Vietnamese EFL college students’ perceptions of listening comprehension problems a study at a university in vietnam

This study attempts to investigate the perceived problems Vietnamese EFL college students commonly encounter when doing listening test and the relationship between these problems and stu

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES

BÙI THÚY NGA

VIETNAMESE EFL COLLEGE STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS

OF LISTENING COMPREHENSION PROBLEMS:

A STUDY AT A UNIVERSITY IN VIETNAM

(Nhận thức của sinh viên học tiếng Anh về các vấn đề khi n

ến An n n ứ n đ ọ V N

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field : English Teaching Methodology Code : 8140231.01

Hanoi – 2021

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI

UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES

BÙI THÚY NGA

VIETNAMESE EFL COLLEGE STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS

OF LISTENING COMPREHENSION PROBLEMS:

A STUDY AT A UNIVERSITY IN VIETNAM

(Nhận thức của sinh viên học tiếng Anh về các vấn đề khi n

ến An n n ứ n đ ọ V N

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field : English Teaching Methodology Code : 8140231.01

Supervisor : Assoc Prof Nguyen Thuy Nga

Hanoi – 2021

DECLARATION

This is to certify that this thesis is of my own research and has not been submitted to any other university or institution degree or other purposes Except where the reference is indicated, no other person‟s work has been used without due acknowledgement in text of the thesis I certify that the assistance received in preparing this thesis and sources have been acknowledged

Hanoi, 2021

Bùi Thúy Nga

I would also like to thank all of the lecturers of the Department of Postgraduate Studies, Vietnam National University for their useful lectures and materials which are of great value to my thesis

A special word of thanks goes to all of my fellow master students for their feedback, cooperation and of course friendship

Last but not the least, I would like to thank my boyfriend and my family for supporting me spiritually throughout writing this thesis and my life

in general

ABSTRACT

Listening skill is appreciated as a key skill in real-life communication

as well as language acquisition Therefore, there have been numerous studies

of this skill in different aspects This study attempts to investigate the perceived problems Vietnamese EFL college students commonly encounter when doing listening test and the relationship between these problems and students‟ actual performance Specifically, it involves the listening test scores and responses on listening problems of 43 EFL learners at a college in Hanoi Descriptive statistics reveals that the listening problems faced by students are mainly from context and input factors, followed by process and task factors However, as regression analysis points out, students‟ listening test scores have rather strong association with two factors namely affect and listener factors Based on these findings, pedagogical implications for teaching and learning listening skills are also discussed, such as planning listening lessons with memory and concentration activities and providing and gaining

constructive feedback

Key words: listening skills, listening problems, listening scores

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

References IELTS International English Language Testing

System

GEPT General English Proficiency Test

LISTS OF FIGURES AND TABLES

Table 3.1 Structure of the listening test 25

Table 4.1 Overview of the listening comprehension problems 28

Table 4.2 Top five problems encountered in listening comprehension test 29

Table 4.3 Listening problems related to process factor 32

Table 4.4 Listening problems related to listener factor 36

Table 4.5 Correlation between listening scores and different factors 38

Table 4.6 Model Summary Table 40

Table 4.7 ANOVA Table (test using alpha = 05) 40

Table 4.8 Coefficients Table (test each predictor at alpha = 05) 42

Table 4.9 Summary of Coefficients Table(test each predictor at alpha = 05) 42

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS iv

LISTS OF FIGURES AND TABLES v

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aims and objectives of the study 2

3 Research questions 2

4 Method and procedures 3

5 Scope of the study 4

6 Significance of the study 5

7 Structure of the thesis 7

CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEW 9

2.1 Listening skill in English language teaching 9

2.2 Listening comprehension 10

2.2.1 Definitions of listening comprehension 10

2.2.2 The importance of listening comprehension 12

2.2.3 The process of listening comprehension 13

2.3 EFL learners‟ listening problems 15

2.4 The correlation between EFL learners‟ listening comprehension problems and their performance 18

2.4.1 Review of previous studies overseas 18

2.4.2 Review of previous studies in Vietnam 20

2.5 Framework for investigating listening problems 20

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 23

3.1 The setting of the study and participants 23

3.2 Data collection instrument and procedure 24

3.3 Data analysis methods 26

CHAPTER 4: FINGDINGS 28

4.1 Problems frequently encountered by students while listening 28

4.2 The relationship between listening problems and listening scores 38

4.2.1 Interpretation of output from correlation analysis 38

4.2.2 Interpretation of output from multiple regression analysis 39

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 45

5.1 Recapitulation 45

5.2 Implications 47

5.3 Limitations and suggestions for further studies 48

REFERENCES 50 APPENDIX I

Despite being considered the most challenging skill to teach and learn (Field, 2008), listening skill is by far the least widely researched among the four language skills (Plonsky, 2011) Compared to the other receptive skill, listening to a foreign language is understudied, since its process is more difficult to observed and manipulated than reading skills (Osada, 2004) In English language teaching process, grammar, reading and vocabulary appear

to gain more attention than listening skill The fact that it is neglected in teaching curricula, textbooks and teachers‟ lesson planning probably lead to serious problems that many EFL learners are exposed to in listening comprehension tasks (Gilakjani & Ahmadi, 2011)

This same issue can also be found in Vietnam, where English is introduced to learners since third grade of primary school, and upon finishing secondary education (a.k.a lower-secondary and higher-secondary schools), students are expected to achieve B1 level of the Common European Framework of References for languages (CEFR), according to National Foreign Languages 2020 Project which has come into effect since 2008 However, this expectation is hardly met and when moving to post-secondary

education, English learners, especially non-English major students still have various problems with language skills, especially speaking and listening Since the English college entrance exam only tests students‟ vocabulary and grammar knowledge as well as reading and writing skills, the washback effect

of teaching to testing has made English education in Vietnam to neglect speaking and listening skills That is why together with speaking, listening is the most difficult skill for EFL college students The struggles they have can

be clearly observed by their scores on listening comprehension test Therefore, it is vital for teachers to find out the students‟ difficulties with this skill and finally help them to improve their performance in listening tests

In spite of the significant role of the research matter, the investigation

of listening problems faced by Vietnamese EFL students has not been found adequately Therefore, this study was designed to make an effort to discover EFL college students‟ listening problems and to determine whether a relationship exists between their problems and listening test performance

2 Aims and objectives of the study

The researcher aims to give a closer investigation into listening comprehension problems and possible strategies to tackle those difficulties In detail, the objectives are as follows

 Identifying what problems are met by Vietnamese EFL college students when doing listening comprehension practice and tests

 Finding out whether there exists a relationship between their problems and their actual listening test scores

2 Is there any relationship between their problems and their actual listening test scores? If so, which factor(s) affect their performance?

4 Method and procedures

To fulfill the above aims, the study was conducted with quantitative methods of data collection and correlational analysis The instruments used in this study were: (1) a listening comprehension test, (2) a questionnaire with the subjects

Firstly, participants were required to sit a listening comprehension test consisting of 3 parts, which had been adapted from Section 2, 3, and 4 of IELTS Listening test materials The test aimed at English proficiency level of B2 in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) Secondly, students were required to fill in the questionnaire comprising two parts: personal information and listening problems This questionnaire was used to get information about the difficulties the students were facing in EFL listening while taking listening course and listening tests

at Hanoi University of Industry Afterwards, a proportion of participants were encouraged to take part in a session of a semi-structured interview The follow-up interview‟s sole purpose was to double-check the information that was obtained through the questionnaire Therefore, the semi-structured interview was not considered one of the main instruments used for this study The two main instruments, namely, the test and the questionnaire, were described in more details in Chapter 3: Methodology

After obtained from the listening comprehension test and the questionnaire, data was analyzed quantitatively For the first research question, descriptive statistics with mean and standard deviation are employed

to identify the major problems faced by students in the listening comprehension test

With regards to the second research question, correlation analysis was first applied in order to see whether the relationship between these perceived problems and students‟ listening scores existed The researcher went on to carry out regression analysis to investigate the relationship between each of the six factors (process, input, listener, task, affect, context) and students‟ performance This was for the purpose of finding out how much the difficulties faced by students affect their listening score

5 Scope of the study

The study was carried out at Hanoi University of Industry (HaUI), an accredited technical university Although this university‟s major departments are associated with industry, technology and applied science; it also caters for those who major in business and foreign languages as well The participants

in this study were 43 undergraduate students in the department of English language and translation who are now at their 5th semester Their age ranges from 19-22 years old

All of them were attending the course called Listening-Speaking 5 at the time the study was conducted, and were chosen using convenient sampling The language courses offered to them include a listening component By participating in listening courses available, they were provided plenty of opportunities to listen to a variety of spoken language, namely, daily conversations, short talks, presentations and lectures in English

This study aims at determining the problems faced by English-major students at Hanoi University of Industry when they are doing listening comprehension tasks The scope of the study is limited to this specific group

of students, and thus, the results might be more valuable to the internal revision within the institution itself of their teaching and assessment materials

6 Significance of the study

This study was conducted to find out the problems encountered by EFL college students when listening comprehension tasks are being conducted; hence, practically, it was expected to be a useful reference material to teachers who are currently teaching the course Listening-Speaking 5 at Hanoi University of Industry, as well as teachers who are in charge of similar English courses in other educational institutions

Besides being of immediate use to teachers of English at Faculty of Foreign Languages at HaUI, theoretically, this study might also interest those whose academic work are focusing on the listening component in the field of English Language Teaching

To be more specific, recognition of the factors that are the roots of the problems that EFL learners were facing in their study process would benefit the following groups:

 EFL teachers at Hanoi University of Industry: to be provided with insights of their students‟ difficulties that occur when they are doing listening comprehension tasks, and reflect on their own teaching and assessing methods to enhance their students‟ performance Knowing the occurrence of those identified problems would inherently help teachers stand a higher chance in guiding their learners so that they can tackle the listening difficulties they are experiencing It is also hoped that the findings of this research paper can provide English language teachers at Hanoi University of Industry with some guidelines for material evaluation, selection and adaptation Besides, the results of the study might be able to propose some indications for EFL teachers at HaUI to revisit and/or revise their teaching and

assessment materials In addition, thanks to this study, other teachers of English at University of Industry might be aspired to produce similar research into other groups of students apart from English-major students at the very same institution

 EFL teachers of similar language courses at other educational institutions in Hanoi: to be inspired to propose similar research questions and conduct investigation into the problems faced by their own students‟ body when they are taking listening comprehension tests Being equipped with this knowledge, they may find ways to improve their own teaching methods or assessment materials

 EFL learners at HaUI: to identify the listening comprehension challenges that they are having, so that they may come up with, on their own or with the help of their teacher or mentor, what further learning strategies are needed for them to achieve progress in listening skill acquisition One way or another, learners ought to be aware of the factors which might be responsible for their listening problems When listeners have a certain amount of knowledge of their own challenges, they are likely to be able to grow to become better listeners as well as more well-rounded learners

 Researchers who have taken an interest in EFL learning and teaching: to use the findings as a basis for a similar study at other institutions or with another group of students, for further study of the similar topic or a reference material in their own paper

All in all, the researcher believes the thesis will be helpful in practice to all stakeholders in Faculty of Foreign Languages at Hanoi University of

Industry; and theoretically, it might be useful for scholars who are researching into English as a Foreign Language Teaching field

7 Structure of the thesis

This research consists of five chapters:

Chapter 1: Introduction

It is important, first and foremost, to state the reasons, objectives, and values of the research Consequently, the Introduction involves seven sections: Rationale, Research goals, Research questions, Research scope, Research instruments and procedures, Research significance, and Design of the research

Chapter 2: Theoretical background and literature review

This includes the explanation of key definitions of listening comprehension and listening comprehension problems Moreover, it presents the review on different previous works on listening comprehension skill and listening comprehension problems to point out the research gaps

4.1 Problems frequently encountered by students while listening

4.2 The relationship between listening problems and listening scores

Chapter 5: Conclusions

In this chapter, the conclusions of the paper will be presented This part also summarizes how to conduct the research to the objectives, and offers

possible guidelines for future research Five parts are included: Recapitulation, Concluding remarks, Implications, Limitations, and Recommendations for further study

CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Listening skill in English language teaching

In the field of EFL acquisition, listening plays a significant role, since it

is the most regularly used language skill in the classroom (Ferris, 1998; Nunan, 1998) and it takes a crucial part in improving EFL learners‟ language competence Dunkel (1991) and Feyten (1991) both agree that listening can provide meaningful input for the learner, which is the fundamental foundation for any learning Rost (2006) also supports this idea by stating that listening provides the linguistic environment and sets the stage for acquisition Therefore, good competence in listening comprehension can have great impact on improving the other three language skills (Pearson & Fielding, 1991) In addition, acquiring listening skill also facilitates students to get access to various information sources in the age of blooming technology and multimedia, such as online audios and videos, podcasts and vlogs

Simply speaking, listening can be defined as “the activity of paying attention to and trying to get the meaning of something we hear” (Underwood, 1989, p.1) A more elaborate definition of listening is proposed

by O‟Malley, Chamot and Kupper (1989): “listening comprehension is an active and conscious process in which the listener constructs meaning by using cues from contextual information and from existing knowledge, while relying upon multiple strategic resources to fulfill the task requirement” (p.19) Sharing the same view that listening is mostly associated with the ability to understand speaker‟s meaning, Mendelson (1994) adds that the required abilities of a competent listener are processing the linguistics forms, interacting, understand the message and decipher the speaker‟s intention Later, Steinberg (2007) emphasizes the need of distinguishing listening from

hearing, asserting that listening is a complex process involving four distinct stages: sensing and attending, understanding and interpreting, remembering and responding

Although the fact that EFL leaners only sit quietly when doing listening comprehension creates the impression of listening as a passive skill, it is actually argued by most scholars to be an active and dynamic process Purdy (1997) clarified such process engaged in listening: “attending, perceiving, interpreting, remembering, and responding to the expressed (verbal and nonverbal), needs, concerns, and information offered by other human beings” (p 8) Rost (2002) proposed the idea of listening comprehension as an inferential process, in which listener‟s main jobs are constructing, decoding and negotiating meanings with the speaker The ability to understand and interpret spoken messages in real time is attributed to the process of integrating information from phonetic, phonological, prosodic, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic sources (Lynch, 1998); therefore, listening can be regarded an active and complex process which requires both linguistic and world knowledge In order to achieve comprehension, bottom-up (data-driven) and top-down (conceptually-driven) are the two processes common applied (Nunan, 1998) While the bottom-up allows listeners to form the meaning basing on linguistic cues in speakers‟ utterances, top-down process mainly depends on background knowledge in interpreting what listeners hear

In a nutshell, it is widely agreed that rather than a solely passive reception of audible signs, listening comprehension is an active, complex and interactive process involving different cognitive strategies and stages

2.2 Listening comprehension

2.2.1 Definitions of listening comprehension

A number of definitions of listening comprehension skill have been put forward and each of those definitions reflects its author's own point of view The following are some representative definitions of listening comprehension

Buck (2001: 31) defined listening comprehension as an active process

in which listeners are involved in constructing meaning He emphasizes that both linguistic knowledge and non-linguistic knowledge are used for the understanding of incoming speech by listeners It can be realized from this definition that listening comprehension is more than hearing because listeners actively interpret what speakers say basing on their linguistic and non-linguistic knowledge

Rost (2002: 3) considered listening comprehension as a cognitive process to represent and form meaning from what speakers say According to him, meaning 8 construction is assisted by contextual factors Moreover, listening comprehension involves establishing a negotiation in meaning (with the speaker), and giving responses Thus, listening comprehension is one integral part of communication skill in which context plays an important role

in identifying speakers' intention

Jeon (2007: 50) stated that listening comprehension requires listeners' capacity to "apprehend, recognize, discriminate, or even ignore certain information" He also pointed out the factors which are necessary for listening comprehension: linguistic knowledge, personal expectation, cognitive processing skills, world knowledge and prior experience which listeners have Thus, listening comprehension depends on a variety of listeners' sub-skills, knowledge, and experience

Nadig (2013: l743) simply defined listening comprehension as the various processes of interpreting spoken language According to him, the processes are based on listeners' perception of speech sounds, comprehension

of the meaning of individual words and the syntax of sentences

It can be concluded from the definitions mentioned above that

“listening comprehension is an active and purposeful process” in which

listeners try to interpret speakers' intention and respond In other words, listening is an important skill in communication It may include interrelated activities such as receiving aural stimuli, attaching meaning to aural symbols, remembering and responding to oral communication The factors which are necessary for listening comprehension are linguistic knowledge personal expectation, cognitive processing skills, and world knowledge

2.2.2 The importance of listening comprehension

Before 1960s, the role of listening comprehension in language learning was taken for granted, so teaching of listening comprehension was completely neglected Nevertheless, with a new wave of interest in the development of communicative competence in language teaching, there came an increasing awareness of the significant role of listening Through a great number of researches, listening comprehension has been proved to play a very crucial role in human being's communication, language learning, and second language acquisition

Devine‟s (1982:7) definition of listening comprehension was that,

“listening is the primary means by which incoming ideas and information are taken in" Thus, it is obvious that listening is a receptive skill and an integral part of human being's communication Furthermore, listening is the skill used most frequently in verbal communication In general, successful listening may involve successful communication

Hasan (2000: 138), in addition to this, mentioned multiple times in his works that “listening comprehension provides the right conditions for language acquisition and the development of other language skills” The proficiency in speaking and pronunciation can only be perfectly achieved through listening skill

All in all, the significant role of listening comprehension skill in human being's communication, language learning and second language acquisition is undeniable This is the reason why teaching and learning listening comprehension skill have received more and more attention of researchers, teachers, and learners over the world

2.2.3 The process of listening comprehension

Prior to 1960s, listening comprehension is labeled as a passive skill However, this opinion has changed since 1980s Listening comprehension is considered as “an active and complex process” which is illustrated by Anderson's model

Anderson (1995) divided listening comprehension into three interrelated cognitive processes: perception, parsing and utilization In terms

of the first process, perceptual processing is “the encoding of the acoustic or written message” In particular, a person pays close attention to input and the sounds are stored in echoic memory Simultaneously, some initial analysis of the language code may start, and encoding processes may transform some of the input into meaningful representations In the second process - parsing, words are converted into a mental representation of the combined meaning of those words which “can be stored in short- term memory” The basic unit of the process is a proposition The third process, utilization, involves the process of “associating a mental representation of the auditory meaning with existing knowledge” to form schemata whose role is guiding the comprehension process If the input is compatible with the schema, meaning the listener has managed to successfully comprehend the text By contrast,

“either the information or the schema will be discarded or modified”

Anderson‟s model (1995) suggested that the first two steps belong to bottom-up process, meanwhile the third step is of top-down process Those

two processes are described in details as followed

Bottom-up processing which is suitable to the way of thinking of almost people takes place in a definite order from the lowest level to the highest level In particular, phonemic units are first decoded and connected to form words; words then are linked together to construct phrases; afterwards, phrases are put together to build up utterances; and last, utterances are combined to create a complete, meaningful text This process is closely associated with the listeners' linguistic knowledge In fact, the processing of different types of knowledge does not occur in a fixed sequence It is quite possible to understand the meaning of a word before decoding its sounds thanks to the knowledge of the world around us and our expectation to incoming information

Top-down processing is defined as using background knowledge in comprehending the meaning of a message The listener has to call for their own prior knowledge of the topic, context and situation of the occurrence of the audio they are listening to In this case, context and situation include things such as topic knowledge that listeners have already known in their own experience or exposure, who the speakers are, their correlation with the situation, their relationships with each other and the relationships between the events at hand and the previous events However, if the data the listener takes

in though the process of listening is unfamiliar to his own knowledge, it cannot evoke his schemata and it is mandatory for him to largely rely on his linguistic knowledge in order to comprehend the task at hand Additionally, even though in the cases when the listener does trigger a schema, he might not have the compatible schema expected by the speaker(s) As a result, only depending on top-down processing can be likely to lead to a failure of comprehension

To conclude, it is undeniable that both bottom-up process and top-down process have downsides This is the reason why another model which is interactive process is proposed When the content of the material is familiar to the listener, he will employ his background knowledge to make predictions which will be proved by the new input By contrast, if the listener is unfamiliar with the content of the listening text, he can only depend on his linguistic knowledge, especially the lexical and syntactical knowledge to make sense of the information

In summary, listening comprehension is a very complex process in which both bottom-up and top-down process play a crucial part The researcher is quite in favor of the opinion that listening comprehension is an interactive process

2.3 EFL n s’ s n n p o s

Due to the complexity of different cognitive stages involved in listening comprehension, EFL learners usually need to make remarkable processing efforts when they listen, which makes listening the most difficult skill of all (Graham, 2006) Especially in listening to a recorded text, where listeners are not offered the chance to interact with the speakers to negotiate for meaning, EFL learners frequently have much greater difficulties since they have no control over the speech rate, manner and content As Flowerdew (1994) point out, listening requires real-time processing without the chance to

go back to the sections that just have been missed; and some aurally presented materials like phonological and lexical features may not be present in written materials These two distinct characteristics of listening comprehension have posed a number of obstacles for EFL learners

It is a view held widely by many researchers and teachers of English that listening is an intricate cognitive process that are associated with

„perception‟, „attention‟, „cognition‟ and „memory‟ The ability to listen of students of English may be affected by a diversity of factors Hayati (2010) and Flowerdew and Miller (1992) have drafted out several lists of general factors as well as specific factors To take some examples, research has been looking closely into speech rate (Conrad, 1989; Blau, 1990; Griffths, 1992; Zhao, 1997), lexis (Rost, 1992), phonological features and background knowledge (Long, 1990; Chiang and Dunkel, 1992) In addition, there are some other issues that might have a causal relationship with listener‟ difficulties, such as text structure and syntax or personal factors To exemplify the latter, insufficient exposure to the target language, a.k.a English in this case, and lack of interest or motivation can be taken into consideration

All the aforementioned factors are acknowledged by Brown (1995) Another contribution, as Brown (1995) further added, to listener‟s difficulties is “the levels of cognitive demands made by the content of the texts.” Before that, a wide variety of problems that EFL learners have to face in listening comprehension had been mentioned and discussed in literature (Underwood, 1989; Ur, 1984) In addition, other challenges such

as unfamiliar vocabulary items, topics, and accents, and fast speech rate were later identified by Buck (2001)

In 1997, Higgins investigated into listening comprehension hardships

of students in Oman and the results showed that speech rate, vocabulary and pronunciation are the three factors that can either facilitate or block listening comprehension Afterwards, in 2000, a study carried out by Hasan examined the perceived listening comprehension obstacles through 81 EFL Arabic speakers and pointed out that the most important message factors were

„unfamiliar words‟, „difficult grammatical structures‟, and „the length of the

spoken text.‟ Regarding the „speaker‟ factor, „clarity‟ was revealed to be the root of the challenges that EFL learners face while listening In terms of the

„listener‟ factor, the two dominant hardships encountered were „lack of interest‟ and „the demand for full and complete answers to listening comprehension questions.‟ At about the same time, Yagang (1994) suggested that there were four sources that hinder listening comprehension from happening, namely, „the message‟, „the speaker‟, „the listener‟ and „the physical setting‟

One way of classification of factors affecting listening comprehension were proposed by Boyle (1984) Four categories were suggested by this expert to be inter-related with each other: listener, speaker, medium and environment Furthermore, another way of classification was put forward by Chang, Chang, & Kuo (1995) Five major difficulties in listening comprehension were discovered were „speed‟, „a cluster of sounds difficult for segmentation‟, „obsession with translation‟, „association of sounds with words and meanings‟, and „idiomatic expressions.‟ Relatively similar to Boyle‟s (1984) categorization, Teng (2002) pinpointed four divisions of factors, namely, listener factors, speakers factors, stimulus factors, and context factors Teng (2002) implied that the most essential factor that resulted in problems in listening comprehension practices or tests was

„proficiency‟, which means lack of linguistic knowledge was the root cause of poor listening performance On the other hand, shortly before her, Goh (2000) claimed that the difficulty that was the most common was found out to be

“quickly forget what is heard (parsing).” Likewise, Sun‟s study (2002) suggested that “forget the meaning of the word (perception)” was the dominant hardship that hinder listening comprehension in Taiwanese students

Admittedly, explanations generated by theories and principles in listening comprehension have offered us insights into the challenges faced by EFL students when listening Nonetheless, this understanding is not sufficient

to produce a thorough and careful clarification of those difficulties Vogely (1995: 41) claimed that “we still need research that documents empirically the relationship between what theory says and what learners actually know and, more importantly, do.” The classroom context should play as a fundamental part in pinpointing where listening comprehension comes from

2.4 The correlation w n EFL n s’ s n n o p ns on problems and their performance

2.4.1 Review of previous studies overseas

The topic of problems in listening skill encountered by EFL learners has received lots of interest from researchers Underwood (1989) suggested seven causes of challenges with listening skill: speed of delivery, inability to listen again, limited vocabulary repertoire, failure to recognize a speech signal, insufficiency of contextual knowledge, short attention span and intolerance of vagueness and incomplete understanding Later, Rubin (1994) provided a more organized list of five factors affecting listening comprehension: text, interlocutor, task, listener and process characteristics Bloomfield et al (2010), when carrying out a long-term project to develop authentic listening materials for the Defense Language Proficiency Test (DLPT) by the U.S Government, reviewed the current literature and narrowed down the focus on three big factors: characteristics of listener (working memory, metacognitive strategies, L2 proficiency and experience and anxiety), passage characteristics (length, complexity, organization, auditory features) and testing conditions (time limits, multiple hearings and note-taking) In short, these factors can be grouped into two major types:

internal factor (inside problems like processing, listeners‟ characteristics) and external factor (outside issues like the speaker‟s quality, context)

Various empirical studies have also been conducted to find out factors influencing students‟ listening test performance Kutlu and Aslanolub (2009) employs a listening comprehension test for over 200 elementary students in Turkey and found that such factors as number of books at home, time spent reading books, newspapers and time spent listening to radio have positive impact on young learners‟ listening performance Boyle (1984) studied both Hong Kong teachers and first-year college students‟ perception of problems that affect listening comprehension and found that lack of practice, exposure, experience and opportunity to listen to English is considered the most important factor Other factors raised by the students include memory, attention and concentration, while the teachers are more aware of the linguistic factors like complex syntactic structures, stress, intonation and influence from L1 Chinese

Realizing the importance of learners‟ perspectives on the subject matter, there have been more and studies conducted from the viewpoint of EFL students In Colombia, Diaz (2012, as cited in Ardila, 2013) gathers data from observations and interviews with college students and discovers that speaker‟s accent and speech rate, students‟ limited vocabulary, concentration and unfamiliar topics Motivation, teachers‟ methodology and the use of materials are found to be some other factors affecting Colombian‟s college students‟ listening skills (Ardila, 2013) Unlike the previously mentioned studies, Yang (2011) uses a unique way of collecting data to investigate Taiwanese EFL learners She asks 32 participants to keep a diary about their listening problems and experience, from which some major problems are drawn: inadequate practice, unknown words and fast speed of the listening

text, insufficient vocabulary knowledge and lack of listening strategies Chao (2013) also studies the problems affecting Taiwanese EFL learners‟ listening comprehension, but with the employment of two groups of participants in two different colleges and two sets of instruments: a listening comprehension problem questionnaire and the high-steak national General English Proficiency Test (GEPT) intermediate level She concludes that there is a strong correlation between listening problems and listening proficiency, in other words, less competent listeners report greater listening problems than the more proficient ones

2.4.2 Review of previous studies in Vietnam

In Vietnam context, there have been a few research papers on the factors causing EFL leaner‟s problems with listening skills Problems faced

by students at a high school in Hanoi are studied by Nguyen (2011), which involves questionnaire and focus-group interview as instruments to collect data She finds that high school students frequently have difficulties related to linguistics, psychological factors, materials and strategies when listening However, the questionnaire used in this study is subjectively designed by the researcher basing on the literature review A reliable, validated instrument to collect data has not yet applied, and the relationship between listening problems and actual listening test performance has not been investigated, which encouraged the researcher to carry out the study

2.5 Framework for investigating listening problems

On the ground that language learners are able to identify the problems they face while listening and these beliefs will help teachers better understand and assist students in improving listening skill, Lotfi (2012) makes an attempt

to design a well-formed and reliable questionnaire to elicit EFL learners‟

beliefs on English listening comprehension problems He develops a final item questionnaire after carefully reviewing the current literature, studying students‟ short essays on their frequently faced problems, having the items scrutinized by experts, doing several pilot studies and carrying out factor analysis The questionnaire asking students‟ beliefs on six factors: process, input, listener, task, affect and context is proved reliable Since it can be considered as a comprehensive and appropriate instrument, this study is going

40-to adopt this framework 40-to investigate problems that students commonly encounter in listening

The first factor „process‟ comprises of 12 question items associated with listening comprehension process and how students apply processing strategies in listening Students are asked to express their belief on the difficulties they experience in employing such cognitive strategies as

“between-parts inferencing, prediction, personal elaboration, linguistic inferencing, summarization, contextualization and listening for main idea” and meta-cognitive strategies like “planning, monitoring and evaluation” (p 512)

The second factor „input‟ is made up of nine items reflecting learners‟ belief about difficulties related to the listening text like vocabulary, speech clarity, grammatical structure, speech rate, prosodic feature, accent, pause and text length An example of „input‟ problem taken from the questionnaire is that when the speaker(s) in the input audio speaks too fast and/or do not pause long enough, a number of students find it difficult to grasp the presented ideas

The third factor named „listener‟ factor consisting of ten items asks about listener‟s characteristics that considerably affect listening comprehension, namely, attention, attitude and memory For example, if a

student hear a pronounced word or phrase in a speech and cannot recall its meaning immediately, it is a situation categorized as a memory problem, or poor memory ability

The fourth factor „task‟ with three items represents students‟ belief on how task characteristics trigger listening problems for them These often involve students‟ level of familiarity with different kinds of tasks (questions)

in the test For example, some students might score higher when doing multiple choice questions than when doing completion tasks

The fifth factor „affect‟ having four items asks learners‟ perception on their affective dimension of listening, such as anxiety level and response to comprehension failure

The last factor, named „context‟ factor with only two items reflects students‟ beliefs about difficulties caused by such outer sources as the machine‟s quality and the unsuitable setting to play the recording

Altogether, this 40-item questionnaire hopefully will help researcher have a comprehensive view on students‟ belief on their listening comprehension problems

In summary, in this chapter, previous related studies and the theoretical framework for the study are presented They were the basis for the researcher to design the questionnaire with which the investigation of the students‟ difficulties in learning listening comprehension at Hanoi University of Industry was carried out

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY

In this chapter, the research questions are raised again The information about the setting of the study and participants, data collection instruments, data collection procedures and data analysis methods will be described in details

3.1 The setting of the study and participants

The study was conducted at Hanoi University of Industry (HaUI), a 120-year-old accredited technical university which have a rather selective admission rate of 20%-30% Although this university‟s major departments are associated with industry, technology and applied science; it also caters for those who major in business and foreign languages as well

The participants in this study were 43 undergraduate students in the department of English language and literature who are now at their 5thsemester Their age ranges from 19-22 years old All of them were attending the course called Listening-Speaking 5 at the time the study was conducted, and were chosen using convenient sampling Prior to this course, all participants have passed the four other lower-level Listening-Speaking courses in the total row of five Listening-Speaking courses in the curriculum Their expected English proficiency level is B2 within the CEFR The language courses offered to them include a listening component By participating in listening courses available, they are provided plenty of opportunities to listen to a variety of spoken language, namely, radio or talk show conversations, short talks, presentations and lectures in English Because this course aims at B2 level or above, its listening materials mainly consist of listening audios in academic contexts rather than none-academic ones, which are the focus of its previous courses

Prior to their higher education, all of the students are required to pass the nationwide placement exam in order to be admitted into higher education This national exam consists of 50 multiple choice test items, the focus of which is on grammar, vocabulary, reading, and translation In this entrance exam, listening is not included at all and speaking is tested indirectly via a small proportion of 50 multiple choice questions (10%), which means that the aural-oral skills are almost not included in this test This applies to most undergraduates studying in Hanoi in particular and in Vietnam in general

3.2 Data collection instrument and procedure

To fulfill the above aims, the study was conducted with quantitative method of data collection The study employed two sets of instruments to collect data: listening test and listening problems questionnaire These instruments are described in detail below

Listening comprehension test

Participants were first asked to sit for a 30-minute school-designed practice test which resembled the mid-term and final listening tests that they have always regularly taken There were three sections in the listening test with 25 questions Section 1 took the form of IELTS listening part 1, specifically required students to listen to a telephone conversation about an architecture conference and complete the notes with the specific information they derive from the recording Section 2 was a monologue about volunteer work and students‟ jobs were again filling in the blank and answering to some short questions In section 3, test-takers listened to a man introducing a farm

to tourists and had to match the locations given to the correct labeled spots on the map In short, the listening test consisted of two gap-filling sections with

18 questions in total and 7 multiple-matching items (see Table 1), with the hope of activating students‟ ability to recall and comprehend the accurate information without resorting to wild guessing

Table 3.1 Structure of the listening test

The questionnaire was proved to be reliable with the Cronbach‟s alpha index of 87 for all 40 items For each factor, the reliability indices of process factor, input factor, listener factor, task factor, affect factor and context factor are 71, 72, 63, 76, 70 and 82 respectively

Apart from 40 items in the questionnaire, students were also encouraged to express their opinions about other problems they face while listening by an open-ended question at the end of the survey 17 out of 43 students responded to this question to express their specific concerns or difficulties when doing listening test

In summary, the questionnaire for the students consisted of 40 ended items as following