Nghiên cứu về những khó khăn mà học sinh lớp 11 trường THPT nguyễn viết xuân gặp phải trong quá trình học kỹ năng nghe​

VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES ***************** NGUYỄN CÔNG HIỆU A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES THAT

VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES

*****************

NGUYỄN CÔNG HIỆU

A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES THAT 11TH GRADE STUDENTS

AT NGUYEN VIET XUAN HIGH SCHOOL ENCOUNTER

WHEN LEARNING LISTENING SKILLS

(NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN MÀ HỌC SINH LỚP 11 TRƯỜNG THPT NGUYỄN VIẾT XUÂN GẶP PHẢI TRONG QUÁ

TRÌNH HỌC KỸ NĂNG NGHE)

M.A.MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

HA NOI – 2016

VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY-HA NOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES

*****************

NGUYỄN CÔNG HIỆU

A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES THAT 11TH GRADE STUDENTS

AT NGUYEN VIET XUAN HIGH SCHOOL ENCOUNTER

WHEN LEARNING LISTENING SKILLS

(NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN MÀ HỌC SINH LỚP 11 TRƯỜNG THPT NGUYỄN VIẾT XUÂN GẶP PHẢI TRONG QUÁ

TRÌNH HỌC KỸ NĂNG NGHE)

M.A.MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 60140111

Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr KIỀU THỊ THU HƯƠNG

HA NOI – 2016

DECLARATION

I hereby state that I – Nguyễn Công Hiệu, being an M.A candidate of the Faculty of Post-graduate Studies, ULIS, VNU, certify my authorship of the study entitled

School encounter when learning listening skills

I certify that this thesis is entirely my own work and that all the information in this paper was presented in accordance with academic rules and ethical conduct As required in the rules, I fully cited all the sources of the results that were not original

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Assoc Prof Dr Kieu Thi Thu Huong for her guidance, comments, enthusiasm, encouragement and heartfelt sympathy throughout the whole research process Without her assistance, this thesis could not have been completed

Second, my big thanks go to all the lecturers and staff of the Faculty of Graduate Studies, Hanoi University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi, for their profound knowledge and guidance during my two years of studying at the Faculty

Post-Third, I would like to thank all the librarians for their helping me with the reference materials and their efforts to make the atmosphere of reading rooms as pleasant as possible

Especially, I wish to express my special thanks to the students and teachers

at Nguyen Viet Xuan High School for their full support in completing the questionnaires and their detailed answers to the questions in the interview

I also wish to send my grateful thanks to examiners who will spend their time reading and making comments on this thesis

And finally, I wish to send my thanks to my family, relatives and friends who always cheer me up and support me at hard time

ABSTRACT

This study aims at discovering difficulties that the students of class 11D2 at Nguyen Viet Xuan High School encounter when they study listening skills and suggesting solutions for the teacher to improve students‟ listening competence To collect the data for analysis, two instruments have been used: the questionnaire and classroom observations The findings show that there are fourteen problems that cause difficulties to the students of class 11D2 The problems have been classified into

four categories, namely (i) problems related to the bottom-up processing, (ii) problems related to top-down processing, (iii) problems related to materials and listening tasks, and (iv) other problems Based on the findings, the researcher has

offered some solutions to the teacher, so that he will make changes in his approaches, methods and techniques to help his students overcome the problems and become better listeners

TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION Error! Bookmark not defined ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Error! Bookmark not defined ABSTRACT Error! Bookmark not defined

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS viii

LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS ix

PART I: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale of the study 1

2 Objectives of the study 2

3 Research question 2

4 Scope of the study 2

5 Methodology of the study 3

6 Significance of the study 3

7 Design of the study 3

PART II: DEVELOPMENT 5

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1.1 Notions of listening 5

1.1.1 Nature of listening 5

1.1.2 Importance of listening skills 6

1.1.3 Types of listening 7

1.1.4 Listening processes 8

1.2 Procedures of a listening lesson in a language classroom 10

1.2.1 Pre-listening 10

1.2.2 While-listening 10

1.2.3 Post-listening 10

1.3 Problems related to bottom-up processing 11

1.3.1 Problem related to hearing sounds 11

1.3.2 Problem of understanding stress and intonation 13

1.3.3 Problem of understanding different accents 13

1.3.4 Problem of mismatch between learners‟ vocabulary and vocabulary used in listening texts 14

1.3.5 Problem of mismatch between learners‟ syntactic knowledge and syntax used in listening texts 15

1.4 Problems related to top-down processing 16

1.4.1 Problem of cultural differences 16

1.4.2 Problem of unfamiliar topics 16

1.5 Problems related to materials and listening tasks 17

1.5.1 Problem related to length and density of the text 17

1.5.2 Problem related to delivery speed 17

1.5.3 Problem related to the complexity of the task 18

1.6 Other problems 18

1.6.1 Problem of failing to apply effective learning styles and strategies 18

1.6.2 Problems of fatigue and lack of concentration 19

1.6.3 Problem related to physical settings 19

1.6.4 Problem related to lack of visibility of the speaker 20

1.7 Review of previous works 20

CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY 22

2.1 Research context, learning materials, research subjects 22

2.1.1 Research context 22

2.1.2 Learning materials 23

2.1.3 Research subjects 23

2.2 Data collection instruments 24

2.2.1 Reasons for using the questionnaire 24

2.2.2 Format of the questionnaire 24

2.3 Data collection procedure 25

2.4 Students’ background information 25

2.4.1 Students‟ time experience in learning English 25

2.4.2 Students‟ average scores in listening skills last semester 25

2.4.3 Students‟ perception of the importance of listening skills 26

2.4.4 Students‟ perception of the difficulty of listening skills in comparison with other skills 26

2.5 Students’ responses to the questions about problems related to bottom-up process 28

2.5.1 Students‟ responses related to problem of hearing sounds 28

2.5.2 Students‟ responses related to problem of understanding stress and intonation 29

2.5.3 Students‟ responses related to problem of understanding different accents 30 2.5.4 Students‟ responses related to problem of mismatch between learners‟ vocabulary and vocabulary used in listening texts 30

2.5.5 Students‟ responses related to problem of mismatch between learners‟ syntactic knowledge and syntax used in listening texts 31

2.6 Students’ responses to questions about the factors related to top-down processing 31

2.6.1 Problem of cultural differences 31

2.6.2 Problem of unfamiliar topic 32

2.7 Questions about problems caused by materials and tasks 32

2.7.1 Students‟ responses related to problem concerning length and density of the text, and delivery speed 32

2.7.2 Students‟ responses related to problem of the complexity of the task 34 2.8 Students’ responses to questions about other factors 34

2.8.1 Students‟ responses related to problem of failing to apply effective learning styles and strategies 34

2.8.2 Students‟ responses related to problems of fatigue and lack of concentration 36

2.8.3 Students‟ responses related to problems of physical settings 37

2.8.4 Students‟ responses related to problems related to lack of invisibility of

the speaker 37

2.9 Summary 38

PART III CONCLUSION 41

3.1 Recapitulations 41

3.1.1 Students‟ listening performance and their assessment of listening skills 41 3.1.2 Difficulties 11D2 students at NVXHS encounter when studying listening skills 41

3.2 Suggestive recommendations 42

3.2.1 Problems related to bottom-up processing 42

3.2.2 Problems related to bottom-up processing 43

3.2.3 Problems related to listening materials and tasks 43

3.2.4 Other problems 43

3.3 Limitations and suggestions for further studies 44

REFERENCES 45 APPENDICES I

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

NVXHS: Nguyen Viet Xuan High School L2: Second Language

ESL: English as a second language

EFL: English as a foreign language

LIST OF TABLES Table 1 Students‟ responses related to problem of hearing sounds ……… 31 Table 2 Students‟ responses related to problem of understanding

stress and intonation ……….32

Table 3 Students‟ responses related to problem of understanding

different accents……….32

Table 4 Questions about problem of mismatch between learners‟

vocabulary range and vocabulary used in listening texts ……….33

Table 5 Students‟ responses related to mismatch between learners‟

syntax and that used in listening texts ……… 33

Table 6 Students‟ responses related to problems of cultural

differences and unfamiliar topics ……….34

Table 7 Students‟ responses related to complexity of the task ……… 36 Table 8 Students‟ responses related to problem of failing to

apply effective learning styles and strategies ……… 36

Table 9 Students‟ responses related to problems of fatigue and

lack of concentration ……… 37

Table 10 Students‟ responses related to problem related to physical settings … 38 Table 11 Students‟ responses related to problem related to lack of

invisibility of the speaker ……… 38

Table 12 Summary of students‟ responses to questions about problems

related to bottom- up processing ……… 40

Table 13 Summary of students‟ responses to questions about problems

related to top- down processing ………40

Table 14 Summary of students‟ responses to questions about problems

caused by materials and tasks ……… 40

Table 15 Summary of students‟ responses to questions about other problems …41

LIST OF CHARTS

Chart 1: Students‟ time experience in learning English ………30 Chart 2: Students‟ average scores in listening skills last semester………30 Chart 3: Students‟ perception of the importance of listening skills……….… 30 Chart 4: Students‟ perception of the difficulty level of listening

skills in comparison with other skills ……….……….30

Chart 5 Students‟ responses to problem of the mismatch between

learners‟ vocabulary range and that used in listening texts ………….30

Chart 6 Students‟ responses related to length and density of the text

and delivery speed ………35

PART I: INTRODUCTION

There was a time when most English textbooks in Vietnam paid most attention to grammar, translation and reading materials It was almost impossible to find anything related to teaching listening skills, so listening comprehension skill teaching and learning were hardly practiced by teachers and students Things have changed since 2008 when The Ministry of Education and Training made a decision

on approval of the project “Teaching and learning foreign languages in the national education system period 2008-2020” Since then listening lessons has been

integrated in official syllabuses at all levels

However, little achievement has been gained even though many efforts have been made for the last six years The majority of school students, especially those in rural areas, still show very little improvement in listening ability during their school years As a result, when attending universities in big cities or even after graduating from universities, they have to rush to language centers with a hope to find a quick

way to improve their listening capacity

With a view to discovering reasons for the problem, we have decided to conduct research into factors that lead to students‟ difficulties in listening The research is carried out at Nguyen Viet Xuan High School (NVXHS from now on), a school in a rural area of Vinh Phuc Province In recent years, English has been a compulsory requirement in the school entrance examinations here Throughout the school year, students have to do different English tests, each of which consists of four parts,

namely listening, grammar and structure, reading comprehension and writing The

listening section is often in the form of multiple choice questions or gap fillings

In the final test last year, many students in this school performed poorly in the listening test though their reading and grammar results were quite good A large number of students said that they could not understand what the speakers in the tape were saying The situation has not changed in the first few weeks this school year

This was observable when students took the pre-test at the beginning of the school year to be placed in suitable classes Students‟ low ability to understand spoken English was also visible when there was a native teacher working at NVXHS Most students failed to communicate with him; therefore, they were unable to fulfil the tasks given by this native teacher of English It always took him plenty of time and efforts to make himself understood by illustrating his ideas with visual aid, writing them down or even asking for help from Vietnamese teachers All of the above-mentioned problems have led to a great necessity for the researcher to

encounter in leaning listening and suggestive solutions for improving their listening comprehension skills

The present study takes as its main focus the following objective:

- Identifying difficulties that class 11D2 students at Nguyen Viet Xuan High School, Vinh Phuc Province experience in studying listening comprehension skills

Although many students in NVXHS encounter difficulties in acquiring listening comprehension skills, this research is only carried out on a small scale due to the limitation of time and the narrow scope of an M.A thesis The subjects of the study are 40 students from class 11D2, where the researcher himself is teaching Accordingly, the researcher will make out major difficulties these students run into in their listening lessons Based on the findings, some suggestions for the

teacher will be offered to deal with the students‟ problems and to help them become better listeners

Conducting the study, the researcher makes use of both quantitative and qualitative methods with a wish to explore the matter thoroughly The data have been collected from two sources: the questionnaire for students and class observations

The questionnaire was designed into two parts: part one consists of questions about students‟ background and part two consists of questions about difficulties that students encountered when they studied listening comprehension at school The second part of the questionnaire was adapted from that of Hamouda (2013) The questionnaire was responded by students within 30 minutes The classroom observation was carried during listening lessons and its aim is to confirm and supplement the result of the questionnaire

6 Significance of the study

The study helps the researcher himself recognize the problems coming up in his listening lessons, so that he will bring about radical changes in his approaches, methods and techniques of teaching listening skills

The result of this study is supposedly beneficial not only to the teacher and students of the surveyed class but to other teachers and students working in the same conditions as well By making teachers and students aware of some problematic areas in learning listening skills, the researcher hopes to provide them with necessary understanding of as well as the right attitude toward listening skills

to find suitable ways to teach and learn listening comprehension skills

The study is organized into three main parts and several subdivisions as follows:

Part 1 (Introduction) deals with the rationale, objectives, research question, scope,

methodology, significance and design of the study

Part 2 (Development) is subdivided into two chapters

Chapter 1 (Literature Review) provides the theoretical framework, presenting the

terms and theories related to the nature and importance of listening, as well as types, processes and procedure of listening In addition, factors affecting listening are discussed and a short review of previous works is given

Chapter 2 (The Study) presents the context of the study, the learning material, the

subjects of the study and data collection instruments Together with those parts are the data collection procedure and the analysis of the results

Part 3 (Conclusion) recapitulates the study, sums up major findings, points out the

limitations, and proposes some suggestions for further studies

PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

Rost (1991), as cited in Nunan (2011), suggests that listening is not only a skill area

in language performance, but is also a means of acquiring a second language Listening is the channel in which we process language in real time – employing pacing, units of encoding and pausing that are unique to spoken language

Steinberg (2007), cited in Bingol (2014), mentions listening process as “the ability

of one individual perceiving another via sense, aural organs, assigning a meaning to the message and comprehending it”

From another aspect, Lucas (2007) differentiates listening and hearing in the way that hearing is a physiological process, and listening is a psychological process in

which we pay close attention to what we hear in order to make sense out of the information

Meanwhile, Saricoban (1999) notices the difference between listening and speaking

He argues that listening is as active as speaking, and in some ways, is even more difficult It well requires attention, thought, interpretation, and imagination

Listening also differs from other skills in the way that listeners cannot control the text as can speakers, readers and writers They cannot make a break or slow down the speed of spoken speech when they are dealing with listening text as others can

In short, listening is a cognitive process in which listeners hear sounds, analyze them and make use of other linguistic factors to grasp information or ideas that speakers would like to mean

1.1.2 Importance of listening skills

In our communication oriented age, listening is more important than ever This is why in most companies, effective listeners hold higher positions and are promoted more often than ineffective listeners (Lucas, 2008)

In terms of language learning, listening is an integral part in the process of mastering a language It does not stand alone, but is used together with other skills Saricoban (1999) argues that listening is one of the fundamental language skills, and

it is the first step in the process of acquiring a language in the way that it supplies a necessary input for language learners

Talking about the fact that listening is closely related to speaking, Field (2009) foregrounds the relationship between them According to him, communication requires a two-way traffic, and unless the non-native speaker has a listening competence as developed as his/her command of speech, it will be impossible for him/her to sustain a conversation This may seem a blindingly obvious point But the briefest review of listening proficiency in a language class will identify more than a few learners whose ability to interpret what is said to them lags well behind the level of language that they are capable of producing

Through their communication experiments in which a speaker had to instruct a listener in drawing a diagram or in arranging a set of objects, Anderson and Linch (1998) suggest that effective speaking depends on successful listening They find that the most effective spoken performance comes from speakers who have previously been listeners on a similar task

Listening also has its influence on process of learning reading and writing as Nunan

mentions in his book The Cambridge guide to teaching English to speakers of other languages (2011, p 7) “listening, the most widely used language skill, is often used

in conjunction with other skills of speaking, reading and writing.”

1.1.3 Types of listening

Based on the patterns of interaction between the listener and the speaker, Anderson

and Lynch (1988) classify listening into two types, namely reciprocal listening –

listening where there is at least an opportunity for speakers and listeners to

exchange roles and non-reciprocal listening or one way listening – which happens

when the listener is engaged in listening passively to a monologue, or speech, or even conversation

According to Rubin and Thomson (1994), reciprocal listening situations include

face-to-face conversations and telephone calls in which the listener has a chance to ask for clarification, repetition, or slower speech from his/her conversation partner

In the meantime, in non-interactive listening situations, the listener does not usually

have the opportunity to ask for clarification, slower speech, or repetition Some examples of non-interactive listening situations are listening to the radio, CDs, TV, films, lectures, etc

On the other hand, Field (2009) bases on listener’s goals to suggest four types of

listening (1) shallow attention focus – skimming and unfocused scanning skills; (2) medium attention focus – listening for plots, listening to commentaries, conversational listening, information exchanges; (3) deep attention focus – close

listening to establish the speaker‟s main points and to trace connections between

them; (4) very deep attention focus – listening to check critical facts

1.1.4 Listening processes

So far, there have been many linguists studying about listening such as Anderson and Lynch (1988), Underwood (1989); Brown (1990) or Saricoban (1999) All of them agreed that listening process is not a simple process of a single activity but a complex one consisting of various activities After hearing process with various stages involving physical processing of the auditory system with the outer ear, the middle ear, the inner ear, the nerve impulses and so on the listening process occurs inside the brain with a lot of sub-processes

In terms of the nature of those sub-processes, Duzer (1997) suggests nine successive activities in listening process (1) determining a reason for listening; (2) taking the raw speech and deposits an image of it in short-term memory; (3) attempting to organize the information by identifying the type of speech event (a conversation, a lecture, a radio advertisement) and the function of the message (to persuade/ inform/ request); (4) predicting information expected to be included in the message; (5) recalling background information (schemata) to help interpret the message; (6) assigning a meaning to the message; (7) checking that the message has been understood; (8) determining the information to be held in long-term memory; and (9) deleting the original form of the message that has been received into short term memory

Looking at the issue from another angle, other scientists assign listening process to

a parallel processing model with bottom-up processing and top-down processing

Helgesen and Brown, cited in Nunan (2007), suggest that the bottom-up processing

is the process that hearers try to make sense of what they hear by focusing on different parts: the vocabulary, the grammar or functional phrases, sounds, etc The

top-down processing, on the other hand, starts with background knowledge called

schema This can be content schema (general knowledge based on life experience and previous learning) or textual schema (knowledge of language and content used

in a particular situation; for example, the language you need at a bank is different than the language you need when socializing with friends)

Nunan (2001), cited in Mc Clelland (1987) and Cowan (1995), proposes that as a goal-oriented activity, listening involves “bottom-up” processing (in which listeners attend to use data in the incoming speech signals) and “top-down” processing (in which listeners utilize prior knowledge and expectations to create meaning) Both bottom-up processing and top-down processing are assumed to take place at various levels of cognitive organization: phonological, grammatical, lexical and propositional This complex process is often described as a „parallel processing model‟ of language understanding: representation at these levels creates activation

at other levels

According to Brown (1990), bottom-up processing was developed during 1940s and 1950s and dominated teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) for decades He explains this processing as follows:

You start off with recognizing phonetic sounds, you identify these as phonemes, you sort out the morphological structure – identify plural endings and so on – and so you arrive at a word Then you undertake the same procedure for the next word and eventually you identify a phrase, say a noun phrase, and so you continue, building up structures until you have a sentence You then interpret the sentence and come up with a semantic reading which will yield „a thin meaning‟, and then you look at this

in terms of pragmatic context which will yield „a thick meaning‟, which will include, for instance, what you think the speaker meant by what he or she said

(P 10)

Brown thinks that bottom-up processing is important but insufficient on its own For the listener to fully understands what the speaker means, a crucial part of the comprehension process is needed This is the top-down processing As soon as someone begins to speak, the co-operative human listener is actively trying to work out what he is saying, what he is likely to say next and what he is likely to mean by what he says The active listener will use all relevant background knowledge – knowledge of physical context of the utterance (the immediate surroundings, the place, the time of the day, etc.), knowledge of the speaker (gender, age, known opinions), knowledge of the topic (and what the speaker is likely to know about it,

monitors the incoming acoustic signal, which will simultaneously shape and confirm his expectations

Speaking of the close relationship between the bottom-up processing and top-down processing, Brown argues that even if listeners do manage to develop a rich set of predictions (top-down), they still need to be able to monitor incoming acoustic signals (bottom-up) so that they know which of their predictions is being confirmed and which is not

Therefore, the bottom-up processing and top-down processing are two integrated parts of the comprehension

1.2.1 Pre-listening

Pre-listening is the very first stage, where the context is established The teacher creates motivation and students do some activities with the purpose of preparing themselves for what they will hear

1.2.2 While-listening

The following stage is listening, where learners do different kinds of tasks given by the textbook or the teacher to find out answers The aim of activities done during this phase is to help the students to catch the main meaning of the text so that they have enough information to interpret the text One of the most important functions

of while-listening activities is to present the sound of the target language This presentation enables students to develop their listening comprehension skills and it also serves as a model of their speech

1.2.3 Post-listening

The last stage is post-listening, which is the part where students have an opportunity

to check their answers concerning what they have been listening to, to give feedback and consolidate what they have learnt This stage is useful for teachers as well, because it helps them see and analyze particular difficulties students already have with the listening activity

In previous parts, notions of listening and listening procedures have been mentioned, in the next part, the researcher will address different factors that affect learners‟ listening comprehension As mentioned above, when listening, students experience hearing process with different hearing organs and cognitive processes with what linguists called bottom-up processing and top-down processing Consequently, anything hindering those processes can cause challenge for the students‟ listening Considering that in mind, the researcher focuses on impeding factors related to bottom-up processing, those related to top-down processing, and those affect the hearing process

1.3.1 Problem related to hearing sounds

One of the biggest problems facing the learners when listening to foreign language

is the matter of identifying sounds This problem is commonly encountered by learners of English as a foreign language As stated in Rixon (1986, p 38), one of the most common problems encountered by students is the way English words are pronounced, but unfortunately this aspect of English cannot be overlooked as pronunciation of English can cause students problems in recognition, and therefore

Rixon (1986,p 38)

The second difficulty appears as a result of differences between English sounds and their spellings, “As there is a difference between the spoken and written form of words in English students can fail to identify the pronounced form of words they know in written form” (Rixon, 1986,p 38)

Rixon asserts the necessity of students‟ awareness of English connected speech, which makes it difficult for learners to recognize individual words He goes on talking about this phenomenon in relation to stressed/ unstressed vowel sounds:

In natural speech listeners can encounter three main types of a change in sound involving weak form of vowels This means that words that are in unstressed positions have different pronunciation in comparison with stressed vowels e.g when

to is said in isolation it is pronounced as /tu:/, but on the other hand, in connected

speech the pronunciation changes into /tə/ (Ibid.)

Elision and assimilation, in Rixon‟s view, are reasons for this difficulty:

Another factor of connected speech is called elision This means a loss of sounds appearing in natural speech e.g the word probably is pronounced /probli/ The third factor of connected speech is called assimilation Assimilation means that a pronunciation of a letter can be influenced by the letter before or after it so that it changes its sound e.g ten bikes can be pronounced /tem baiks/ (Ibid.)

Another aspect of sounds is that there are sounds that do not exist in students‟ first language or there are pairs of sounds that seem to be indistinguishable to learners The following example given by Ur (1996, p 11) is about a problem his French student faces:

The sound /θ/ as in ‘think’, for example, does not exist in French; a native French

speaker may very often therefore not notice at first that it occurs in English – he may simply assimilate it to the nearest sound familiar to him and say /s/ or /f/

Ur points out the fact that it may take a Hebrew learner quite a long time to practise distinguishing differences between „ship‟ and „sheep‟ or „fit‟ and „feet‟ as Hebrew does not have similar sounds

At the same time, Ur (1996) is concerned about the sequences and juxtapositions of sounds For example, a chain of successive consonants (or consonant cluster) also brings a source of problems to listeners They can get the consonants in the wrong order (hearing „parts‟ for „past‟), or omit one of the sounds („crips‟ for „crisps‟) Also concerning this problem, Brown (1990) adds students are not able to use the phonological code well enough to identify which words are being used by the speaker and how these are organized into sentences He assigns the reason for this

to the fact that students are relatively more successful at interpreting the written form of the language

1.3.2 Problem of understanding stress and intonation

When second language listener has limitation in other decoding skills, understanding the stress and intonation of the speech can be a means of support to them Though the pressures of the group may lead to some words becoming reduced

in form and thus more difficult to identify, there is a compensating benefit in that focal stress serves to foreground the most important piece of information For the L2 listener, it provides a basis for forming hypotheses about what a speaker said when very little else may have been understood

It has been argued that apart from instruction in pronunciation for isolated words and sentences, more attention needs to be paid to intonation training because learners who have better understanding about prosodic features are shown to be more proficient in English According to Fan (1993), instead of intonation and rhythm, English learners pay more attention to the sounds (word pronunciation), vocabulary, and grammar when they are listening to English This is the reason why many English learners complain about the speed of the listening texts being too fast from time to time In their study, Hsieh, Dong and Wang (2013) cited Gilbert (1994) that intonation allows people to follow the flow of information in spoken English They also stated Pickering (2004) and Wennerstorm (2004) that if the speaker can use appropriate intonation structure at the discourse level, recipients will perceive the speaker‟s English to be more intelligible They also indicate that with the use of intonation structure at the discourse level, not only is intelligibility increased, but learners‟ fossilized pronunciation is also found to be improved Therefore, inability to interpret intonation and stress pattern correctly will hinder listening process

1.3.3 Problem of understanding different accents

Various accents can cause students another problem in acquiring listening skills If students are frequently exposed to just one or two accents and get familiar with

them, they will be confused when hearing someone with a different accent They can perceive that kind of accent as unfamiliar or even wrong According to Ur (1996), there is rarely such a thing as a „wrong‟ accent: there are simply accents that are more or less difficult to understand

Ur also states that many foreign-language learners who are used to the accent of their own teacher are surprised and dismayed when they find they have difficulty understanding someone else

Fan (1993) also argues that usually ESL/EFL listeners are used to “their teacher‟s accent or to the standard variety of British or American English” In this case, teachers have to familiarize students with both British and American accents

Munro and Derwing (1998) claim that too many genres of accented speech may result in a significant reduction in comprehension This is certainly true because unfamiliar accents produced by strange speakers may make listeners unable to identify sounds correctly, and therefore, prevent their understanding the language

1.3.4 Problem of mismatch between learners’ vocabulary and vocabulary

used in listening texts

Owning a narrow range of vocabulary offers challenges to learners in mastering listening skills Hung (1998), as cited in Bingol (2014), agrees that listening passages with known words are easier for learners to understand, even if the theme

is unknown to them His research also points out that knowing the meaning of the words might arouse students learning interest and lead to a positive effect in listening ability

On the other hand, for listeners who do not know all vocabulary used by the speaker, listening can be very stressful as they usually start thinking about the meaning and, as a result of this, they miss the following information (Underwood, 1989)

Another problem related to vocabulary is that learners fail to recognize words they have learned There are two reasons for this occurrence First, learners often learn a

word in its isolation with formal pronunciation, so they find it difficult to catch that word in a stream of speech According to Ur (1996), if a word is pronounced differently in informal speech from the way it is said formally, or was said when it was learnt, the listener may simply not recognize it as the same word, or even miss its existence completely

He adds that mastering new items to the stage of total familiarity is a very gradual process It takes time before a newly-learnt word becomes known well enough to be readily recognized Second, the use of the same word varies from context to

context For examples, certain expressions are common in colloquial English, but more or less taboo in formal style

White, in his book on listening (1998), also mentions that it is impossible for learners to make out some words or phrases at all because they are words students have never heard before, or they are words that are familiar, but not in their reduced form

This can be seen as both the problem of vocabulary and the problem of pronunciation

1.3.5 Problem of mismatch between learners’ syntactic knowledge and syntax

used in listening texts

The listening text is usually in a more unpredictable style compared with that for reading The spoken language is not fixed as the written one and speakers can easily change their way of using language In other word, the content of listening text is not well-organized Brown and Yule (1983, p 12) also state that there are a number

of differences between spoken discourse and written discourse which are important

in learning EFL listening That is, while the spoken language is syntactically simpler, the written language is relatively complex Therefore if the listener is unable to segment and simplify complex sentences and turn them into more basic syntactic units, they will fail to comprehend the text

Anderson and Linch (1998), as cited in Cook (1973), D‟Anglejan and Tucker (1975) that it seems that the input which is syntactically difficult for young children

causes comparable problems for older foreign learners, who – in the initial stages of L2 learning – appear not to benefit from their L1 experience of similarity difficult surface structures

1.4.1 Problem of cultural differences

According to Anderson and Lynch (1997) when students learn a foreign language, they do more than learning a linguistic system, and they acquire some degree of familiarity with the foreign cultural system Language is the means used by a community to express facts, ideas, beliefs, rules, and so on – in short, to express its culture So gaps in our knowledge of the L2 culture, of the associations and references available to native users, can present obstacles to comprehension

Being familiar with cultural knowledge of language plays a great role in understanding the context The marriage between language and culture is indivisible (Brown, 1994; cited in Bingol, 2014) The topic may contain completely different cultural matters than those students have In this case, students may have difficulties

to imagine what has been said

1.4.2 Problem of unfamiliar topics

There may be misunderstanding between two communicators even though they come from the same culture and use the same native language This happens when the listener is not familiar with the topic that the speaker is talking about

Fan (1994) states that in many cases listeners cannot predict what speakers are going to say, whether it is a news report on the radio, an interviewer‟s questions, an everyday conversation, etc The listening material may deal with almost any area of life It might include street gossips, proverbs, new products, and situations unfamiliar to students Also, in a spontaneous conversation, speakers frequently change topics

In addition, difficult concepts can negatively affect students‟ listening According to Boyle (1984, p 35), cited in Vu Quynh trang (2013), 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 very difficult Topics about people, daily life, environment and social issues which contain simple concepts are familiar to students, while topics with theoretical concepts interfere with students‟ comprehension If the information

of the spoken text is full of theoretical concepts and if it is beyond learners‟ knowledge, it will make students confused and frustrated This is because a difficult concept demands past experiences and linguistic abilities that not many students could have

Ur (1996) suggests that if a listener can make a guess as to the sort of thing that is going to be said next, he will be much more likely to perceive it and understand it well

1.5.1 Problem related to length and density of the text

Students‟ difficulty in listening can be especially caused by being continuously exposed to long and dense texts If a message contains so much information that cannot be stored easily in memory, special listening strategies will be possibly inapplicable A short spoken text reduces the complexity of comprehension by reducing tiredness and lapse of concentration With regard to the density of the text, many writers (take Underwood, 1989 and Ur, 2005 as examples) claim that information should be less dense in the spoken language than in the written language

1.5.2 Problem related to delivery speed

Along with length and density of a listening text, speed of delivery also challenges listeners According to Macháčková (2009), may students feel that one of the greatest difficulties they have to deal with during listening exercises in comparison with reading exercises is lack of possibility how to control the speed of the speaker‟s speech Students believe that during the listening text they can miss important information Some students can be busy with the meaning of certain words of the first part that they miss important information of the second part or

they can stop listening as they are not able to select the correct information so quickly

1.5.3 Problem related to the complexity of the task

Another problem making listeners confused is the complexity of the task Ur (2005) says that even native speakers find it difficult to do multiple-choice listening exercises or take notes of lectures because this kind of exercise requires more of writing skills than listening skills Here, if the purpose of the tasks is to cover all language skills other than focusing on listening skills, it may be unnecessary to employ tasks that involve reading, speaking or writing, which are tiring and difficult for students

Therefore, Ur (2005) and many authors agree that listening tasks should ask quick simple responses and should not demand the skills of reading, speaking and writing at the expense of listening It is advisable that listening tasks should be listening-based, rather than reading-, writing-, or speaking-based

1.6.1 Problem of failing to apply effective learning styles and strategies

Learning styles and strategies influence and determine the objectives in teaching and learning The styles and strategies also influence students‟ perception and subsequent recalling of information and also determine the way how people react (Macháčková 2009)

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

follows: (i) predictive skills, (ii) extracting specific information, getting the general picture, (iii) extracting detailed information, (iv) 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 listening simultaneously He advises that EFL listeners should employ these strategies of listening in order to be successful in listening comprehension because listeners‟ success at understanding the content of what they hear depends on a large extent in their expertise on the micro skills

1.6.2 Problems of fatigue and lack of concentration

Students‟ concentration as well as motivation is one of the crucial factors that affect listening comprehension It can be difficult for students to maintain concentration in a foreign language learning classroom In listening comprehension, even the smallest pause in attention may considerably spoil comprehension (Bingol, 2014)

According to Hamouda (2013), during listening lessons students are required to be attentive since in a very restricted time they are required to process and understand

a strand of newly introduced information Failure to concentrate will result in the students missing some of the lecture content, which will eventually affect their understanding of the whole lecture

According to Macháčková (2009), there are many factors influencing learners‟ concentration For example, selection of a good topic is very important as it is easier for students to concentrate if the topic is appealing for them The length of the listening exercise plays an important role as well

Many linguists argue that a long text in foreign language exhausts learners and reduces the competence of every single organ of hearing as well as prevents the brain from concentrating According to Ur (1996), listeners will suffer from more fatigue than readers or speakers Reading, writing and speaking are also tiring, but

at least as far as these activities are concerned, the learner can set his own pace and make breaks when he wishes In listening, the pace is set by someone else, and the breaks may or may not occur when the listener needs them

1.6.3 Problem related to physical settings

In order to listen well, one must hear well first Hearing refers to the receiving process in which sound waves travel from the speaker to the listener‟s ear and are operated by a number of auditory parts before they go to the brain through nerves Every factor that affects that receiving process will certainly affect listening ability Inconvenience of classrooms is one of those factors Bingol (2014) indicates that in large classrooms students who are sitting on the back rows may not hear the

recording as well as students sitting in the front rows Students who prefer to stay next to the windows are also affected by the noise that comes from outside Unclear sounds resulting from poor-quality equipment can also interfere with the listener‟s comprehension (Fan, 1994) Ur (1996) agreed that one of the disadvantages of recordings is their technical quality Even professionally-made tapes are not always

as distinct as they should be, and their clarity may be further impaired by faulty or inferior playing equipment

1.6.4 Problem related to lack of visibility of the speaker

Lastly, lack of visibility of the speaker also causes challenges to the listener When the listener interacts face to face with the speaker, it means he/she is exposed to the visual signals, which helps enhance his/her listening comprehension The signals can be segmental to help students identify the sounds correctly or behavioral ones to help students predict what the speaker means In regard to segmental signals, Brown (1990) states that one advantage that a student in Britain who is actually face to face with his lecturer has over a student who is listening to tapes is that the former can see the face of the speaker as well as his gestures Since foreign learners need all the help they can get in the form of aids to interpret the spoken message, it seems worthwhile informing them of what visual clues they may expect to find in informal speech and what they may not expect to find In terms of behavioral signals, Fan (1994) argues that not seeing the speaker‟s body language and facial expressions makes it more difficult for the listener to understand the speaker‟s meaning

Mentioning to this matter, Ur (1996) notes that the speaker is actually visible to the listener in most real-life situations, and his facial expressions and movements provide some material aids to comprehension He adds that live speech does on the whole seem to be a more useful and practical basis for practice and should be used

more often

In Underwood‟s point of view (1994, p 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, and (7) established learning habits Many language learners believe that the greatest difficulty with listening is that the listener cannot control how quickly a speaker speaks

Fan (1994) attributes the difficulty of listening comprehension to four sources: the message, the speaker, the listener and the physical settings Meanwhile, Bingol (2014) proposes the potential problems in listening class as follows: (1) quality of recorded material, (2) cultural differences, (3) accent, (4) unfamiliar vocabulary, (5) length and speed of the listening, (6) physical condition, and (7) lack of concentration

In her research, Vu Quynh trang (2013) addresses listening problems in regard to the Text, the Speaker, the Listener and the Listening environment

CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY

This chapter comprises six sections The first three sections introduces the context

of the study, the learning material and the subject of the study Then, the instruments and procedure of data collection are described In the last section, the results of the study are presented through tables and charts

2.1.1 Research context

The study has been conducted at Nguyen Viet Xuan High School, a school in the rural area of Vinh Phuc Province The school was founded in 1972 and has obtained remarkable achievements This school year, there are 30 classes (10 classes for each grade) with the student popuulation of nearly 1200 and 7 teachers of English Among 10 classes of grade 11, three are using the new set of English textbooks which follows the systematic, cyclical and theme-based curriculum approved by the

45-minute English lessons per week Each term, there are three 45-minute aptitude tests, and 2 end-of-the-term tests Besides, the students have to sit in 4 proficiency tests during the school year

It is worth mentioning that in the last two weeks before data collecting, there were two native teachers teaching English in 11D2 class, whose students are the subjects

of this research They were sent to NVXHS due to a project conducted by Vinh Phuc Department of Education and Training with a view to improve language skills among students in the area A South-African teacher worked with this class for the first week and a Canadian one for the second Their participation in teaching English not only provides the students an opportunity to communicate with native speakers for the first time, but it also helps them be exposed to more accents Accordingly, the students have had more information to respond to the questionnaire

2.1.2 Learning materials

The materials used at NVXHS are a three-level English language set of

textbooks for Vietnam‟s upper-secondary schools (namely, Tiếng Anh 10, Tiếng Anh 11, Tiếng Anh 12) The aim of this set of textbooks is to develop students‟

communicative competence in listening, speaking, reading and writing so that students can achieve level 3 of the Vietnamese Foreign Language Competence Framework (equivalent to B1 in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages) when finishing upper-secondary school

The textbook of each level is divided into two volumes: Volume 1 and Volume 2 Each volume contains a book map (providing information about the sections of each

unit and the structure of the book), 5 topic-based units (each comprises 5 sections taught in eight 45-minute lessons), 2 review lessons (providing revision and further practice of the preceding units, taught in two 45-minute lessons), and a glossary (providing phonetic transcription of new words and their Vietnamese equivalents) The listening sub-section consists of four or five activities representing the three stages of the lesson: pre-listening, while-listening, and post-listening The first activity is to draw students‟ attention to the topic of the lesson, making them interested in the content of the listening text This is also a chance for students to share with their peers their background knowledge related to the topic The following two activities provide students with practice of the skills of listening for gist and/or listening for details There are also tasks that help students learn new vocabulary or the new meaning of the vocabulary learnt previously in meaningful contexts The most common task types are true/false, multiple choice, comprehension questions, etc The last activity, which can be considered as a post-listening one, aims at checking students listening comprehension and asking them to express their opinions of the content of the listening text

2.1.3 Research subjects

The subjects of this study are 40 students coming from class 11D2 They are all at

the age of 16 and spent one year learning Tiếng Anh 10 and are now working on