DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED BY THE TENTH GRADERS IN LEARNING ENGLISH LISTENING SKILLS AT AN UPPER SECONDARY SCHOOL IN BIEN HOA CITY

VIETNAM ACADEMY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES GRADUATE ACADEMY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES Nguyễn Minh Trí DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED BY THE TENTH GRADERS IN LEARNING ENGLISH LISTENING SKILLS AT AN UPPER

VIETNAM ACADEMY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

GRADUATE ACADEMY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

Nguyễn Minh Trí

DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED BY THE TENTH GRADERS IN LEARNING ENGLISH

LISTENING SKILLS AT AN UPPER

SECONDARY SCHOOL IN BIEN HOA CITY

MA THESIS IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE

HO CHI MINH, 2021

VIETNAM ACADEMY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

GRADUATE ACADEMY OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

Nguyễn Minh Trí

DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED BY THE TENTH GRADERS IN LEARNING ENGLISH

LISTENING SKILLS AT AN UPPER

SECONDARY SCHOOL IN BIEN HOA CITY

Field: English Language

Code: 8220201

Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr Phạm Hữu Đức

HO CHI MINH, 2021

DECLARATION BY AUTHOR

I hereby claim that the thesis entitled “Difficulties Encountered by the Tenth Graders in Learning English Listening Skills at an Upper Secondary School in Bien Hoa City” was written solely by myself and was

not submitted for admission to a degree, diploma or other qualification to this university or any other institution

This master thesis has not been published before And if it is eventually proved that I am cheating, I am ready to take responsibility, including the revocation of my academic degree

Author’s signature

Nguyễn Minh Trí

Approved by SUPERVISOR

Assoc Prof Dr Phạm Hữu Đức

Date:………

I would like to send my thanks for the useful materials, advice, and enthusiasm for this study to all lectures and staff of the Graduate Academy of Social Sciences, Vietnam Academy of Social Science, in Ho Chi Minh City

In addition, my sincere gratitude goes to the teachers and students of the Nguyen Huu Canh Upper Secondary School who have willingly spent their precious time in the interview process

Last but not least, I would like to show appreciation for my beloved family and my friends for their encouragement to help me overcome difficulties to finish this study

TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION BY AUTHOR i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iii

ABSTRACT vi

LIST OF TABLES vii

LIST OF FIGURES viii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ix

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale 1

1.2 Aims of the Study 2

1.3 Research questions 3

1.4 Scope of the Study 3

1.5 Significance of the study 3

1.6 Research methods 4

1.7 Structure of the study 4

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 6

2.1 Overview of Listening 6

2.1.1 Definition of Listening and Listening skills 6

2.1.2 The importance of listening skills 7

2.1.3 Listening process 8

2.1.4 Elements of Listening 9

2.1.5 Types of Listening 10

2.2 Difficulties in Learning Listening skills 13

2.3 Factors affecting listening learning in class 15

2.3.1 Content 15

2.3.2 Learners 19

2.3.3 Speakers 20

2.3.4 Stages of listening 10

2.3.5 Physical setting 23

2.4 Previous related study 25

2.4.1 Previous study overseas 25

2.4.2 In Vietnam 26

2.5 Summary 27

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 28

3.1 Research questions 28

3.3 Participants 29

3.4 Data collection instrument 29

3.4.1 Survey Questionnaires 29

3.4.2 Interviews 30

3.5 Data collection procedures 30

3.6 Data analysis 31

3.7 Summary 31

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 32

4.1 Data analysis of survey questionnaire 32

4.1.1 Data analysis of students’ survey questionnaire 32

4.1.2 Data analysis of teachers’ survey questionnaire 54

4.2 Data analysis of survey interview 64

4.3 Discussions of the findings 66

4.4 Summary 69

CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 71

5.1 Recapitulation 71

5.2 Concluding remarks 72

5.3 Implications 72

5.3.1 Implication for the students 72

5.3.2 Implication for the teachers 73

5.3.3 Implication for the school 77

5.4 Recommendations for the problems in learning listening skills Error! Bookmark not defined 5.4.1 Pre-teaching and activating vocabulary Error! Bookmark not defined 5.4.2 Building up learner vocabulary Error! Bookmark not defined 5.4.3 Encouraging learner’s prediction Error! Bookmark not defined 5.4.4 Using visual aids Error! Bookmark not defined 5.5 Limitations of the study 78

5.6 Suggestions for further studies 79

REFERENCES 80 APPENDIX 1 I APPENDIX 2 IV APPENDIX 3 VII APPENDIX 4 X

ABSTRACT

Listening skills play an important role in everyday communication and the educational process Despite its importance, the teaching and learning state of listening has long been neglected This study attempts to investigate learning and teaching problems in listening skills at NHCUSS To solve the research problem, the paper used questionnaires and semi-structured interviews as the main research tool for data collection A brief description of the participants, as well as data collection methods, was provided The results of the study show that most hearing difficulties are found in five main groups: content, learners, speakers, physical setting, and stages of listening After exploring the obstacles, several proposed solutions are also introduced by the researcher to contribute

to teachers and students in teaching and learning their listening skills

LIST OF TABLES

Table 4 1 Information about students participating in the survey 32

Table 4 2 Students’ years of learning English 33

Table 4 3 Students’ perceived importance of English listening skill 34

Table 4 4 Learning strategy difficulties perceived by tenth students 50

Table 4 5 Information about the teachers participated in the survey 54

Table 4 6 Teachers’ year of teaching English 54

Table 4 7 Teachers’ opinions in pre-listening stage 60

Table 4 8 Teachers’ opinions in while-listening stage 62

Table 4 9 Teachers’ opinions in post-listening stage 63

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 4 1 Students’ attitude before every listening lesson 35

Figure 4 2 Listening problems related to the content 36

Figure 4 3 The difficulties of students with unfamiliar words 37

Figure 4 4 The difficulties of students about the length of the text 38

Figure 4 5 The listening texts are too difficult for the students 40

Figure 4 6 Connected speech 41

Figure 4 7 My background knowledge of listening topics is limited 42

Figure 4 8 I do not have any social knowledge about the topics 43

Figure 4 9 Concentration of the students in the class 44

Figure 4 10 Concentration of the students on recording 45

Figure 4 11 Strange accent and pronunciation 46

Figure 4 12 Speed of the speaker 47

Figure 4 13 Facilities of the class are in good conditions 52

Figure 4 14 Classroom atmosphere 53

Figure 4 15 Time allowance 55

Figure 4 16 Lesson plan preparation 56

Figure 4 17 Lack of facilities in the classroom 57

Figure 4 18 Teaching methods affect students in learning listening skills 58

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

NHCUSS: Nguyen Huu Canh Upper Secondary School

EFL: English as a Foreign Language

%: Percentage

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

This chapter introduces the rationale of the study, the aims, the research questions, the scope, the methods, the significance, and the structure of the study

1.1 Rationale

As a foreign language, listening is a basic component of English It may also

be regarded as a primary source of language learning For various purposes, such as entertainment, educational purpose, or collecting data Among the four language skills that all language learners should learn: listening, speaking, reading, and writing Due to the complex and subtle nature of listening comprehension in a second or foreign language, listening is believed to be the most difficult If they want to communicate properly, meaningfully, and naturally, people need to hear different kinds of English repeatedly and continually It means that people cannot acquire language without hearing, because listening provides language input

Meanwhile, in their listening comprehension of the test at school, students faced several difficulties By studying the listening comprehension challenges

of students, they would be able to overcome barriers such as loss of vocabulary, misunderstanding structure, failing to comprehend natural expression, losing confidence, retaining focus, poor recording, As Hamouda (2013) said, causes that cause listening comprehension difficulties for students are classified into multiple outlets, including listening text related issues, listening difficulties related to tasks and exercises, listener related issues, and instructor technique Thus, from three key fields, it was the way to find out the problems of the students: listener causes, listening content, and physical environment

Moreover, to improve the language of students, teaching listening requires more attention Listening requires more time and focus in some situations in the language classroom to understand the content that involves learning dialogue and monologue text It could be said that listening is a complicated process in which several things happen within the mind simultaneously Nevertheless, in the learning process, the teacher has a very important requirement When the students experience issues with their listening, it was clearly because they were learning The teacher was able to deal with the students and the situations of the class, and it became the teachers' duty to solve the students' problems Most teachers, however, paid little attention to it and thought that it was not necessary to do so

As a researcher, for the above reasons, I would like to present the thesis title

“Difficulties Encountered by the Tenth Graders in Learning English Listening Skills at an Upper Secondary School in Bien Hoa City” It will

make helpful contributions to the growth of the method of teaching and

learning

1.2 Aims of the Study

This study aims at:

 Exploring the current situation of teaching and learning English listening skills in grade 10 at NHCUSS

 Investigating the difficulties in learning listening skills perceived by students at upper secondary schools

 Presenting some solutions that the students apply to improve their listening skills at schools and giving out some suggested solutions for common teaching listening problems for teachers

1.4 Scope of the Study

The study is concerned with student's difficulties in learning listening comprehension It is conducted on 63 10th graders in 2 classes (10A1, 10A2) and 7 English teachers at Nguyen Huu Canh upper secondary school (NHCUSS) in Bien Hoa city Because of the limitations of time and knowledge

of the shortage of reference material, this study can not cover the whole issue

of Listening skills

1.5 Significance of the study

The study mainly aims at pointing out the causes of difficulties in learning listening to students at upper secondary school As a result, once having been completed, the study is expected to bring considerable benefits to both teachers and students Pedagogically, the findings and suggestions of this study are believed to enhance the teaching and listening process of students and teachers

at upper secondary schools in Bien Hoa city

The results of this study may be a good help for the students themselves and other people who are interested in this field Furthermore, the findings of this study also provide comments for listening material developers as well

More importantly, the research findings would raise the teachers’ awareness of the students' difficulty, thereby guiding them in reconstructing their program of teaching to suit their students’ needs

1.6 Research methods

Some steps in the study were carried out as follows:

 First, for students and teachers, the survey questionnaire was to find out their challenges in studying and teaching listening skills Also, the questionnaire showed the views of the students on the strategies they and their teachers should do to solve the listening difficulties

 Second, personal interviews were conducted with the teachers to help the researcher gain a deep understanding of the challenges of listening and know the rationale behind them

 After that, the information was quantitatively and qualitatively obtained, sorted, and analyzed to obtain realistic results

 To conclude, suggestions were proposed based on the results found from all instrument data for the solutions to the listening problems of the students

1.7 Structure of the study

The study consists of five chapters: Introduction, Literature Review, Methodology, Findings & Discussions, and Conclusions

 Chapter 1: Introduction presents the rationale, aims, research questions, scope of the study, the significance of the study, and research

 Chapter 2: Literature Review gives an overview of listening skills with the investigation of prior literature to clarify some major terms

 Chapter 3: Methodology includes the participants, data collection instrument, data collection & data analysis procedure context of the study

In this part, the researcher summarizes all the findings revealed, draws conclusions, and suggests some contributions to the study

 Chapter 4: Findings & Discussions describes the data of the questionnaires and interviews, then gives some findings through the data analysis; and suggests some solutions perceived by teachers to the current problems

 Chapter 5: Conclusion focuses on recommendations for further study

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter discusses relevant research papers The researcher also noted the document gap and explained why it is advisable to conduct current research to close the gap

Listening seems to be a passive skill superficially, but in fact, it is still a process that is involved Listening is not just the way of acquiring the input from the speakers, it is not only listened to by the students, but also able to process it, perceive it, comprehend it, analyze it, and finally respond effectively to it (Underwood, 1989) It means that students must be able to process it in their brains after perceiving the oral results They will evaluate the utterances' illocutionary force and then render the reaction Besides, Buck (2001) notes that “listening comprehension is an active process of constructing meaning and this is done by applying knowledge to the incoming sound” Rost (2002) sees listening as a process of receiving the speakers' knowledge, building and representing meaning, negotiating meaning with the speakers and reacting, and generating meaning through engagement, creativity, and empathy, sharing the same ideas with Buck

In conclusion, we perceive from all the above meanings that listening is not just listening, but it is an “active and dynamic process” involving multiple forms of activities, such as understanding, remembering, and drawing inferences based

on the speakers’ messages

2.1.2 The importance of listening skills

One of the most difficult aspects of teaching and learning English as a foreign language is teaching and learning listening The importance of listening comprehension must be taken into consideration for anyone who wants to learn English with great success In discussion and communication, a lack of listening comprehension skills creates a lot of difficulties

The important role of listening comprehension in second and foreign language learning is summarized in a recent publication by Rost, (1994:141) as follows:

“Listening is vital in the language classroom because it provides input for the

learner Without understandable input at the right level, any learning simply cannot begin.” Therefore, listening comprehension is very necessary when you study any language If students do not learn to listen effectively, they will not

be able to take part in oral communication because according to Mary Underwood (1989:4), “Merely to hear what a speaker says is insufficient for communication to occur” It implies that communication has broken down when nobody listens to a speaker or when a listener fails to understand the message By listening, we do not mean that students only learn to hear it, but

as Mary Underwood (1989:4) says, “We mean our students to attend to what they hear, to process it, to interpret it, to evaluate it and to respond to it” Therefore, to succeed in communication, participants need to be active in listening Listening is an important way of acquiring the language, a good way

of picking up vocabulary and structures Teaching listening to spoken language

is therefore of primary importance

2.1.3 Listening process

The method of listening is often defined as the perspective of information processing and “an active process in which listeners select and interpret information that comes from auditory and visual clues to define what is going

on and what the speakers are trying to express” (Thompson and Rubin, 1996,

p 331) In other words, listening is an active process, as opposed to hearing, because listeners actively choose what they want to know and perceive the information they get Above everything, the listener can listen closely and concentrate on stress, grammar, and speech intonation

Understanding of the concept of listening awareness is necessary when teaching and studying high school listening skills, especially in tenth grade, when students develop their learning strategies They should be prepared and listen closely, i.e they should know what they are supposed to listen to, as well

as to which hints or information In addition, language teachers must encourage their students to understand why listening skills are necessary First of all, listening skills are the key component for all language and cognitive learning factors and play a lifelong role in communication processes A Wilt research (1950 quoted in Wills, 2008) has determined that 45% of the time people spent

on the conversation is listened to Strother, 1987, also quoted this report This result confirmed Rankin's observation in 1928 that 70 % of people spent waking time talking and 34% spent listening and speaking, as well Second, listening provides the recipients with input In a newsletter (1952, quoted in Wills, 2008) listening is the main language It is a means through which people read, learn, appreciate the environment and human life, have a lot of their thoughts, interest, and appreciation On this mass communication day, “the importance of listening cannot be underestimated; it is imperative that it not be treated trivially

in second and foreign language curricula” (Morley, 1991, p 82)

2.1.4 Elements of Listening

The two aspects of listening, the macro, and the micro-skill cannot be differentiated Macro skills are easier to comprehend because it simply means understanding what is said However, micro-skills are a little more difficult to understand, since it's not only about understanding as a whole, so we have to notice things like word choice, intonation, mood, deeper definitions, and a lot further Below is a summary of the macro and micro-skills used in general communication and academic discourse (Richards, 1983, quoted in Jansen, 1998)

Brown (2004) also proposes the micro-skills involved in interpreting what we are told by others The listener should: maintain short-term memory chunks of expression, distinguish between distinctive sounds in the new language, recognize patterns of stress and rhythm, tone patterns, intonational contours,

recognize reduced types of terms, recognize word boundaries, recognize standard patterns of word order, recognize vocabulary, identify keywords, such

as those that identify themes and concepts In addition, Brown (2007) states that the following are the macro-skills for conversational discourse: identify coherent instruments in spoken discourse, recognize the communicative roles

of utterances, according to circumstances, participants and goals, infer circumstance, participants, goals using real-world knowledge, distinguish between literal and inferred interpretations, construct and use a battery of listening strategies In total, in practicing listening comprehension, the macro and micro-skills in listening are very important In defining the targets for learning, these aspects of listening are valuable These aspects of listening are effective in identifying the priorities for the learning process

2.1.5 Stages of listening

Pre-listening, while-listening, and post-listening processes are typically subcategorized as listening activities (Wilson, 2009) It is very important to involve teachers in "pre-listening" and "post-listening." In the course, teachers should aim to help determine the selection of appropriate methodology and classroom procedures The basic framework for designing a listening lesson is separated into three steps (cited in the 2nd edition of the ELT technique, p.141)

• Pre-listening:

In the pre-listening stage, teachers help their students train for three objectives, including inspiration, contextualization, and readiness, to listen to them Firstly, through interesting activities and tasks planned by teachers, students should be encouraged to listen Secondly, teachers can also assist students in contextualizing and interpreting the text, subjects, and themes Finally,

particular language or phrase is offered to students that can help interpret the recordings Pre-listening activities that precede the listening passage should prepare students for the task of understanding by enabling the vocabulary and context awareness of students or supplying students with the appropriate details

to interpret the substance of the listening text (Thanajaro, 2000) In this process,

by enabling their schemes, the students are supported in planning what they will hear (Wilson, 2009) Brainstorming words, reviewing grammar areas, or discussing the topic of the listening text are part of the tasks For the pre-listening period, two simple goals are to provide appropriate context to match what would be available in real life and to create earners' motivation for what they would hear (Field cited in Richard and Renandya, 2002)

• While listening:

Teachers help concentrate the attention of students on the listening text and encourage the development of their comprehension of it While-listening can help students improve the ability to extract meaning from the stream of speech Students interpret the messages of the speakers, check, and revise their predictions To work out the main idea of the text, teachers can ask students to note keywords (Karakas, as cited in Gilakjani, 2011) Students will listen for a second time, either to check or to answer more detailed questions In this situation, several opportunities for receiving feedback will reduce the anxiety

of students for teaching purposes This ensures that they will listen to the passage considered difficult There is a range of other aspects that come into play concerning the passage: difficulty, duration, concentration on pedagogy, and the potential for boredom It may be repeated several times if the objective

is on close language study, while if the focus is on listening to the gist, it won't

be (Wilson, 2009)

• Post-listening:

Teachers help students integrate into their current knowledge what they have learned from the text There are two different forms that can be taken by post-listening activities "A reaction to the text" is the first one Discussion can be introduced as an "answer to what they have learned." Another type is "language analysis," which includes "focusing students on the text's linguistic characteristics." Students may have the chance to improve their language skills, such as vocabulary and grammatical structures Post-listening tasks consist of extensions and developments of the listening assignment, following the listening passage Cultural themes and other things connected to the materials can be emphasized In addition, Wilson (2009 ) mentions that, at this point, problems such as unknown vocabulary and reaction to the content of the passage are discussed, usually orally

2.1.6 Types of Listening

There are two ways of listening in real life, according to some authors, namely Nguyen Thi Van Lam and Ngo Dinh Phuong (2006) Depending on the listening purpose, they are casual listening and focused listening Casual listening, one form of listening, involves listening without a specific purpose When we listen, unless there is anything that interests us, we do not pay much

or even any attention to the information We hardly remember the content of what we hear, thus Normally, when we listen to music or listen to the news on

this kind of listening Listening focuses on another type of listening It is when, for a specific reason, we listen and find out the details we need to hear It occurs quite commonly in everyday life Here, with much more focus, we listen and aim to get as many details as possible We do not listen to every word; however,

We know what we are supposed to listen to beforehand, but we just obtain the most important points from the speech or the lecture Learners also use this form of listening in the classroom

2.2 Difficulties in Learning Listening skills

Willis (1981, p.134) has extended another point of view, listing a range of abilities to listen to issues she terms 'enabling abilities' for coping with To quote a few of them are:

 Predict what people will communicate about

 Guessing without panicking over unfamiliar words or phrases

 Using one's own subject information to help one understand

 Inferred knowledge comprehension

From my own experience in my teaching class and the experiences of many writers, I have read about the subject that seems to indicate that listening problems come from four sources: the speaker, the content, the learner, and the physical setting It is difficult for most students to listen to a message rather than to read the same message in or elsewhere in their textbook Since the listening speed is not controllable, it becomes an issue, but you may take your time to read and pause and go through the message at will If you like, you can also check a dictionary I notice there are particular areas of vocabulary that have specific problems if you offer dictations or if students dictate My students have trouble hearing regular verb sounds like 'job, wish or watch' from the past When I make the dictation the final /t/ sound of 'ed' is generally omitted so the

expression "Tim worked hard yesterday" Comes out as “Tim work hard yesterday.” The students fail to hear the voiceless 't' final Liaison (the linking

of words in rapid speech) is another problem “What is she going to do tonight? Sounds like/Whaisigunnadotanight?/ This causes an interesting problem for the untrained ear liaison

I have been struggling with issues students have with listening up to this point

It is now time to recommend strategies to help them improve more effective listening skills In general, foreign-language learners devote more time to reading than to listening, and therefore lack exposure to various forms of listening For students, spending much of their listening time interpreting foreign words and phrases for long periods is tiring There are eight spoken language features that make it difficult to listen to (Brown, 2001, p.252) In spoken language, we break down speech into smaller groups of words because

of memory limitations They are referred to as clustering E.g: "a lot of", "a number of" and so on Therefore, learners have to learn to pick out manageable word clusters while listening, avoiding attempting to listen to every word of the speech It is not important and makes it possible to distract learners In addition, there is a great deal of redundancies in the spoken language They are the product of rephrasing, repetitions, elaborations, and some insertions, such as

"as I said" and so on Learners may have difficulty with this at first It is easy

to confuse them However, learners can take advantage of redundancies with some training to have more time and additional knowledge Spoken language,

on the other hand, has several reduced forms as well This could be phonological, morphological, syntactic, or pragmatic, such as "you're" instead

of “you are" "won't" instead of “will not" or "can't" instead of “cannot” These reductions are major problems for learners, especially beginners, as they begin

to learn the full form of the English language Sufficient quality is the next

feature of spoken language Spoken language consists of a lot of hesitations ("er", "uhm"), false starts, stops, and corrections as a result of unexpected action They confuse the listeners In real-life listening, colloquial language is another issue that can interfere with listeners since they are familiar with traditional written language The appearance of idioms, slang, reduced forms and shared cultural vocabulary are popular in monologues and dialogues Learners need to understand language delivered at various speed rates and delivered with few pauses while listening, so they do not have the chance to interrupt the speaker and listen many times again English is a language of stress, so it is very important for learners to consider its prosodic characteristics Listeners may perceive more subtle signals like irony, mutual admiration, insult, request, encouragement, etc through stress, rhythm, and intonation Last but not least, engagement is also an aspect that plays a major role in the understanding of listening Language learners should be taught in the two-way nature of listening To continue the understanding process, they have to read Negotiation, explanation, attending signs, turn-taking, subject nomination, maintenance, and termination are such principles of interaction

In short, both of these features of spoken language must be understood by language learners in order to make conversation in general and listening in particular easier

2.3 Factors affecting listening learning in class

2.3.1 Content

The density of information

It should be taken into account that information on density is one of the most challenging for students, especially beginners The dense passage (Rost, 2006)

is a long one with a significant amount of data included Again, it is thought that larger data density produces higher cognitive requirements for L2 listeners,

which may increase the effort involved in listening comprehension (Gilmore, 2004)

The complex text

The organization of the text is very complicated in some instances Cervantes and Gainer (1992) found that on a recall examination, listeners who heard a syntactically simplified version of a lecture scored considerably higher than listeners who heard a more complicated version of the lecture Therefore, if students are unable to draw a simple outline of this text, they also fail to effectively capture the content

The reduced form, elision, and assimilation

The speaker's ability to effectively express the meanings in the articulation of clauses Therefore, there may be slurred or dropped words that play a less critical role in the message, and other words may be more prominent (Brown, 1977) In particular, spoken English is distinguished by three characteristics of sandhi-variation, according to Madsen and Bowen (1978) contraction (e.g., wanna, gonna, ), reduction (e.g., “could” /kʊd/ is reduced to /kəd/ in a sentence like I could meet you this evening), and assimilation (e.g., /hi eɪʃt ər ləntʃ/ for

“He ate your lunch”)

Johana (2005) points out that the points at which the listener needs unambiguous information, namely word beginnings and ends, are precisely influenced by accommodatory phonological processes To be more accurate, in materials such as assimilation, elision, or linking words, learners may have some problems Liaison (link of words in the speech when the second word begins with a vowel, e.g., an orange) and elision (leaving out a sound or sounds, e.g., suppose that it can be pronounced in fast speech) are common phenomena

that make it difficult for students to recognize or understand individual words

in the speech stream In their textbooks, they are used to seeing terms written

as distinct elements

The intonation and stress

Stress and intonation are one of the excellent features of English The purpose

of stress is to emphasize content phrases to express meaning Somehow, students do not distinguish between the terms for content and function In fact, they do not know the fact that words are often not given the same stress in spoken continuous speech as they are said in isolation (Underwood, 1989) As

a consequence, they cannot hear a word they already know Also, because of the stress, foreign learners often fail to understand the grammar points in listening

The noise and redundancy

The listeners also have to deal with the amount of noise when they listen Some words, such as the surrounding sounds, are perhaps drowned by outside noise More effort must be made by foreign language learners to understand the significance of these noises Sometimes, because of the disruption of noise, they cannot get the point In addition, repetitions, false beginnings, rephrasings, self-corrections, elaborations, tautologies, and seemingly meaningless additions such as "I mean" or "you know" (Ur, 1984) can take the form of redundant utterances This redundancy is a natural feature of language and could be a benefit or an obstacle, depending on the level of students It may make it harder for beginners to understand what the speaker is saying; on the other hand, it may allow more time for experienced students to "tune in" to the voice and speech style of the speaker

Discourse markers

Failure to understand signal words of the speakers is also an obstacle to the learners, apart from the above difficulties The speakers use the discourse makers to mean that the ideas are transferred, examples are given, or the previous points are repeated (Underwood, 1989) If these markers cannot be listened to, the learners would not be able to follow the continuous stream of speech

The difference of the cultures

Unknown to cultural language skills plays a significant role in understanding the meaning Language-culture marriages are indivisible (Brown, 1994) The subject can be entirely different from that of the students Students could find

it hard to imagine what they were saying in this situation Here, the instructors should offer the subject previously For example, if the listening part involves Easter Day, and it is not popular in the region where students learn language, certain points cannot be reached

The unfamiliar vocabulary

Hung (1989) noted that it is easier for learners to listen to passages with known phrases, even though the subject is unfamiliar to them His study found that understanding the meaning of the words could stimulate interest in learning for students and lead to a positive impact on listening capacity Another issue here

is that many words have more than one meaning, and students get confused if they are used in their less popular use

2.3.2 Learners

Lack of vocabulary and background knowledge

The lack of socio-cultural, factual and contextual awareness of the target language may be a barrier to understanding because language is used to communicate its culture (Anderson & Lynch, 1988) To help understand the messages based on those keywords, knowledge of the world helps The further expanded information you have, the better you can capture the point, to put it

in another way If students listen to an unfamiliar subject, they will be frightened and confused; therefore, they cannot listen

The shortage of vocabulary often prevents students from listening comprehensively, apart from the lack of context information The limited vocabulary of collocations and slang prevents students from guessing and predicting the content in general and the missing words and phrases in particular (Yagang, 1993)

Incorrect pronunciation:

It is clear that good pronunciation makes a major contribution to listening skills

It could help students understand the correct form of words and write them down One of the ways to improve pronunciation is to form a habit of checking the vocabulary Gilakjani (2012) offers empirical evidence that even though they make mistakes in other fields, learners with good English pronunciation are likely to be understood; while learners with poor pronunciation are not even though their grammar is excellent

The students' motivation

The motivation of students is one of the key factors affecting listening comprehension In listening comprehension, even the slightest delay in focus

will significantly ruin understanding for students to retain focus in a foreign language learning classroom It will be simpler to understand as students find the subject of the listening text interesting Even if they are interested in the subject, students find listening very boring because it takes a massive amount

of effort not to miss the meaning

The concentration of the student

It is assumed that a learner 's understanding of the content is much better in a long comprehension exercise and starts getting worse as he / she moves on Because of the psychological phenomenon, learners sometimes run out of motivation and excitement for learning at the end of the class Yagang (1993) notes that listening is not a easy process; it is a complicated psychological one,

on the other hand It means that a student cannot focus while he or she is stressed or nervous More significant, they can also be distracted from their listening by the classroom setting and the surrounding environment For instance, whether people are talking or there are sounds in the tape recorder, the listeners cannot pay attention to listening Concentration was necessary in order to interpret and capture the meaning of the spoken text The lack of concentration made the spoken text misunderstand what it was talking about It was hard for the students to find the meaning while listening to the material at the same time As stated in Hamouda (2013), Gilakjani and Ahmadi (2011) suggest that when students or teachers find the longer exercise, it will be easier

to turn it into the shorter section

2.3.3 Speakers

The accents

Firstly, while speaking to someone else, but not their teachers, many foreign language learners are shocked and dismayed because they are accustomed to the accents of their teachers In addition, learning the spoken mode of language requires the modification of a single speaker's idiosyncrasies (Underwood, 1989) Ikeno and Hansen (cited in Bloomfield et al , 2010) find that lower accuracy comes from unfamiliar accents

Accented speech was found to influence both the degree to which listeners effectively comprehend the message of a speaker and the effort involved in recognizing certain words in the message by listeners (Floccia et al., 2009) To some extent, the students are quite familiar with native speakers such as American or English in academic courses; but in fact, they can also listen to speakers from non-native English-speaking countries Consequently, they are unable to capture the words or express the messages of the conversations, and the result is broken down communication

Munro and Derwing (1999) said that too much accented speech would lead to

a substantial decrease in incomprehension 66 percent of learners listed the accent of a speaker as one of the most critical factors influencing listener comprehension, according to Goh (1999) Unfamiliar accents, both native and non-native, can cause serious listening comprehension difficulties and accent familiarity helps the listening comprehension of learners Buck (2001) suggested that crucial problems in hearing would occur as listeners hear an unusual accent such as Indian English for the first time since they learn only American English This will definitely disrupt the entire phase of listening comprehension because, at the same time, an unusual accent makes it impossible for the listeners to comprehend

The speed of the speakers

Secondly, the speed of the speakers also hinders the learners in their effort of learning English Because the students cannot sort them out when listening before they disappear It is not the same as remaining reading text on the page for them to retrieve whenever they want Sometimes, while they are working

on this part, they miss the next part Most of the foreign language students perceive that native speakers speak too fast and that makes it difficult for them

to follow (Brown & Yule, 1983) Similarly, Butt (2010) has the same ideas in negative impacts of the native speakers to listening comprehension This coincides with the results of the studies done by Flowerdew and Miller (1992) who have reported that their subject unanimously rated the speed of delivery as one of the greatest obstacles to understanding The students can play recorded materials again and again until getting the information

Student levels also play a great role in listening to long sections and keeping all the information in mind Listening for more than three minutes of listening and then completing the desired tasks is not easy for the lower-level student Short listening texts enhance awareness of listening and decrease boredom, keeping learners alive with concentration Atkins et al (1995) It's not easy to store all in mind, exceptional listening capacity, and the technique needed to understand whether text contains a lot of information (Carroll, 1977)

Length of the listening

Another reason that makes it difficult to listen to text is the speed It may be difficult to catch target words if the speakers speak faster than normal listeners Underwood states that the listener cannot control the speed of the speaker, directly opposed to reading comprehension, and this causes the greatest difficulty with listening comprehension (Underwood, 1989, p 16) For most

language learners and teachers, it is clear that a slower speed of speech would facilitate the listening comprehension of beginner learners (Flaherty, 1979; Griffiths, 1990, 1992; King & Behnke, 1989; Zhao, 1997) Blau (1990) concluded that one of the effective techniques that helps second language learners understand is to reduce the input speed

Using slang and colloquial words

A particular difficulty is colloquial language If listening materials are made up

of daily speech, a lot of colloquial words and phrases, such as material stuff as well as slang, can be included These phrases may not be common to students who have been exposed primarily to formal or bookish English Brown (1992) points out that it is often surprising and difficult to deal with colloquial language for ESL learners accustomed to traditional written English and

"textbook" language

Hesitations and pauses:

According to Hasan (2000), hesitations and pauses in spontaneous speech cause perceptual issues and comprehension errors for non-native speakers They sometimes pause when people speak, repeat themselves, say stuff that is ungrammatical, and change their minds halfway through a sentence These items are a normal speech aspect and can be either a support or a hindrance, depending on the level of the students

2.3.4 Physical setting

Poor quality of the equipment and facilities

Teachers use some recorded materials in some classes that are not high quality The quality of the sound system can have an impact on the understanding of

listening by learners We are still living in the 21st century, which is that there are still some classrooms that do not have computers, smartboards, multimedia systems, and so on The quality of the sound system also affects listening comprehension The ambiguous sounds that result from poor-quality devices can interfere with the listener's understanding Furthermore, the students who sit at the end of the classroom may not listen to the lessons clearly in a crowded classroom The scarcity of opportunities to listen to various spoken texts with the help of good equipment and learn English with native speakers, especially

in rural areas, contributes to listening performance, according to Chetchumlong (1987) In addition, large classrooms, surrounding noise, and noisy classes also have negative impacts on listening

Using audio

Moreover, students also practice audio recording when listening to lessons Therefore, without watching, they cannot guess what the speakers are saying But at the other hand, video is a rich and useful resource, according to Hemei (1997, cited in Çakir, 2006), and it is valued by both students and teachers Obviously, by explaining relationships in a way that is not possible with words, video makes meaning clearer, confirming a well-known saying that an image

is worth a thousand words This is in line with Yagang (1994) and Harmer (2001) that failure to see the gesture and facial expressions of the speaker makes

it harder for the listener to understand the meaning of the speaker

The class atmosphere

Classroom inconvenience sometimes affects students’ comprehension of listening Students who sit in the back rows may not hear the recording as students sit in front in the large classrooms The noise that comes from outside

also influences students who prefer to stay next to the windows As a teacher, all these conditions in the body must be taken into account The size of the classroom also makes it difficult for the teacher to manage all classes or receive feedback from learners in group activities It is possible to count the class temperature as a factor that makes listening comprehension difficult It may be too hot in summer or too cold in winter for a class that has no air conditioner

or heater

2.4 Previous related study

2.4.1 Previous study overseas

Because listening is one of the most important skills for being a good communicator, in which people spend about 60% of their time listening (Rubin

& Thompson, 1994), several studies have been done to investigate difficulties

in learning EFL learners' listening skills

Yagang (1993) presented the general definition of simple listening that

"listening is the ability to identify and understand what others are saying" (p.5) During the listening process, he said, four main factors that can lead to difficulty for EFL learners include the message, the listener, and the physical context He points out that many learners find it difficult to handle a message whose content is not well organized When listening, they cannot predict what the speaker will say in the recorded message because they are unfamiliar with the "no intonation sentence", the "spontaneous topic" or because the message was recorded Likewise, they will be challenged when communicating with speakers who may sound superfluous or have strange voices Greater obstacles can arise if the listener himself is not proficient at predicting information, unfamiliar with color writing, cliches, or different types of listening material

Ferris & Tagg (1996) focused more on listening and speaking tasks in learning for ESL students Through surveys conducted with full-time professors from various colleges and universities, Ferris and Tagg analyzed students' difficulties in learning to listen academically Although students may be aware

of the importance of listening skills, they are rather hesitant and do not want to participate in classroom discussions or interact with their peers (except those who speak their native language.) either ask or answer questions The implications of this study suggest that teachers should be the ones to help develop students' communication and listening strategies Their research is a useful reference for ESL students However, it would be better if the survey investigated the opinions of both teachers and students It is better if students who are having difficulty can tell what their problems are

Chen (2005) also studied the barriers to achieving listening strategies for EFL learners and suggested some pedagogical implications The study was conducted based on a report by students from Takming College, Taiwan His research has analyzed seven main types of learning obstacles including 22 subgroups These are emotional barriers, habits in habits, learning difficulties related to information processing, English proficiency, and learners' beliefs about listening; the problem focuses on the nature and procedure of using the strategy, and the listening materials the learner practiced This thorough research can be a useful resource in listening teaching and learning

2.4.2 In Vietnam

In Vietnam, teaching and learning listening skills for 10th graders is no longer

a new thing or strange because new English textbooks have been in use for 10 years In fact, listening skills have not been paid attention to and invested properly In the article "Textbooks of the year 80" (textbooks of the 1980s)

posted on the website tuoitre.vn, the reporter gave comments on the content of textbooks for high school students He quoted a teacher as saying that his listening skills were either ignored or not taught in his high school because both teachers and students wanted to focus on exams that did not include tests listening skills With a small investment, listening skills still cause many difficulties for intermediate and low-level students The purpose of the current study is to collect information about the hearing difficulties of NHCUSS 10th graders The research is guided by the following research question: What difficulties do the students encounter in learning listening skills?

2.5 Summary

Previous literature on listening skills difficulties is discussed in this chapter The researcher hopes that he has gathered enough applicable information for his research with a description of many scholarly studies However, it can be seen that some parts are not suitable for Vietnamese students, written in foreign contexts Therefore, the researcher hopes to compensate for the above limitation by his observations, and detailed descriptions are provided in the following chapters

CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The researcher would like to present some aspects of the research methods in this chapter, including the setting, participants, instruments, and data collection techniques, as well as the research's validity and reliability The following is a detailed explanation of each aspect

3.1 Research questions

In order to find out the difficulties of teachers and students in teaching and learning listening skills at Nguyen Huu Canh upper secondary school in Bien Hoa city, it is necessary to answer the following questions:

1 What is the current situation of teaching and learning English listening skills

(NHCUSS) in Bien Hoa city After the data, which were questionnaires and interviews (see appendixes), were collected, they were measured and analyzed

3.3 Participants

The subjects of the study were 63 students of grade 10 of Nguyen Huu Canh upper secondary school (NHCUSS) in Bien Hoa city These students were selected from 2 classes of grade 10 (10A1, 10A2) And 7 teachers from the English Department at NHCUSS who are currently teaching listening skills at NHCUSS for years with the intention of finding difficulties in teaching listening skills to the students at NHCUSS in Bien Hoa city

3.4 Data collection instrument

The study employed survey method using questionnaires and focus group interview Firstly, questionnaires were used as the main research instrument because the study aimed to exploit a large number of participants Therefore, the two research instruments were made advantage of to collect wide, rich and detailed information of participants

3.4.1 Survey Questionnaires

The questionnaire is constructed based on the theoretical framework of literature review and interview taken with 63 tenth form students at Nguyen Huu Canh upper secondary school (NHCUSS), which aims to investigate the difficult factors affect students’ perception of listening skills Section A of the questionnaire contained Personal information, required the students to provide their personal information including their gender, age, years of learning English Section B of the questionnaire comprised items that were employed to elicit the students’ opinions on the project-based approach In addition, the