A study on difficulties in english listening skill for the second year students in english faculty, thuongmai university and some suggested solutions

Therefore, we conducted a study on the difficulties in English listening skills of second-year English language students.. This thesis focuses on three main issues: theattitude of second

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THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY ENGLISH FACULTY

-GRADUATION PAPER

Topic:

COMMON ERRORS IN ENGLISH SPEAKING LESSONS OF ENGLISH –

MAJOR FRESHMEN AT THUONG MAI UNIVERSITY

Supervisor: Pham Thi Xuan Ha (M.A)

Student: Trinh Thi Thuong

Class: K52N3

Student Code: 16D170186

HANOI, 2020

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Today, the position of English in the areas of life is increasingly important andnecessary To learn English well and fluently, learners must improve their languageskills Listening is considered to be the most difficult skill when learning a foreignlanguage in general and English in particular, a skill that learners face manydifficulties and challenges Students at Thuongmai University also have difficultyhearing English There are many domestic and foreign authors studying the areas oflistening skills However, there are no major studies targeting second-year Englishstudents Therefore, we conducted a study on the difficulties in English listening skills

of second-year English language students This thesis focuses on three main issues: theattitude of second-year students in English Faculty, Thuongmai University on Englishlistening skills, difficulties in listening skills of English second-year students inEnglish Faculty, Thuongmai University and proposing solutions to help the studentsimprove their listening skills This study is based on quantitative, qualitative methods.The survey questionnaire was used to distribute 100 students in K54N classes tocollect data Raw data is converted into numbers and percentages From the results,there are conclusions drawn about students' attitudes and difficulties in Englishlistening skills In general, second-year students are aware of the importance oflistening skills and most of them consider that this is the most difficult skill in Englishskills Second-year students have many difficulties in listening (subjective andobjective difficulties) From the research findings, the researcher has made suggestionsand recommendations to help students solve difficulties when listening to English Theresearcher hopes this research can help second-year students in English Faculty,Thuongmai University improve their listening skills and support follow-up research toavoid shortcomings and limitations

On completing this graduation paper, I would like to send my deepest and mostsincere gratitude to many people for their invaluable help during the conduct of theresearch

First and foremost, I would like to send my heartfelt gratitude towards mysupervisor Ms Pham Minh Hong for her constructive and timely feedbacks as well asher constant and unfailing support which were decisive factors to the completion of thestudy

Furthermore, I would love to thank all the teachers who have taught me academicwriting and research methodology I would also like to say the sincerest thanks tosecond-year students in English Faculty, Thuongmai University who haveenthusiastically participated in the study Their participation has been crucial to thecompletion of the research

Last but not least, I express my truly gratitude to my family and friends whoemotionally and spiritually comforted me through the challenging time of conductingthe research The study could not have been completed without their continualencouragement

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT i

ACKNOWLEDGMENT ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS v

LIST OF TABLE AND FIGURES vi

CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY 1

1.1 Rationale 1

1.2 Previous studies 2

1.3 Research subjects 5

1.4 Scope of the study 6

1.5 Research methodology 6

1.6 The organization of the study 7

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 8

2.1 An overview of listening skills 8

2.1.1 Definition of listening 8

2.1.2 The features of listening skills 10

2.1.3 The significance of listening skills 10

2.1.4 Types of listening 11

2.2.2 Elements make English listening difficult 15

2.3 Factors affecting English listening 16

2.3.1 The class atmosphere 16

2.3.2 Students’ motivation 16

2.3.3 Quality of recorded material 17

2.4 Summary 18

CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND RESEARCH FINDINGS 19

3.1 Methodology 19

3.1.1 Research methodology 19

3.1.2 Research questions 19

3.1.3 Participants 20

3.1.4 Data collection instruments 20

3.2 Data analysis and discussions 21

3.2.1 The difficulties, like and dislike 21

3.2.2 The importance of learning English listening skills and frequency of students having problems in learning English listening skills 23

3.2.4 Causes affecting English listening skills 25

3.2.5 The activities students should do before and while listening 29

3.2.6 Results of the interview 30

CHAPTER 4: RECOMMENDATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 32

4.1 Summary of the study 32

4.2 Possible solutions to improve listening skills 32

4.2.1 Solutions for students 32

4.3 Recommendations 34

4.3.1 For school or university 34

4.3.2 For lecturers 35

4.3.3 For students 35

4.4 Limitation of the study 37

4.5 Suggestions for the study 37

CONCLUSION 38

REFERENCES 39

APPENDIX 40

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

TMU: Thuongmai University

LIST OF TABLE AND FIGURES

Chart 3.2: The student’s interest in learning listening skills 22

Chart 3.3: The importance of English listening skills 23

Chart 3.4: The frequency of students having problems in learning English skills 24

Chart 3.5: Students’ interest in extra listening activities 24

Chart 3.7: Difficulties in English listening related to the listener 26

Chart 3.8: Other problems in listening English skills 28

Chart 3.10: Students should do during English listening 29

CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY

The first chapter includes an overview of the research topic The first problemmentioned is the reason for studying the topic as well as previous research and theaims of the study In addition, Chapter I also points out the salient features of theresearch subjects and scope of the study Moreover, this is also the chapter outliningthe research methodology used in the study process Finally, this chapter is also achapter that summarizes the parts of the organization of the study

Listening plays a vital role in daily lives People often listen for differentpurposes such as entertainment, academic purposes or obtaining necessaryinformation Of the four language skills Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writingthat all language learners are supposed to acquire Listening is believed to be the mostchallenging due to the complex and subtle nature of listening comprehension in asecond or foreign language

As a researcher, I would like to present the thesis title “A study on difficulties in English listening skills for the second-year students in English Faculty, Thuongmai University and some suggested solutions” for several reasons.

First of all, listening is the most important skill in communication in our real life.Listening is key to all effective communication Without the ability to listeneffectively, messages are easily misunderstood As a result, communication breaksdown and the sender of the message can easily become frustrated or irritated

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Moreover, in learning a language, listening is a useful means of providing studentswith comprehensible input, which is an essential component of the whole languagelearning process And teaching listening skill in the classroom helps students make thetransition from classroom English to real-life English more easily and effectively.Therefore, I would like to do this research to help the students and teachers pay moreattention to listening skill.

Secondly, learning listening skill is the most difficult in learning a foreignlanguage Listening, like reading, is a receptive skill but it is often the most dauntingfor students When reading, a reader usually has more opportunities to refer back to thetext to clarify understanding, which a listener cannot do in most listening contexts such

as TV programs, meetings, discussions, lectures or conversations

Last but not least, reason for choosing this thesis title is that many students arenot interested in learning listening skill They find listening classes boring On theother hand, practicing listening skill is difficult and it takes a long time That is thereason I would like to work out some suggestions to help teachers motivate theirstudents to study listening skill more excited and better

After studying in English Faculty, Thuongmai University, for nearly four years, Irealize that the second-year students of English major still have to cope with manydifficulties in their listening skill In the hope of finding out some difficulties of

listening that they normally get, a study entitle: “A study on difficulties in English listening skill for the second-year students in English Faculty, Thuongmai University and some suggested solutions” has been conducted because of all above mentioned

reason

1.2 Previous studies

According to some previous research from Hamouda (2013), who completed therelated study, he concluded that in order to help students to improve their listeningability, language lecturer had to understand students’ listening difficulties incomprehending listening text, and instruct effective listening strategies to help thestudents to solve their listening difficulties As well as the lecturer knows theirstudents’ difficulties, students as subjects have an important role in developing theirlistening Students successful in listening depend on how they can know and solve

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their difficulties If the students know the problems influence their listening, it would

be easy to find the solution They will study hard in order to improve their listening

Hamouda (2013) found in his research entitled An Investigation of Listening Comprehension Problems Encountered by Saudi Students in the EL Listening Classroom This research used quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection.

This study was carried out with the participation of 60 first-year students majoring inEnglish language and translation at Qassim University Their ages range from 20 to 22years old Listening comprehension seems to be the weakest skill and studentsencounter various kinds of listening problems Data was gathered throughquestionnaires and interviews The research found that accent, pronunciation,insufficient vocabulary, different accents of the speakers, lack of concentration,anxiety, and bad quality of recording were the major listening comprehensionproblems encountered by EFL Saudi learners

Andi Asmawati (2017) found in his research entitled Analyzing students’ difficulties toward listening comprehension This research also use quantitative and

qualitative methods of data collection There were 37 students as the subject in thisstudy Data were gathered by questionnaires and interviews while observation duringlistening was used to confirm students’ answers and have many main reasons related

to difficulties in English listening skill for students

a Listening problems related to the content of the listening text

1) Problems pertinent to unfamiliar word

2) Problem pertinent to poor grammar

3) Problem pertinent to understand every single word in the text

4) Problem pertinent length of spoken text

5) Problem pertinent fatigue when listen long spoken text

6) Problem pertinent to unfamiliar topic

b Listening problems related to the listener

1) Problem pertinent to inability of understanding listening

2) Problem pertinent to anxiety

3) Problem pertinent to the unclear pronunciation

4) Problem pertinent intonation of the speaker

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5) Problem pertinent to predict what would come next

6) Problem pertinent unable to concentrate when answer and listen at the same time

c Listening problem related to physical setting

Not only the difficulties come from the message, listener, but also come fromenvironment the students it called physical setting Noise and poor quality CD playerdisturb students in listening comprehension

1) Problem pertinent lose concentration because poor quality of recording

2) Problem pertinent of hesitation and pause

3) Lack visual support

4) Problems pertinent to variety of accents

5) Problem pertinent poor equipment

6) Problem pertinent inability to get repeated

7) Problem pertinent poor quality tapes or disks

8) Problem pertinent noise around

9) Problem pertinent speed of delivery (Speaker speak too fast is factor thatinterfere the students’ comprehension in listening)

10) Problem pertinent lack of pauses

Andi Asmawati (2017) concluded that all of the students are unable tocomprehend listening text There are ten problems in students’ self-learning that werefound in analyzing students’ difficulties, they were: lack of vocabulary, poor grammarmastery, accent, pronunciation, lack of concentration, speed of speech, anxiety, noisy,inability to apply listening strategy, bad quality of the recording It is correct that theproblems in listening comprehension faced by students not only from the listenersthemselves but also from content material and environment of listeningcomprehension Hence, the students have to study hard and have more practice toimprove their listening comprehension

In Vietnam, there are also many research topics on listening skills in English For

example, “Improving Foreign-service Officials’ Listening Comprehension Abilities in English for International Relations” by Kieu Thi Thu Huong English Faculty,

Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Dong Da, Hanoi,

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Vietnam, the research focuses on understanding foreign-service officials’ presentlistening comprehension abilities in English for international relations, finding outreasons for listening difficulties they have and suggesting some solutions Althoughforeign-service officials wish to improve their listening abilities in English forinternational relations, their listening skills are still limited The factors affecting theirlearning listening abilities can be classified into two main groups The subjectivereasons include five subgroups, namely language knowledge, listening strategies,background knowledge and knowledge of culture, psychology and health and learners.The objective reasons are quality of news reports, facilities, lecturers and learningmaterials Based on the analysis of the data collected, some solutions have beensuggested, namely learners’ determination, lecturers’ support improvement offacilities, and development of new materials.

The other study is “Methods of improving listening skills for non-english majorstudents” by Nguyen Luong Ha Lien and Nguyen Thi Thanh Ha who are Englishteachers in English Faculty, Quy Nhon University The purpose of this paper is to rake

up the basic notions that interdepend to the place and momentousness of listening skill

in learning English as the second language, and to focus on the difficulties in listeningcomprehension which non-English major students are encountered Thenceforth, itaims to provide some recommendation for improvement They carried out a survey byusing a questionare to elicit data from 400 randomly selected freshmen from QuyNhon University To analyze the data, descriptive statistics, factor analyses, andmultiple regression analysis were used The findings indicated that lack of vocabulary,background knowledge, long listening texts, unfamiliar topics are the main problemsfor learners to understand the listening texts Suggested solutions may help students toovercome those difficulties, increase vocabulary knowledge, exposure to multiplefields in listening topics and different accents

1.3 Research subjects

The subject of research in this study is the second-year students in EnglishFaculty at Thuongmai University and focuses primarily on difficulties in Englishlistening skills and solutions to improve their English skill

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The subject of the study is a sophomore, currently studying in English Faculty,Thuongmai University Most sophomores are students with relatively low scores onEnglish listening in the Faculty They are still almost familiar with the way they study

in high school

Currently, under the innovation program, second year students have learned 4skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing as a separate subject They havespecific topics to learn to listen to English Compared to previous courses, second yearstudents have better listening conditions, have more time to listen with teachers andfriends Besides, they also have the opportunity to learn how to listen to foreignteachers However, this is also a difficulty for most sophomores English listeningscores are considered a subject of a subject, so low results will affect the overalloutcome of the study In particular, students from rural areas, students from rural areasmay face more difficulties than other urban students because of different economicconditions as well as different educational programs in which agricultural students, thevillage has few opportunities to interact with the target language and native teachers.Therefore, listening to English and getting good grades in university subjects is really

a big challenge for them

1.4 Scope of the study

This study focuses on difficulties in listening skill for the second-year students inEnglish Faculty, TMU Because of the limitations of time and knowledge, the shortage

of reference materials, this study cannot cover the whole issue of listening skill It onlyfocuses on exploring common difficulties students get in listening skill Moreover, thestudy could not touch upon all students at Thuongmai University It is confined to thesecond-year students in English Faculty, TMU only

1.5 Research methodology

The study was conducted using quantitative, qualitative methods The studyincludes survey questionnaires for and students, interview questions for students forK54N in English Faculty, Thuongmai University The interview process was held toknow deeply about the students’ difficulties

Then, all of the result questionnaires and interviews were analyzed Theresearcher will use the tables and charts for presenting the collected data

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1.6 The organization of the study

My graduation paper includes four main chapters, organize as follows:

Chapter 1: Overview of the study

The chapter indicates the rationale, previous studies, research subject, scope ofthe study, research methodology and organization of the study

Chapter 2: Literature review

The chapter gives the general theoretical basis of listening, listening skill anddifficulties in learning it as well as the factor affecting English listening

Chapter 3: Data analysis and research findings

This is the most important part of the research, focusing on data analysis,analyzing and synthesizing survey results

Chapter 4: Recommendations and suggestions

The last chapter is some recommendations and suggestions to improve Englishlistening skill for the second-year students in English Faculty, Thuongmai University

In addition, it gives summary of the study, limitation of the study and suggestion forfurther study

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CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 An overview of listening skills

According Howatt and Dakin (1974) defined listening as the ability to identifyand understand what others are saying This involves understanding a speaker’s accent

or pronunciation, his grammar and his vocabulary, and grasping his meaning

Wolvin and Coakley (1982) regarded listening: “the process of receiving,attending to and meaning to aural stimuli”

Person (1983) stated “Listening involves the simultaneous organization andcombination of skills in Phonology, Syntax, Semantics, and knowledge of the textstructure, all of which seem to be controlled by a cognitive process Thus it can be saidthat though not fully realized, the listening skills is essential in acquiring languageproficiency”

Hirsh (1986) gave another definition: “Listening as an aspect of skills: involvesneurological response and interpretation of sounds to understand and to give meaning

by reacting selecting meaning, remembering, attending, analyzing and includingprevious experience”

Bentley and Bacon (1996) stated that listening, an important part of the secondlanguage learning process has also been defined as an active process during which thelistener constructs from oral input

According to Brown (2001), listening is “hot merely the process of unidirectionalreceiving of audible symbols” He supposed that one aspect of listening

comprehension which is “the psychomotor process of receiving sound waves throughthe ear and transmitting nerve impulse to the brain” Hence, listening comprises threeelements: the sender, the message and the listener.

Gary Buck (2001) for example, points out that “listening comprehension is anactive process of constructing meaning and this is done by applying knowledge to theincoming sound” in which “several different types of knowledge are involved: bothlinguistic knowledge and non-linguistic knowledge”

Scott Shelton (2008) thinks that listening effectively is a demanding andinvolving process One must be able to deal with different accents or pronunciation,unfamiliar lexical items, and syntactic structures, competing background noise, andalso make a conscious effort not switch off or become distracted while listening All ofthis must be achieved and dealt with more or less simultaneously in order to identifyand understand the meaning in any given message

Recently, Renukadevi (2014) argued that listening is the most important part ofcommunication because it is important in providing a meaningful response Especially

in learning a language for the purpose of communication, listening plays an importantrole, because it helps language learners to gain pronunciation, vocabulary, syntax, andunderstanding of messages can be voice-based, and only possible when we listen.Without proper input understanding, learning is simply that the development does notget any improvement In addition, without listening skills, unable to communicate.Through the judgment of scholars, as well as the reality of communicationactivities, this skill plays an important role in everyday life including languagelearning Learning language, through listening, students can get used to the sounds inEnglish, so that pronunciation will become easier Most linguistic researchers alsothink that when learning any language, the learner must be exposed to that language,but the best way is through listening comprehension, on which basis, learners areexposed to language and culture of language

To sum up, the definitions mentioned above are all very reasonable andconvincing All of definitions are given with a view to clarify the nature of thelistening skills is necessary in the process of acquiring a native language or a native

language or a foreign one and listening skills plays a significant role in learningprocess of learner.

2.1.2 The features of listening skills

Practicing listening skills looks like an art It is not merely heard It requires thelistener to be proactive in the conversation as well as know how to combine certain lifeskills and techniques Listening is a receptive language skills which learners usuallyfind the most difficult because it has some features as follows:

Firstly, listening skills are formed by experience, not merely by downloadingknowledge Therefore, the formation of listening needs real experiences from manyaspects of the listener's life, so that the listeners have more selective and usefulinformation as much as possible

Secondly, the listener has to get oriented to the listening portion and be all ears.The listener is also required to be attentive Listening skills are a skill that requires alot of attention because if we hear the wrong information, not enough information canlead to solving the wrong job For example, in the business, hearing the wronginformation will lead to unfavorable negotiations, the result may be that the companyloses gold opportunities for businesses, or more seriously leads to bankruptcy

Finally, unlike writing and reading skills, listening skills have less time toprocess data The listener needs to master the knowledge of grammar, vocabulary,pronunciation, and be able to understand accents from different regions Therefore, thelistening skills requires the listener to be quick, intelligent and skillful to processquickly and effectively

2.1.3 The significance of listening skills

Listening is one of the necessary life skills which are defined as “skills which canprovide you with a better perspective on life, skills which allow you to maintain ahigher awareness of both yourself and the world around you” It is one of the mostvital ways that human beings feel the life and live In the work, whatever career fromlawyers, consultants, sales, office workers, etc The listening skills are alwaysimportant Listening not only helps us learn from experience, understand thepersonality, habits, interests, and feelings of colleagues, customers, partners but alsohelp us come up with ideas to solve problems quickly Especially for leaders, listening

skills will help them understand their employees, create cohesion and increase workefficiency In life, listening skills help us build and develop relationships Because incommunication, everyone wants to be listened to by others and wants a place to venttheir troubles Therefore, if you know how to listen, encourage and support properly,the communication will be more successful From there, your relationship will becomecloser and more confident.

We listen to everything and everybody For instance, at home, we listen to thenews, watch films or talk to others At school, students listen to the lectures teaching

At a meeting, the staff listens to the new plan from the director, etc Without listening,the man becomes backward in each minute of their lives It is obvious that listening isreally important in real life

As it is mentioned in the differences between hearing and listening, hearing is apart of five senses (hearing, smelling, tasting, touching and looking) but listening is achoice to hear and understand it As an integrative skill, listening plays an importantrole in the process of language learning or acquisition and facilitating the emergence

of other language skills According to Nord (1980), listening is the way of learning thelanguage “It gives the learner information from which to build up the knowledgenecessary for using the language When this language is built up, the learner can begin

to speak The listening-only period is a time of observation and learning, whichprovides the basis for the other language skills” (Nation, 1990) Most learners willspend more time listening to the foreign language than producing it themselves Fail tounderstand spoken language, people may miss important information presented tothem or respond in a funny way So training in listening is really necessary It helpsstudents make the transition from classroom English to real-life English more easilyand effectively

2.1.4 Types of listening

The three main types of listening most common in interpersonal communicationare:

Informational Listening (Listening to Learn)

Critical Listening (Listening to Evaluate and Analyse)

Therapeutic or Empathetic Listening (Listening to Understand Feeling andEmotion)

In reality, you may have more than one goal for listening at any given time – forexample, you may be listening to learn whilst also attempting to be empathetic

- Informational Listening

Whenever you listen to learn something, you are engaged in informationallistening This is true in many day-to-day situations, in education, and at work, whenyou listen to the news, watch a documentary, when a friend tells you a recipe or whenyou are talked-through a technical problem with a computer Although all types oflistening are ‘active’ – they require concentration and a conscious effort to understand.Informational listening is less active than many of the other types of listening Whenwe’re listening to learn or be instructed we are taking in new information and facts, weare not criticizing or analyzing

- Critical Listening

We can be said to be engaged in critical listening when the goal is to evaluate orscrutinize what is being said Critical listening is a much more active behavior thaninformational listening and usually involves some sorts of problem solving - decisionmaking Critical listening is akin to critical reading; both involve analysis of theinformation being received and alignment with what we already know or believe.Whereas informational listening may be mostly concerned with receiving facts or newinformation - critical listening is about analyzing opinion and making a judgement

- Therapeutic or Empathetic Listening

Empathic listening involves attempting to understand the feelings and emotions

of the speaker - to put yourself into the speaker’s shoes and share their thoughts

Counsellors, therapists, and some other professionals use therapeutic or empathiclistening to understand and ultimately help their clients This type of listening does notinvolve making judgements or offering advice but gently encouraging the speaker toexplain and elaborate on their feelings and emotions

2.1.5 Stages of listening

Many factors can interfere with listening, so you need to be able to manage anumber of mental tasks at the same time in order to be a successful listener:

- Receiving

Receiving is the intentional focus on hearing a speaker’s message, which happenswhen we filter out other sources so that we can isolate the message and avoid theconfusing mixture of incoming stimuli At this stage, we are still only hearing themessage

- Understanding

In the understanding stage, we attempt to learn the meaning of the message,which is not always easy For one thing, if a speaker does not enunciate clearly, it may

be difficult to tell what the message was Even when we have understood the words in

a message, because of the differences in our backgrounds and experience, wesometimes make the mistake of attaching our meanings to the words of others

So much of the way we understand others is influenced by our own perceptionsand experiences Therefore, at the understanding stage of listening, we should be onthe lookout for places where our perceptions might differ from those of the speaker

- Remembering

It is an important listening process because it means that an individual has notonly received and interpreted a message but has also added it to the mind’s storagebank, but just as our attention is selective, so too is our memory what is rememberedmay be quite different from what was originally seen or heard

- Evaluating

It is a stage in which active listeners participate, it is at these points that theactive listener weighs evidence, sorts fact from opinion, and determines the presence

or absence of bias or prejudice in a message, the effective listener makes sure that he

or she doesn’t begin this activity too soon, beginning this stage of the process before amessage is completed requires that we no longer hear and attend to the incomingmessage, as a result, the listening process ceases

- Responding

This stage requires that the receiver completes the process through verbal ornonverbal feedback because the speaker has no other way to determine if a messagehas been received This stage becomes the only overt means by which the sender maydetermine the degree of success in transmitting the message

2.2 Difficulties in learning listening skills

2.2.1 Common English listening problems of students

According to Ur, P (1996), author of many books on language teaching, studentsoften encounter the following difficulties while learning to listen:

1 Unable to recognize sounds spoken by the English

2 Have a habit of understanding all words in a sentence to understand the

content of the lesson

3 It is incomprehensible when the English speak naturally

4 Need to hear many times to be able to understand

5 Find it difficult to grasp all the information and not predict what the speaker is going to say

6 If students have to listen for a long time, students will feel tired and lack of concentration

When referring to the difficulties of learners with listening subjects for listening subjects, two foreign language teachers, Nguyen Bang and Nguyen Ba Ngoc, also list the following 6 difficulties:

1 Having difficulty with English sounds

2 Must understand all the words

3 Do not understand when the English speak naturally

4 Find it hard to keep up with English speaking speed

5 Need to listen repeatedly

6 Tired and frustrated

Besides, according to Alex Case in the articles on teaching foreign languages also list some difficulties in learning to listen that learners often encounter, they are:

1 Lack of vocabulary

2 Indistinguishable from important

3 Always try to understand all the words in the tape

4 Affected by external noise

5 Unable to recognize different voices

6 Spoken speed

In short, according to the foregoing teachings and linguistics, foreign languagelearners often encounter the following common difficulties in listening:

1 Unrecognized English sounds

2 Limited vocabulary

3 Lack of concentration while listening

4 It is difficult to grasp the main idea of the listening text

5 Need to hear many times

6 Not keep up with the speaker's speed

2.2.2 Elements make English listening difficult

According to Brown, there are eight characteristics of spoken language whichmakes listening difficult

1 In spoken language, due to memory limitations, we break down speech intosmaller groups of words They are called clustering For examples: “a lot of”, “anumber of”, etc Therefore when listening, learners have to learn to pick outmanageable clusters of words, avoiding trying to listen to every word of the speech It

is not necessary and makes learners distracted

2 Moreover, spoken language has a great number of redundancies They are theresult of rephrasing, repetitions, elaborations and some insertions such as “As I havesaid” and so on At first, learners may get trouble with this They are easy to beconfused However, with some training learners can take advantage of redundancies tohave more time and extra information

3 On the other hand, spoken language also has many reduced forms It may bephonological, morphological or syntactic or pragmatic like “you’re” instead of “youare”, “won’t” instead of “will not”, or “can’t” instead of “cannot” These reductionsare really significant difficulties to the learners, especially beginners when they startgetting to know the full form of English language

4 The next characteristic of spoken language is the performance variable As aresult of unplanned action, spoken language consists of a lot of hesitations (“er”,

“uhm”), false starts, pauses, and corrections They make the listener confused

5 Colloquial language is another problem that can interfere with listeners inreal life listening because they are familiar with standard written language In

monologues and dialogues, the appearance of idioms, slang, reduced forms and sharedcultural language are common.

6 In listening, learners need to comprehend language delivered at varying rates

of speed and delivered with few pauses because they do not have opportunities to stopthe speaker and listen again many times

7 English is a stress-timed language so it is very important for learners tounderstand its prosodic features By stress, rhythm, and intonation listeners caninterpret more subtle messages like sarcasm, endearment, insult, solicitation, praise,etc

8 The last but not least, interaction is also an element that plays a large role inlistening comprehension Language learners should be taught the instruction in thetwo-way nature of listening They have to learn to continue the process ofcomprehending Some rules of interaction are negotiation, clarification, attendingsignals, turn-taking, topic nomination, maintenance, and termination

In short, it is necessary for language learners to understand all of thesecharacteristics of spoken language so that they get more ease in interaction in generaland in listening in particular

2.3 Factors affecting English listening

2.3.1 The class atmosphere

Sometimes inconvenience of classroom affects students listening comprehension

In the large classrooms, students who are sitting on the back rows may not hear therecording as students sit in front Students who prefer to stay next to the windows alsoaffected by the noise that comes from outside As a teacher, we have to take intoaccount all these conditions in a body The size of the classroom also makes difficultfor the teacher to manage the all class in group activity or to get feedback fromstudents The temperature of the class can be counted as a factor that makes listeningcomprehension difficult The class that does not have air conditioner or heater may betoo in summer or too cold in winter

2.3.2 Students’ motivation

Students’ motivation is one of the crucial factors that affect listeningcomprehension It can be difficult for students to maintain the concentration in a

foreign language learning classroom In listening comprehension, even the smallestpause in attention may considerably spoil comprehension When students find thetopic of the listening text interesting, comprehending would be easier For all that,students find listening very boring even if they are interested in the topic because itneeds a huge amount of effort in order to not miss the meaning.

2.3.3 Quality of recorded material

In some classes, teachers use some recorded materials that do not have highquality The quality of sound system can impact the comprehending of learners’listening

Noise and poor quality CD players disturb students in listening comprehension

We can show some problems related to equipment that does not have high quality.11) Problem pertinent to lose concentration because of poor quality of therecording

12) Problem pertinent of hesitation and pause

13) Lack of visual support

14) Problems pertinent to a variety of accents

15) Problem pertinent to poor equipment

16) Problem pertinent to inability to get repeated

17) Problem pertinent to poor quality tapes or disks

18) Problem pertinent noise around

19) Problem pertinent to speed of delivery (Speaker speaks too fast is the factorthat interfere the students’ comprehension in listening)

20) Problem pertinent lack of pauses (Many students found difficult tounderstand the listening text when the speaker does not pause long enough)

2.3.4 Accent

Munro and Derwing (1999) expressed that too many accented speech can lead to

an important reduction in comprehension According to Goh (1999), 66% of learnersmentioned a speaker’s accent as one of the most significant factors that affect listenercomprehension Unfamiliar accents both native and non-native can cause seriousproblems in listening comprehension and familiarity with an accent helps learners’listening comprehension Buck (2001) indicated that when listeners hear an unfamiliar

accent such as Indian English for the first time after studying only American Englishwill encounter critical difficulties in listening This will certainly interrupt the wholelistening comprehension process and at the same time an unfamiliar accent makes thecomprehension process impossible for the listeners.

2.4 Summary

In conclusion, this chapter mainly summarizes the theories, ideas, opinionsrelated to listening skills It has presented the relevant literature, which has helped toform the theoretical can conceptual framework for graduation paper The followingchapter will display the methodology and findings of the research under the light of allabove