A study on how to improve TOEIC listening comprehension skills for English majors at Thuongmai University

A study on how to improve TOEIC listening comprehension skills for English majors at Thuongmai University A study on how to improve TOEIC listening comprehension skills for English majors at Thuongmai University A study on how to improve TOEIC listening comprehension skills for English majors at Thuongmai University A study on how to improve TOEIC listening comprehension skills for English majors at Thuongmai University A study on how to improve TOEIC listening comprehension skills for English majors at Thuongmai University A study on how to improve TOEIC listening comprehension skills for English majors at Thuongmai University A study on how to improve TOEIC listening comprehension skills for English majors at Thuongmai University A study on how to improve TOEIC listening comprehension skills for English majors at Thuongmai University A study on how to improve TOEIC listening comprehension skills for English majors at Thuongmai University A study on how to improve TOEIC listening comprehension skills for English majors at Thuongmai University A study on how to improve TOEIC listening comprehension skills for English majors at Thuongmai University A study on how to improve TOEIC listening comprehension skills for English majors at Thuongmai University A study on how to improve TOEIC listening comprehension skills for English majors at Thuongmai University A study on how to improve TOEIC listening comprehension skills for English majors at Thuongmai University A study on how to improve TOEIC listening comprehension skills for English majors at Thuongmai University A study on how to improve TOEIC listening comprehension skills for English majors at Thuongmai University A study on how to improve TOEIC listening comprehension skills for English majors at Thuongmai University A study on how to improve TOEIC listening comprehension skills for English majors at Thuongmai University A study on how to improve TOEIC listening comprehension skills for English majors at Thuongmai University A study on how to improve TOEIC listening comprehension skills for English majors at Thuongmai University

Today, TOEIC certification plays an important part in the resume ofemployees It reflects the level of proficiency in communicating in English inactivities such as business, commerce, tourism In particular, listeningcomprehension skills in the TOEIC test is considered the hardest part Therefore, it

is extremely necessary to practice listening comprehension skills while still inschool

Recognizing the importance of listening comprehension skills in the TOEICtest, the study was launched with the desire to point out common mistakes whiledoing the listening comprehension section of English Faculty students atThuongmai University and propose some solutions to improve their listeningcomprehension skills

Hopefully, this article will partly help students studying for the TOEIC exam

as well as preparing to enter the TOEIC exam

I have made this graduation report in nearly 4 weeks This is the first time I’veexperienced in these fields, my knowledge is still limited so that I could not avoiddifficulties and mistakes I hope to receive comments from you to enhance myexperience.

Finally, I wish you good health, happiness, and success in your life

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS v

LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS v

CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY 1

1.1 Rationale 1

1.2 Previous studies 2

1.3 Aims of the study 2

1.4 Research subjects 3

1.5 Scope of the study 3

1.6 Research methodology 3

1.7 Organization of the study 4

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

2.1 Theoretical background 5

2.1.1 Definition of listening skill 5

2.1.2 Definition of Listening Comprehension 6

2.1.3 Types of listening 6

2.1.4 The TOEIC listening test 8

2.2 Listening comprehension-related problems 12

2.2.1 Quickly forgetting what is heard 12

2.2.2 Not recognising the words they know 12

2.2.3 Understanding the message but not the intended message 12

2.2.4 Neglecting next part while thinking about the meaning of the current text 12

2.2.5 Unabling to form a mental 13

2.3 Factors affecting Engish majors’ listening comprehension skill 13

2.3.1 Quality of Recorded Materials 13

2.3.2 Cultural Differences 14

2.3.3 Knowledge of how sounds merge or get reduced 14

2.3.4 Accent 14

2.3.5 Length and Speed of Listening 14

2.3.6 Grammar, Pronunciation, and Vocabulary of the listener 15

2.3.7 Concentration 15

CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND RESEARCH FINDINGS 17

3.1 Participants 17

3.2 Data collection instruments 17

3.2.2 The interview questions 18

3.3 Data analysis procedures 18

3.4 The research findings 18

3.4.1 The reality of English listening skill in the TOEIC tests of English Faculty’s students at Thuongmai University 18

3.4.2 The results of survey questionnaires 19

3.4.3 The results of interview questions 24

CHAPTER 4: RECOMMENDATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 29

4.1 The solutions for improving listening comprehension skill 29

4.1.1 Solutions for students 29

4.1.2 Solutions for teachers 31

4.1.3 Particular solutions for each part in TOEIC tests 31

4.2 Some suggested books and courses for learners to improve listening skill in the TOEIC tests 33 4.3 Limitations and suggestions for further study 34

4.3.1 Limitations of the study 34

4.3.2 Suggestions for further study 34

CONCLUSION 35

REFERRENCES 1

APPENDIX 3

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS

Picture 1: Listening test and Part 1 directions 9

Picture 2: Part 2 directions 10

Picture 3: Part 3 directions 11

Picture 4: Part 4 directions 11

Chart 3.1: English learning time of English majors 19

Chart 3.2: Time to know about the TOEIC test of English majors 20

Chart 3.3: Practicing time the TOEIC test of English majors 20

Chart 3.4: Students’ assessment of difficulties in listening comprehension part of the TOEIC test 21 Chart 3.5: Students of English Faculty’s self-assessment listening comprehension skills on the TOEIC test 22

Table 3.1: The difficulties in doing listening comprehension section in the 22

TOEIC test 22

Chart 3.6: Factors leading to the listening comprehension difficulties of the learners 23

Table 3.2: Strategies applied by students when taking the TOEIC listening test 24

Chart 3.7: Ways to improve listening skills on the TOEIC test 24

Chart 3.8: The reality of applying these above ways to improve listening comprehension skills in TOEIC 25

Chart 3.9: The effect of learning vocabulary and enrich the necessary knowledge 26

Chart 3.10: The effect of practicing regularly 26

Chart 3.11: The effect of joining a course in English centers 27

CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY 1.1 Rationale

Have you ever wished to be paid a desirable salary after graduating? Have youthought about working and learning experience from foreign experts? Have youimagined that you would travel around the world and make friends with everyone

on this earth? It is extremely incredible! Come back to real life, you are an intern,your English is zero If I am an employer, the first sentence I want to tell you issorry, you are disqualified! This situation proves that English is an indispensablefactor in daily life and work of each individual It is considered a bridge oflanguages between countries around the world, having a positive effect onexchanging and cooperating with people of countries Therefore, in an increasinglysocial society with international integration, English is a compulsory and importantcondition for students in the process of communicating and applying for jobs

Today, the criteria for evaluating English abilities are becoming more andmore difficult The A, B, C certificates used for people who want to find jobs arereplaced by IELTS, TOEFL or TOEIC TOEIC, along with other requirements forcandidates, is preferred by most companies to assess the English languageproficiency of their employees Therefore, many people are trying their best toachieve success on the TOEIC test They have to pass 2 sections: Listening andReading At Thuongmai University, English Faculty students must achieve TOEIC

800 or IELTS 6.5 to be eligible to graduate Although they have not taken theTOEIC exam preparation course, they studied many subjects majoring in economicEnglish The vocabulary that they have accumulated is very close to the TOEIC test.Therefore, to take a TOEIC exam, most students of English faculty can study athome by themselves or take a course at an English center However, I realize thatnot all of them can do well in the listening part Everyone who took the TOEIC testrecognized that listening skills are really difficult to conquer, some do not knowhow to improve, some cannot hear because of poor vocabulary Even some whohave listening skills, still do not get high scores

For all reasons, I decided to conduct the topic: “A study on how to improve TOEIC listening comprehension skills for English majors at Thuongmai

University” From there, several solutions are proposed to improve their listening

comprehension skills

1.2 Previous studies

Several studies stress the importance of listening skills in language learning.Rost (2001) and Morley (2001) stated that listening is the most critical skill inlanguage learning because it is the most widely used language skill in healthy dailylife According to Krashen (1985), listening skill is an essential element in obtainingunderstandable input which provides the environment that facilitates learning andacquisition (Rost, 2001) and development of other communicative skills (Cheung,2010; Hasan, 2000; Rost, 2001) Rubin (1994) reviewed the factors that affectlistening comprehension and reported five elements, namely: text characteristics,interlocutor characteristics, task characteristics, listener characteristics, and processcharacteristics Further studies supported her findings on barriers to listeningcomprehension Of particular relevance to this study are the findings of Underwood

in 1989 Underwood (1989) suggests seven potential problems that could hinderlistening comprehension According to Underwood “many language learnersbelieve that the greatest difficulty with listening comprehension, as opposed tolistening comprehension, is that listener cannot control how quickly a speakerspeaks” Another problem is the lack of opportunity for the learners to have thewords repeated

In short, the previous studies in writing skills have revealed some errors andmistakes in listening comprehension and pointed out some solutions, but not at all,especially, for English majors at Thuongmai University To make the problem moredetailed and close to Thuongmai University’s English faculty student, I decided toconduct this study

1.3 Aims of the study

This study is implemented to find out the answers to 3 research questions:

1 How is the attitude of students of English faculty with listeningcomprehension skills?

2 What are the factors that improve TOEIC listening comprehension skills forstudents of English faculty?

3 What are some solutions to improve TOEIC listening comprehension skillsfor students of English faculty?

All of the reasons I mentioned in section 1.1 (Rationale) show that the purpose

of this study is:

- Finding out the common problems in the TOEIC listening comprehensionsection that students of the English Faculty at Thuongmai University have to face

1.5 Scope of the study

As the title of the study has indicated, the author only focuses on the TOEIClistening comprehension skills Besides, because the time and scope of the paper islimited, I can only conduct a survey on 50 students at Thuongmai University(students of English Faculty)

The reason for my choice of students of English Faculty:

 They study for the TOEIC exam for the goal of 800 points

 They concern about how to improve the listening skills of the TOEIC testthan anyone and suggests solutions for them

1.6 Research methodology

To complete this graduation paper, a series of methods have been applied:

 Collected references, books, and websites related to the TOEIC test anddocuments were analyzed in detail to form the theoretical background of this paper

 A survey questionnaire is conducted for English major students atThuongmai University, questionnaire included closed and open-ended questions.The purpose for mixing of both closed and open-ended responses is that the former

is easier to collate and analyze and the responses to the latter will provide moreflexibility so that the respondent can give more accurate answers

1.7 Organization of the study

Chapter 1 - Overview of the study

This chapter shows the rationale, previous studies, and the aims of the study.Besides, it provides the research subjects, the scope, the methodology and theorganization of the study

Chapter 2 - Literature review

This chapter aims to clarify the theory of listening skill and its features:

 Theoretical background

 Listening comprehension-related problems

 Factors affecting English majors’ listening comprehension skill

Chapter 3 - Data analysis and research findings

Basing on the data collected from the survey questionnaire, the issues will beanalyzed in depth in order to provide realistic information about some commondifficulties in listening part in TOEIC tests for English major students Specifically,

I express how to collect and process the data as well as show the results of thesurvey and analyze them This chapter also offers some suggestions to solve theproblems which are mentioned above and in order to help students have goodTOEIC results

Chapter 4 – Recommendations and suggestions

The researcher gives some recommendations to these problems from theresults of chapter 3

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Theoretical background

2.1.1 Definition of listening skill

The definition of listening has evolved over the years Moreover, the nature ofthe listening process and specific skills involved in listening comprehension havebeen the subject of several studies In the language classrooms, the listening processcan be demonstrated by students hearing oral speech, dividing sounds, classifyingthem into lexical and syntactic units, and comprehending the message Chastain(1971) defined listening as the understanding of native speech at normal speed.According to Morley (1972) listening pertains to auditory discrimination, auralgrammar, selection of necessary information, remembering it, and connecting it tothe process between sound and form of meaning

Listening is an essential part of the communication process Students spent themajority of each school day listening and much of what students know is acquiredthrough listening It is a term daily used without giving it much thought Yet,listening is a vital mental capacity one of the principal ways through which weunderstand and take part in the world around us (Rost, 1994) as he quoted:

“Listening is considered to be a part of oracy, a capacity to formulate Thought verbally and to communicate with others, so it is the skill that underlines all verbal communication”

It is suggested that listening can be done in a narrow and limited way, or it can

be done in a way that enriches communication (Goodith, 2001), as it was said:

“Listening is not merely not talking…it means taking a vigorous human interest in what is being told us You can listen like the blank mall or like a splendid auditorium where every sound comes back fuller and richer” (Miller, Goodith,

2001, 48)

In my opinion, listening is a vital component of oral communication or theinteractive process in which the individual takes the roles of speaker and listenerthrough a verbal and non-verbal component It is the ability to identify andunderstand what the speaker is saying through understanding his accent,pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and grasping his meaning

2.1.2 Definition of Listening Comprehension

The term “listening comprehension” has been defined by different authors.According to Brown and Yule (1983), listening comprehension means that a personunderstands what he has heard If he learns the text through hearing it, he willunderstand it Dirven and Oakeshott-Taylor (1984) defined listening comprehension

as the product of teaching methodology and is matched by terms such as speechunderstanding, spoken language understanding, speech recognition, and speechperception Rost (2002) defined listening comprehension as an interactive process inwhich listeners are involved in constructing meaning

(Stephen, Lucas, 1998) come to define this type of listening to be:

"Listening for pleasure or enjoyment, as when we listen to music, to a comedy,

 Empathic listening:

Listening empathetically means that the listeners are seeking to understand thebeliefs, emotions of other people in order to get them to expose these deep parts ofthemselves to us, so we need to demonstrate our empathy in our demeanor towardsthem, by asking them sensitively to encourage self-disclosure

"Empathic listening provides emotional support for the speaker, as when a psychiatrist listens to a patient or when we lend a sympathetic ear to a friend in distress"

(Stephen, Lucas, 1998, 58)

 Comprehensive Listening

If you are watching the news, listening to a lecture, or getting directions fromsomeone, you are listening to understand or listening to comprehend the messagethat is being sent This process is active In class, you should be focused, possiblytaking notes of the speaker’s main ideas Identifying the structure of the speech andevaluating the supports she offers as evidence This is one of the more difficulttypes of listening because it requires you to not only concentrate but to activelyparticipate in the process The more you practice listening to comprehend, thestronger listener you become

According to Stephen and Lucas (1998): "Comprehensive listening is devoted for understanding the message of a speaker, as when we attend a classroom lecture"

 Critical Listening

Have you ever had to buy an expensive item, such as a new appliance, a car, acell phone, or an iPad? You probably did some research beforehand and listenedclosely to the salesperson when you went to compare brands Or perhaps your bestfriend is telling you about some medical tests she recently had done You listenclosely so you can help your friend understand her results and the possibleramifications of the findings Both of these scenarios are examples of criticallistening Critical listening is listening to evaluate the content of the message

Critical listening in the classroom aims at:

- Separate facts from opinions and help students to prevent opinions frominfluencing their understanding of the facts

- Evaluate speakers' qualifications, motives, biases, and help students tounderstand how to weigh facts and arguments

- Test ideas for effectiveness and appropriateness and help students to testideas they learn

- Recognize the speaker's reasoning and help students to understand thespeaker's logic or lack of logic (Rost, 1994).

2.1.4 The TOEIC listening test

According to Wikipedia, “The Test of English for InternationalCommunication (TOEIC) is an international standardized test of English languageproficiency for non-native speakers It is intentionally designed to measure theeveryday English skills of people working in an international environment Thereare different forms of the exam: The TOEIC Listening & Reading Test consists oftwo equally graded tests of comprehension assessment activities totaling a possible

990 score; There are also the TOEIC Speaking and Writing Tests The TOEICspeaking test is composed of tasks that assess pronunciation, intonation and stress,vocabulary, grammar, cohesion, the relevance of content, and completeness of thecontent The TOEIC Writing test is composed of tasks that assess grammar, therelevance of sentences to the pictures, quality and variety of sentences, vocabulary,organization, and whether the opinion is supported with reason and/or examples.Both assessments use a score scale of 0 - 200.” Some students take the TOEICbecause they want to improve their English Other students take the TOEIC becausethey need it for an intensive English course or they want to apply for a job thatrequires a TOEIC score Every institution expects a different standard ofproficiency from its employees or students

Many test-takers believe that the Listening portion of the TOEIC is the mostdifficult part of the test, even though it only runs approximately 45 minutes Why?Both the questions and possible responses for Parts One and Two are only heard,not printed In Parts Three and Four, the questions will be either printed or spoken,

so it’s a little easier

In the Listening part, the test is divided into four parts, representing differenttasks:

 Part 1 uses pictures as the basis for answering simple questions.

Picture 1: Listening test and Part 1 directions

In this part, you will see a photograph and you will hear four sentencesdescribing the photo You must choose the sentence that most closely matches whatyou see You will hear the sentences once You will identify what you see in thephoto This may include people, objects, actions, and locations both general andspecific You will also make assumptions, you may not be able to determine ifsomething is actually taking place, but from the clues in the photo, you can assumethat it is

 Part 2 uses the Question-Response format.

Picture 2: Part 2 directions

In this part, you will hear a question and three possible responses You mustchoose the response that best answers the question You will hear the question andeach response once The question may ask about people, location, time, an activity,

an event, emotions, reasons, or opinions In short, the question could be on almostsubject

 Part 3 involves listening to two speakers who are engaged in a conversation.

In this part, you will hear a short dialogue You will read a question and fouranswer choices in your test booklet You must choose the opinion that best answersthe question You will only hear the dialog once The question will ask about thegeneral idea of the conversation; usually, it will not focus on specific details Youwill be asked to identify an activity, an emotion, a relationship, or the location ofthe speakers In some instances, you may have to do some minor calculations based

on measurements in the dialogs

Picture 3: Part 3 directions

 Part 4 consists of listening to talks by one speaker.

Picture 4: Part 4 directions

In this part, you will hear a short monologue about which you will read two orthree questions in your test booklet For each question, you must choose the correctanswer from four opinions You will hear the monologue once The talks can be inthe form of recorded announcements, weather forecasts, special bulletins, etc Thequestions will ask you to determine the location, the speaker, the time, the event, or

a reason

2.2 Listening comprehension-related problems

2.2.1 Quickly forgetting what is heard

Some people cannot remember the word they just heard, even though it is avery familiar word and they are more than capable of recognizing it Even somenative speakers have to concentrate in order to not have this problem when tryingTOEIC exam questions Especially for students with quite a high level who can loseconcentration if the questions are too easy, it is worth spending some time ondeveloping your short term memory of language, and your short term memory moregenerally

2.2.2 Not recognising the words they know

It sounds absurd, but it actually makes sense Do you admit that no less than

10 times you couldn't hear very simple words? The cause may be due to poor audioequipment, a strange voice or simply you are too subjective and not concentrating

2.2.3 Understanding the message but not the intended message

Almost everyone has a habit of guessing the word and content of the listeningand its message, prediction can be true or false If the content doesn't go asexpected, people with a volatile mentality will often lose morale, suspense, anxietyand affect the quality of the sequel

2.2.4 Neglecting next part while thinking about the meaning of the current text

This is easy to do but very important to avoid Although you might be able tofind the time to think about the answers to previous questions at some points likewhen the tape is explaining instructions you already know, there are no secondchances on actually hearing the listening text When the next listening text starts,mark clearly that you are leaving the last question 100% until later by, for example,

turning the page or putting your pencil on the question you are about to listen to Tomake sure you still remember any questions you were unsure about when goingback and think about them again, make sure you have made some notes such asquestion marks next to the two questions you need to choose between (strictly,writing on your question paper is not allowed in the exam, but in practice, studentsnever get told off for doing it- just write as little and as lightly as you can).

2.2.5 Unabling to form a mental

The brain is incredibly efficient As it is proved scientifically, any person talks

at a rate of 120 to 150 words a minute and the brain can process about 400 to 800words a minute From these statistics, it may seem that listening should be veryeasy, but it is the opposite So, in the listening process, the learners can take in allthe speaker's words and still have plenty of spare that's why the learners or listenersinterrupt their listening by thinking about other things (Stephen, Lucas,1998).in theclassroom context, the same problem has been stated by Rost (1994):

"Many pupils have difficulties following instructions owing to apparent deficits in attention and concentration Such pupils may not be adapting well to the numerous distractions in a typical classroom".

2.3 Factors affecting Engish majors’ listening comprehension skill

2.3.1 Quality of Recorded Materials

Audio and video materials are not always of a very good technical quality.This fact can make students rather confused and distract from productive andsuccessful studying There is no straight communication between the listener andthe speaker

Thus, it is hard to regulate the speed, rhythm, and other peculiarities of speech,

to work out the compensating strategies (i.e stating the message contents with thehelp of the partner) within students If the sound quality is not good, it is difficultfor listeners to recognize words, stresses, and swallowed words This affects thelistener's ability to understand the message of the passage as well as the psychology

of the listener

The quality of the sound system can impact the comprehending of learners’listening (Azmi Bingol, Celik, Yidliz, & Tugrul Mart, 2014)

2.3.2 Cultural Differences

Cultural Difference is a major barrier to listening comprehension Havinggreat exposure to particular culturally oriented materials, for instance, Englishculture materials, language learners can develop their listening comprehension.Background knowledge, cultural familiarity, and linguistic complexity are vitallinguistic and meta-linguistic characteristics for the improvement of listeningcomprehension Accordingly, having exposure to language materials in which thesethree features are highly observed can boost listening comprehension improvement

2.3.3 Knowledge of how sounds merge or get reduced

When speaking English, indigenous people often match words and swallowwords to create a natural communication As a result, words can be soundly altered,making it to listen Not everything is what it seems It certainly seems to be the casewith sounds In almost any language there is a tendency for different sounds to bereduced (e.g vowel reduction) or to be merged If you don’t grasp how thesechanges happen, it will take you much longer to decipher the ongoing stream ofspeech

2.3.4 Accent

According to Goh (1999), 66% of learners mentioned a speaker’s accent asone of the most significant factors that affect listener comprehension Unfamiliaraccents both native and non-native can cause serious problems in listeningcomprehension and familiarity with an accent helps learners’ listeningcomprehension Buck (2001) indicated that when listeners hear an unfamiliar accentsuch as Indian English for the first time after studying only American English willencounter critical difficulties in listening This will certainly interrupt the wholelistening comprehension process and at the same time, an unfamiliar accent makescomprehension impossible for the listeners

2.3.5 Length and Speed of Listening

Azmi Bingol, Celik, Yidliz, and Tugrul Mart (2014) stated that the level ofstudents can have a significant role when they listen to long parts and keep allinformation in their mind It is very difficult for lower-level students to listen more

than three minutes long and complete the listening tasks Short listening passagesmake easy listening comprehension for learners and reduce their tiredness.

The speed of the speech also supplies cues for catching the main points As amatter of fact, natural talk is very fast for second language learners so it makes upsome trouble for the non-native speaker Nevertheless, in the streaming of listeningstudents would notice that sometimes the speaker speaks a bit slower and clearerthan he did before This is mostly the points of the listening It is the chance forstudents to capture the necessary information in a listening text Emphasis is anatural factor in speaking so the speaker also emphasizes to signal the mostsignificant ideas What students should do is to pay attention to the speed and theintonation of the speaker and identify the points As in his books, “advance listeningstrategies” (Berman, 2003) assumed that:

“Pace is the speed of speech Unimportant points or small details are usuallyspoken more quickly Important points, such as main ideas, are usually spoken moreslowly and clearly.”

2.3.6 Grammar, Pronunciation, and Vocabulary of the listener

89.4% of the participants suffer from incomplete comprehension Somelisteners thought that meaning resides within the unfamiliar words so they need ahuge amount of vocabulary On facing a new word, they tend to find out themeaning rather than infer it from the context (Hasan, 2000) Students have to makesure that they do not spend much time on guessing the unfamiliar word or they willmiss the speaker’s next point Besides, the speakers may use synonyms, antonyms,

or appositives to explain the words

Wrong pronunciation and lack of grammar also prevent the listener fromrecognizing the word or misunderstanding the meaning of the passage

decided to skip them as they have so little bearing on your ability to understand Idon’t want to expand this article artificially.

CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND RESEARCH FINDINGS

3.1 Participants

The study was conducted with 100 students at Thuongmai University (students

of English Faculty) Most of them are review for the TOEIC test Of these, 90students are female and 10 students are male Although all of them have learnedEnglish for over 8 years, they have had difficulties in listening Englishcomprehension Each person has difficulties due to different impact factors Theyalso enthusiastically participated in the survey to share their difficulties and findways to improve their English listening skills, especially the listening skills on theTOEIC test

All students agree to provide information in a voluntary, comfortable, andaccurate manner

3.2 Data collection instruments

After searching, selecting, and referring to related documents, the researcherdeveloped a questionnaire based on previous research and conducted a survey ofEnglish Faculty students at Thuongmai University

My research was carried on the quantitative method with the data collectionthrough questionnaires

The time to conduct this research is not much Therefore, I find that thequestionnaire is one of the most affordable ways to collect quantitative data Thesurvey by questionnaire can be surveyed on a large scale geographically with alarge number of people, especially students Moreover, using this method makes iteasy for researchers to generalize the problem and be proactive Besides, you canchoose questions and formats (open-end or multiple selections) Moreover,collecting quick and accurate feedback is another advantage of the questionnairemethod because the survey is conducted directly

The questionnaires were sent to 100 students of English Faculty The surveyquestions included both close and open questions They divided into two parts andwritten in bilingual

3.2.1 The survey questionnaires

In this section, I gave 13 questions, all related to the Toeic test, problems in