipment such asmachines, cassettes, volume control, etc

Another barrier of listening comprehension, which can be associated withenvironment, is lack of visual support Yagang (1994) says that not seeing thespeaker‟s gestures and facial expressions makes it more difficult for the listener tounderstand the speaker‟s meaning These factors are important not only becausethey contribute to the immediate act of comprehension, but because they help thestudents to build up knowledge of context which is important for successful

listening Ur (2005: 4) also mentioned the importance of “visibility of the speaker” and suggests “using live speakers, restoring to recordings only to attain specific objectives”.

1.4 Overview of listening section in the textbook “Tieng Anh 10”

The new series of English textbook for students from grade 6 to 12, including thetextbook “Tieng Anh 10” marked a great effort of Vietnam‟s Ministry ofEducation and Training (MOET) to improve language teaching and learningcontext in Vietnam Different from the old textbooks where language input werepresented in terms of long reading texts and mechanically grammar-basedexercises, the textbook “Tieng Anh 10” is a theme-based one, in which there are

16 units arranged according to different topics conveying various aspects of daily

life such as School talks, People’s background, An excursion, Film and Cinema.

Each unit consists of 5 sections: Reading, Speaking, Listening, Writing andLanguage focus This is an advantage of the textbook as it aims to develop allcommunicative language skills for students

Listening skills is a complete new section for both Vietnamese students andteachers, who have not got used to the communicative approach Thus, listeningskills is considered one of the most difficult skills by many Vietnamese students.Listening lessons make up 20 % of the English 10 syllabus and each lesson consists

of 3 stages: Pre-listening stage, While-listening stage and Post-listening stage

1.4.1 Pre-listening stage

To prepare students and arouse students‟ interest in the listening text, this stageconsists of various activities such as discussing some relevant pictures, asking andanswering about relevant experience, ideas and vocabulary associated with thetopics, predicting information about the topic It is difficult for students to listen to

a text at the beginning of the lesson without knowing about the topic, itsknowledge and related vocabulary Even if the sounds and topics are familiar withstudents, they may still get confused and miss parts of the text There are certaingoals that must be achieved before students start listening to any text They aremotivation, contextualization and preparation, which should be done in the pre-listening stage To do so, teachers should have interesting activities to introducethe topic, give background information and pre-teach vocabulary such as games orcolorful pictures

1.4.2 While-listening stage

This stage includes a series of listening activities for students to practice, thus itoften takes most time of the lesson At this stage students often listen to the taperecordings several times to do different types of tasks The purpose of the stage is

to help students develop their listening skills and get to understand the text.Teachers should play the role of a facilitator who introduces necessary listeningstrategies and clues to help students complete given tasks Teachers should notexpect students to understand every word in the tape recording While-listeningmay involve these activities: identify the exact topic, note some pieces of

information, answer the questions, fill in the blanks or complete a table, map, chart

or picture

1.4.3 Post-listening stage:

According to Underwood (1989: 75) the purpose of post-listening activities is tocheck whether the students understand the lesson and if they have completedwhatever while-listening tasks has set Another purpose of this stage is to reflectwhy students fail to understand parts of the text The third purpose is to give

students “opportunity to consider the attitude and manner of the speakers”

Post-listening activities in the text book include answering questions, discussing orwriting summaries

1.5 Previous works review

The issues of teaching and learning listening skills have been particularlyconcerned by a lot of researchers Boyle (1984) conducted a research in twouniversities in Hongkong A sample of teachers and students are consulted to listsix factors which they consider the most important in hampering the effectiveness

of listening comprehension A number of factors that emerged was listed anddiscussed Bennui (2005) carried on a survey on first-year students‟ opinionsconcerning causes of their low performance in listening at Thaksin University Thesample students helped to find out six factors that badly influenced their listening

Le Thi Xuan Anh (2001) revealed that “Listening Strategies” were unconsciouslyused by Vietnamese students at tertiary level She realized the relationship betweenthe learners‟ listening abilities and their strategy choice Phung Thi Hoai Thu(2008) examined listening difficulties perceived by teachers and students in usingthe new English textbook for grade 10 at Que Vo II Upper-secondary School inBac Ninh Her findings from the data analysis were categorized into three mainproblems: low level of language background, lack of language skills, especiallytechniques and strategies to learn listening skills; and teacher‟s assistance Vu Viet

Phuong (2009) aimed to study difficulties on learning listening skills via thetextbook “New Headway Pre- intermediate” of the first year non English students

at University of Economic and Technical Industries The possible sources includedstudents‟ lack of experience and learning method, their learning habit, their limitedbackground and linguistics knowledge, teacher‟s teaching method and learning

environment Nguyen Thi Mai Trang (2011) carried on a study as an investigation

of what difficulties tenth forms students at Pham Ngu Lao High School facethrough listening learning process at high school It is revealed from the study thattenth form students have difficulties related to linguistic, psychology, materials andlearning strategies when they study listening skills Based on the findings and thestudents‟ suggestions, the researcher proposes some recommendations for teachersand students to solve the problems

It can be seen that most researchers mentioned focused on studying either thegeneral principles for teaching listening skills or the problems faced by learners inlearning listening and suggested solutions to improve their listening skill Althoughthere have already been studies on listening difficulties faced by 10-grade students,those studies were restricted to the context of some particular high schools, whichcannot present all schools in Hanoi The researcher feels the need of conducting astudy in the context of TLHS where she is working

CHAPTER II: THE STUDY

This chapter comprises four sections The first section introduces the subjects ofthe study The instruments and procedure of data collection will be described Inthe next two sections, the results of the study will be presented through tables andcharts

2.2 Data gathering instruments

The only instrument used in this study is a student questionnaire Thequestionnaire has been designed after a review of the literature about factors that

influence EFL listening It consists of two parts Part 1, entitled “Students’

background information” is intended to gather respondents‟ information about

their prior language learning and how they perceive the importance of listening

skills Part 2, entitled “Students’ opinion concerning difficulties they encounter

in studying listening skills” is the highlight of the questionnaire It has 2 sections.

Section A contains 20 close-ended questions and section B has 1 open-endedquestion For the close-ended items in the questionnaire, the researcher uses a five-point scale where number 1 represents the lowest and number 5 represents the

highest experience of listening difficulties The scales 1 to 5 are equal to: Never, Seldom, Sometimes, Often, and Always respectively The open-ended question

provides students a chance to add any other listening difficulties different from the

ones listed in the close-ended questions.

2.3 Procedure

There are three stages in the data collection:

Stage 1: The questionnaires are designed in both English and Vietnamese (see

Appendicies), after making several changes to the pre-questionnaire which wasdelivered to a group of 10 students Those students were also interviewed to verifythe reliability of the questionnaire Next, the researcher consulted 3 experiencedteachers at TLHS and then come up with the final questionnaire which consists of 2parts

Stage 2: 100 students were chosen randomly from 3 classes; therefore, it took the

researcher 3 days to go to each class First, the students were asked to finish thequestionnaires while the researcher went around offering help The questionnaireswere answered within 30 minutes

Stage 3: The data were analyzed and contrasted to get answers to the research

questions

2.4 Findings and discussion

2.4.1 Student’s background information

Chart 1.1: Students’ time experience in learning English

For the question number 1: How long have you been studying English?, among

100 participants, 55 respondents (55 %) report that they have studied English morethan 7 years, 42 participants (42%) have learnt English from 5-7 years The number

of students who have studied English from 3- 5 years is only 3 students (3%) None

of respondents has learnt English for less than 3 years These statistics shows thatmost students have at least five- year experience in learning English

Because English now, with all skills, is taught from elementary schools, and theEnglish textbooks for students at secondary schools also include listening as acompulsory part of the syllabus, it can be inferred that students have got used tolistening to simple recordings such as conversations, people or thing description.Question number 2 is asked to get more information on how students perform inlistening The results are presented in the chart below

Chart 1.2: Students’ average scores in listening skills last semester

From the chart, it can be seen that the number of students who have average scores

of English listening skills from 5,0 to 6,4 accounts for the highest percentage with43% The number of students who admit having listening score below 5,0 is 14students (14%) The rate of students whose scores are above 6,5 is 43% To someextent, the point average of the first semester can reflect the respondents‟ level inEnglish listening skills Although many of them have learned English for quite along time, the average scores of listening skills shows that they have a lot ofproblems with listening skills in class

Chart 1.3: Students’ responses related the importance of listening skills

The chart presents students‟ responses to the question number 3 which is asked toobtain information on how students perceive the importance of listening skills Alarge proportion of students choose 3, 4 and 5 (95% in total) on the scale whichrefers to the high importance level of listening skills It means that most of therespondents are aware of the significance of listening in learning English.However, there are some students who evaluate the role of listening as notimportant (5% in total).

Chart 1.4: Students’ responses related to the difficulty level of listening skills in comparison with other skills

Illustrating the responses to question number 4, the chart shows that the largestportion is made up by opinion that evaluates listening skills as difficult as otherskills (44%) It is followed by those who consider listening as more difficult thanother skills (38 %) There are 16 students (16%) report that listening is much moredifficult than other skills Only 2 of the respondents (2%) think that listening ismuch easier than other skills So, listening skills are considered difficult by morethan half sample students

2.4.2 Students’ opinion concerning difficulties they encounter in

studying listening skills

Based on the factors mentioned in the literature review, the data are divided intofour categories: Listener, Text, Speaker, and Listening Environment factors.Furthermore, questions that refer to students‟ difficulties related to the listener, tothe text, to the speaker, and to the environment are put together under theirrespective categories

2.4.2.1 Difficulties related to Text factors

Item no Difficulties

1 I find listening difficult because of unfamiliar words in the spoken text

2 I find it difficult because of complex grammatical structures in the

spoken text

3 I find listening difficult because of the length and complexity of

sentences

4 Long spoken text makes me tired and anxious when listening

5 I don‟t continue listening because the information is not interesting

enough to me

6 I find listening difficult because of unfamiliar topics/ subjects

Table 1: Difficulties related to Text factors

Items number 1, 2 and 3 are presented and analyzed together on chart 2.1 because all of them are factors related to bottom-up processing strategy

Chart 2.1: Students’ responses related to unfamiliar words, difficult grammatical

structures, and complex sentences.

Item 1 is asked to know whether unfamiliar words negatively affected students‟listening comprehension A large number of the students, 87/ 100 (87%), haveresponded that unfamiliar words is sometimes (23%), often (51%) or always (13

%) a factor having influence on their listening The percentage of respondentschoosing “never” and “seldom” are 5% and 8% respectively

Item 2 is asked to know whether complex grammatical structures interfere withlearners‟ listening comprehension 26 % of the respondents think that they never(9%) or seldom (17%) face the difficulty of complex grammatical structures Thegreat majority of students (74 %) have responded that difficult grammaticalstructures sometimes (30%), often (23%) or always (21%) negatively affect theirlistening comprehension

Item 3 is asked to know whether length and complexity of sentences affectstudents‟ listening comprehension 89/100 students (89%) have responded thatcomplexity of sentences sometimes, often, always (33%, 34%, 22% respectively)interfere with their listening comprehension

From the result obtained above, it is possible to generalize that unfamiliar words,complex grammatical structures, and complex sentences are common difficulties inlearning listening skills faced by the great majority of 10-grade students in TLHS