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

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

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 thisuniversity or any other institution

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

Author’s signature

Nguyễn Minh Trí

Approved bySUPERVISOR

Assoc Prof Dr Phạm Hữu Đức

Date:………

Writing this dissertation is the final step of a long journey I would have notbegun this journey had it not been helped by a lot of people First andforemost, I would like to express my deep sense of gratitude to my supervisorAssoc Prof Dr Phạm Hữu Đức, my supervisor for his tremendousknowledge, guidance, and recommendations which constantly motivated methroughout the research

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

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

Last but not least, I would like to show appreciation for my belovedfamily and my friends for their encouragement to help me overcomedifficulties to finish this study

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

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

1.1Rationale 1

1.2Aims of the Study 2

1.3Research questions 3

1.4Scope of the Study 3

1.5Significance of the study 3

1.6Research methods 4

1.7Structure 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

Listening skills play an important role in everyday communication and theeducational process Despite its importance, the teaching and learning state oflistening has long been neglected This study attempts to investigate learning andteaching problems in listening skills at NHCUSS To solve the research problem,the paper used questionnaires and semi-structured interviews as the mainresearch tool for data collection A brief description of the participants, as well asdata collection methods, was provided The results of the study show that mosthearing difficulties are found in five main groups: content, learners, speakers,physical setting, and stages of listening After exploring the obstacles, severalproposed solutions are also introduced by the researcher to contribute to teachersand 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 SchoolEFL: 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 thefour language skills that all language learners should learn: listening,speaking, reading, and writing Due to the complex and subtle nature oflistening 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 andcontinually 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 facedseveral difficulties By studying the listening comprehension challenges ofstudents, they would be able to overcome barriers such as loss of vocabulary,misunderstanding structure, failing to comprehend natural expression, losingconfidence, retaining focus, poor recording, As Hamouda (2013) said, causesthat cause listening comprehension difficulties for students are classified intomultiple outlets, including listening text related issues, listening difficultiesrelated 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 thestudents: listener causes, listening content, and physical environment

Moreover, to improve the language of students, teaching listening requiresmore attention Listening requires more time and focus in some situations inthe language classroom to understand the content that involves learningdialogue and monologue text It could be said that listening is a complicatedprocess in which several things happen within the mind simultaneously.Nevertheless, in the learning process, the teacher has a very importantrequirement When the students experience issues with their listening, it wasclearly because they were learning The teacher was able to deal with thestudents and the situations of the class, and it became the teachers' duty tosolve the students' problems Most teachers, however, paid little attention to itand 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 andlearning

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 theirlistening skills at schools and giving out some suggested solutions for commonteaching listening problems for teachers

1.4 Scope of the Study

The study is concerned with student's difficulties in learning listeningcomprehension 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 andknowledge of the shortage of reference material, this study can not cover thewhole issue of Listening skills

1.5 Significance of the study

The study mainly aims at pointing out the causes of difficulties in learninglistening to students at upper secondary school As a result, once having beencompleted, the study is expected to bring considerable benefits to bothteachers and students Pedagogically, the findings and suggestions of thisstudy are believed to enhance the teaching and listening process of studentsand teachers at upper secondary schools in Bien Hoa city

The results of this study may be a good help for the students themselves andother people who are interested in this field Furthermore, the findings of thisstudy 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 theirprogram 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 outtheir challenges in studying and teaching listening skills Also, the questionnaireshowed 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 theresearcher gain a deep understanding of the challenges of listening and know therationale 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 fromall 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 collectioninstrument, data collection & data analysis procedure context of the study In thispart, the researcher summarizes all the findings revealed, draws conclusions, andsuggests some contributions to the study

4

 Chapter 4: Findings & Discussions describes the data of the questionnairesand interviews, then gives some findings through the data analysis; and suggests somesolutions 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 Skills

In language teaching, “listening skills” means listening and understandingskills or listening comprehension skills This is also the sense of listeningused in this thesis, where listening is meant trying to understand the oralmessages people are conveying

There are a wide variety of listening definitions suggested by variousindividuals Listening is the practice of paying attention to and seeking to gainmeaning from what we hear, according to Underwood (1989) Meanwhile,Mendelsohn (1994) describes hearing as the ability of native speakers tocomprehend the spoken language

Listening seems to be a passive skill superficially, but in fact, it is still aprocess that is involved Listening is not just the way of acquiring the inputfrom the speakers, it is not only listened to by the students, but also able toprocess it, perceive it, comprehend it, analyze it, and finally respondeffectively to it (Underwood, 1989) It means that students must be able toprocess it in their brains after perceiving the oral results They will evaluatethe utterances' illocutionary force and then render the reaction Besides, Buck(2001) notes that “listening comprehension is an active process ofconstructing meaning and this is done by applying knowledge to the incomingsound” Rost (2002) sees listening as a process of receiving the speakers'knowledge, building and representing meaning, negotiating meaning with thespeakers 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 notjust listening, but it is an “active and dynamic process” involving multipleforms of activities, such as understanding, remembering, and drawinginferences 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 foreignlanguage is teaching and learning listening The importance of listeningcomprehension must be taken into consideration for anyone who wants tolearn English with great success In discussion and communication, a lack oflistening comprehension skills creates a lot of difficulties

The important role of listening comprehension in second and foreign languagelearning 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 simplycannot begin.” Therefore, listening comprehension is very necessary whenyou study any language If students do not learn to listen effectively, they willnot be able to take part in oral communication because according to MaryUnderwood (1989:4), “Merely to hear what a speaker says is insufficient forcommunication to occur” It implies that communication has broken downwhen nobody listens to a speaker or when a listener fails to understand themessage 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 whatthey 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 inlistening Listening is an important way of acquiring the language, a goodway of picking up vocabulary and structures Teaching listening to spokenlanguage is therefore of primary importance

2.1.3 Listening process

The method of listening is often defined as the perspective of informationprocessing and “an active process in which listeners select and interpretinformation 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 theinformation they get Above everything, the listener can listen closely andconcentrate on stress, grammar, and speech intonation

Understanding of the concept of listening awareness is necessary when teachingand studying high school listening skills, especially in tenth grade, when studentsdevelop 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 encouragetheir students to understand why listening skills are necessary First of all,listening skills are the key component for all language and cognitive learningfactors 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 Thisresult confirmed Rankin's observation in 1928 that 70 % of people spent wakingtime talking and 34% spent listening and speaking, as well Second, listeningprovides 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 listeningcannot be underestimated; it is imperative that it not be treated trivially in secondand 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 bedifferentiated Macro skills are easier to comprehend because it simply meansunderstanding what is said However, micro-skills are a little more difficult tounderstand, since it's not only about understanding as a whole, so we have tonotice things like word choice, intonation, mood, deeper definitions, and a lotfurther Below is a summary of the macro and micro-skills used in generalcommunication and academic discourse (Richards, 1983, quoted in Jansen,1998)

Brown (2004) also proposes the micro-skills involved in interpreting what weare told by others The listener should: maintain short-term memory chunks ofexpression, 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, recognizestandard 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 thecommunicative roles of utterances, according to circumstances, participantsand goals, infer circumstance, participants, goals using real-world knowledge,distinguish between literal and inferred interpretations, construct and use abattery of listening strategies In total, in practicing listening comprehension,the macro and micro-skills in listening are very important In defining thetargets for learning, these aspects of listening are valuable These aspects oflistening 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 typicallysubcategorized as listening activities (Wilson, 2009) It is very important toinvolve teachers in "pre-listening" and "post-listening." In the course, teachersshould aim to help determine the selection of appropriate methodology andclassroom procedures The basic framework for designing a listening lesson isseparated 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 beencouraged to listen Secondly, teachers can also assist students incontextualizing and interpreting the text, subjects, and themes Finally,

particular language or phrase is offered to students that can help interpret therecordings Pre-listening activities that precede the listening passage shouldprepare students for the task of understanding by enabling the vocabulary andcontext awareness of students or supplying students with the appropriatedetails to interpret the substance of the listening text (Thanajaro, 2000) In thisprocess, by enabling their schemes, the students are supported in planningwhat they will hear (Wilson, 2009) Brainstorming words, reviewing grammarareas, or discussing the topic of the listening text are part of the tasks For thepre-listening period, two simple goals are to provide appropriate context tomatch what would be available in real life and to create earners' motivationfor what they would hear (Field cited in Richard and Renandya, 2002).

• While listening:

Teachers help concentrate the attention of students on the listening text andencourage the development of their comprehension of it While-listening canhelp students improve the ability to extract meaning from the stream of speech.Students interpret the messages of the speakers, check, and revise theirpredictions To work out the main idea of the text, teachers can ask students tonote keywords (Karakas, as cited in Gilakjani, 2011) Students will listen for asecond time, either to check or to answer more detailed questions In thissituation, several opportunities for receiving feedback will reduce the anxiety ofstudents for teaching purposes This ensures that they will listen to the passageconsidered difficult There is a range of other aspects that come into playconcerning the passage: difficulty, duration, concentration on pedagogy, and thepotential 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 havelearned 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 beintroduced as an "answer to what they have learned." Another type is

"language analysis," which includes "focusing students on the text's linguisticcharacteristics." Students may have the chance to improve their languageskills, such as vocabulary and grammatical structures Post-listening tasksconsist of extensions and developments of the listening assignment, followingthe listening passage Cultural themes and other things connected to thematerials can be emphasized In addition, Wilson (2009 ) mentions that, atthis 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, namelyNguyen Thi Van Lam and Ngo Dinh Phuong (2006) Depending on the listeningpurpose, they are casual listening and focused listening Casual listening, oneform 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 anyattention 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 the radio or TVwhen doing some housework or talking with a friend, we do

this kind of listening Listening focuses on another type of listening It iswhen, 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, welisten and aim to get as many details as possible We do not listen to everyword; 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 ofabilities to listen to issues she terms 'enabling abilities' for coping with Toquote 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 manywriters, I have read about the subject that seems to indicate that listeningproblems come from four sources: the speaker, the content, the learner, and thephysical 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 listeningspeed is not controllable, it becomes an issue, but you may take your time to readand pause and go through the message at will If you like, you can also check adictionary I notice there are particular areas of vocabulary that have specificproblems if you offer dictations or if students dictate My students have troublehearing regular verb sounds like 'job, wish or watch' from the past When I makethe dictation the final /t/ sound of 'ed' is generally omitted so the

expression "Tim worked hard yesterday" Comes out as “Tim work hardyesterday.” 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 dotonight? Sounds like/Whaisigunnadotanight?/ This causes an interestingproblem 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 effectivelistening skills In general, foreign-language learners devote more time toreading than to listening, and therefore lack exposure to various forms oflistening For students, spending much of their listening time interpreting foreignwords and phrases for long periods is tiring There are eight spoken languagefeatures that make it difficult to listen to (Brown, 2001, p.252) In spokenlanguage, we break down speech into smaller groups of words because ofmemory limitations They are referred to as clustering E.g: "a lot of", "a numberof" and so on Therefore, learners have to learn to pick out manageable wordclusters while listening, avoiding attempting to listen to every word of thespeech 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 theproduct 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 toconfuse them However, learners can take advantage of redundancies with sometraining to have more time and additional knowledge Spoken language, on theother 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 aremajor problems for learners, especially beginners, as they begin to learn the fullform 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 unexpectedaction They confuse the listeners In real-life listening, colloquial language isanother issue that can interfere with listeners since they are familiar withtraditional written language The appearance of idioms, slang, reduced formsand shared cultural vocabulary are popular in monologues and dialogues.Learners need to understand language delivered at various speed rates anddelivered with few pauses while listening, so they do not have the chance tointerrupt the speaker and listen many times again English is a language ofstress, so it is very important for learners to consider its prosodiccharacteristics Listeners may perceive more subtle signals like irony, mutualadmiration, insult, request, encouragement, etc through stress, rhythm, andintonation Last but not least, engagement is also an aspect that plays a majorrole in the understanding of listening Language learners should be taught inthe two-way nature of listening To continue the understanding process, theyhave to read Negotiation, explanation, attending signs, turn-taking, subjectnomination, maintenance, and termination are such principles of interaction.

In short, both of these features of spoken language must be understood bylanguage learners in order to make conversation in general and listening inparticular 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 mostchallenging for students, especially beginners The dense passage (Rost, 2006) is

a long one with a significant amount of data included Again, it is thought thatlarger 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 Cervantesand Gainer (1992) found that on a recall examination, listeners who heard asyntactically simplified version of a lecture scored considerably higher thanlisteners who heard a more complicated version of the lecture Therefore, ifstudents are unable to draw a simple outline of this text, they also fail toeffectively capture the content

The reduced form, elision, and assimilation

The speaker's ability to effectively express the meanings in the articulation ofclauses Therefore, there may be slurred or dropped words that play a lesscritical 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 asentence like I could meet you this evening), and assimilation (e.g., /hi eɪʃt ərləntʃ/ for “He ate your lunch”)

Johana (2005) points out that the points at which the listener needs unambiguousinformation, namely word beginnings and ends, are precisely influenced byaccommodatory 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 itcan 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 Infact, 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 inlistening

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 outsidenoise More effort must be made by foreign language learners to understandthe significance of these noises Sometimes, because of the disruption ofnoise, they cannot get the point In addition, repetitions, false beginnings,rephrasings, self-corrections, elaborations, tautologies, and seeminglymeaningless additions such as "I mean" or "you know" (Ur, 1984) can takethe form of redundant utterances This redundancy is a natural feature oflanguage and could be a benefit or an obstacle, depending on the level ofstudents 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 thelearners, apart from the above difficulties The speakers use the discoursemakers to mean that the ideas are transferred, examples are given, or theprevious points are repeated (Underwood, 1989) If these markers cannot belistened to, the learners would not be able to follow the continuous stream ofspeech

The difference of the cultures

Unknown to cultural language skills plays a significant role in understandingthe meaning Language-culture marriages are indivisible (Brown, 1994) Thesubject 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 instructorsshould offer the subject previously For example, if the listening part involvesEaster 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 withknown phrases, even though the subject is unfamiliar to them His studyfound that understanding the meaning of the words could stimulate interest inlearning for students and lead to a positive impact on listening capacity.Another issue here is that many words have more than one meaning, andstudents 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 targetlanguage may be a barrier to understanding because language is used tocommunicate its culture (Anderson & Lynch, 1988) To help understand themessages based on those keywords, knowledge of the world helps Thefurther 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 befrightened and confused; therefore, they cannot listen

The shortage of vocabulary often prevents students from listeningcomprehensively, apart from the lack of context information The limitedvocabulary of collocations and slang prevents students from guessing andpredicting the content in general and the missing words and phrases inparticular (Yagang, 1993)

Incorrect pronunciation:

It is clear that good pronunciation makes a major contribution to listeningskills It could help students understand the correct form of words and writethem down One of the ways to improve pronunciation is to form a habit ofchecking the vocabulary Gilakjani (2012) offers empirical evidence that eventhough they make mistakes in other fields, learners with good Englishpronunciation are likely to be understood; while learners with poorpronunciation are not even though their grammar is excellent

The students' motivation

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

will significantly ruin understanding for students to retain focus in a foreignlanguage learning classroom It will be simpler to understand as students findthe subject of the listening text interesting Even if they are interested in thesubject, 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 along comprehension exercise and starts getting worse as he / she moves on.Because of the psychological phenomenon, learners sometimes run out ofmotivation and excitement for learning at the end of the class Yagang (1993)notes that listening is not a easy process; it is a complicated psychologicalone, on the other hand It means that a student cannot focus while he or she isstressed or nervous More significant, they can also be distracted from theirlistening by the classroom setting and the surrounding environment Forinstance, whether people are talking or there are sounds in the tape recorder,the listeners cannot pay attention to listening Concentration was necessary inorder to interpret and capture the meaning of the spoken text The lack ofconcentration 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 beeasier to turn it into the shorter section

2.3.3 Speakers

The accents

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

Accented speech was found to influence both the degree to which listenerseffectively comprehend the message of a speaker and the effort involved inrecognizing certain words in the message by listeners (Floccia et al., 2009)

To some extent, the students are quite familiar with native speakers such asAmerican or English in academic courses; but in fact, they can also listen tospeakers from non-native English-speaking countries Consequently, they areunable to capture the words or express the messages of the conversations, andthe 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 theaccent of a speaker as one of the most critical factors influencing listenercomprehension, according to Goh (1999) Unfamiliar accents, both native andnon-native, can cause serious listening comprehension difficulties and accentfamiliarity helps the listening comprehension of learners Buck (2001)suggested that crucial problems in hearing would occur as listeners hear anunusual accent such as Indian English for the first time since they learn onlyAmerican English This will definitely disrupt the entire phase of listeningcomprehension because, at the same time, an unusual accent makes itimpossible for the listeners to comprehend

The speed of the speakers

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

on this part, they miss the next part Most of the foreign language studentsperceive that native speakers speak too fast and that makes it difficult forthem to follow (Brown & Yule, 1983) Similarly, Butt (2010) has the sameideas 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 ofdelivery as one of the greatest obstacles to understanding The students canplay recorded materials again and again until getting the information

Student levels also play a great role in listening to long sections and keepingall the information in mind Listening for more than three minutes of listeningand 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 tostore all in mind, exceptional listening capacity, and the technique needed tounderstand 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 bedifficult 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 difficultywith listening comprehension (Underwood, 1989, p 16) For most

language learners and teachers, it is clear that a slower speed of speech wouldfacilitate 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 languagelearners 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 materialstuff as well as slang, can be included These phrases may not be common tostudents who have been exposed primarily to formal or bookish English.Brown (1992) points out that it is often surprising and difficult to deal withcolloquial language for ESL learners accustomed to traditional writtenEnglish and "textbook" language

Hesitations and pauses:

According to Hasan (2000), hesitations and pauses in spontaneous speechcause perceptual issues and comprehension errors for non-native speakers.They sometimes pause when people speak, repeat themselves, say stuff that isungrammatical, and change their minds halfway through a sentence Theseitems 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 thereare still some classrooms that do not have computers, smartboards,multimedia systems, and so on The quality of the sound system also affectslistening comprehension The ambiguous sounds that result from poor-qualitydevices can interfere with the listener's understanding Furthermore, thestudents who sit at the end of the classroom may not listen to the lessonsclearly in a crowded classroom The scarcity of opportunities to listen tovarious spoken texts with the help of good equipment and learn English withnative speakers, especially in rural areas, contributes to listening performance,according to Chetchumlong (1987) In addition, large classrooms, surroundingnoise, 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 isworth 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 itharder for the listener to understand the meaning of the speaker

The class atmosphere

Classroom inconvenience sometimes affects students’ comprehension oflistening Students who sit in the back rows may not hear the recording asstudents 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 theclassroom also makes it difficult for the teacher to manage all classes orreceive feedback from learners in group activities It is possible to count theclass temperature as a factor that makes listening comprehension difficult Itmay be too hot in summer or too cold in winter for a class that has no airconditioner 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 goodcommunicator, 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 thelistening process, he said, four main factors that can lead to difficulty for EFLlearners include the message, the listener, and the physical context He points outthat many learners find it difficult to handle a message whose content is not wellorganized When listening, they cannot predict what the speaker will say in therecorded message because they are unfamiliar with the "no intonation sentence",the "spontaneous topic" or because the message was recorded Likewise, theywill be challenged when communicating with speakers who may soundsuperfluous or have strange voices Greater obstacles can arise if the listenerhimself 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 inlearning for ESL students Through surveys conducted with full-timeprofessors from various colleges and universities, Ferris and Tagg analyzedstudents' difficulties in learning to listen academically Although students may

be aware of the importance of listening skills, they are rather hesitant and donot want to participate in classroom discussions or interact with their peers(except those who speak their native language.) either ask or answerquestions The implications of this study suggest that teachers should be theones to help develop students' communication and listening strategies Theirresearch is a useful reference for ESL students However, it would be better ifthe 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 EFLlearners and suggested some pedagogical implications The study wasconducted based on a report by students from Takming College, Taiwan Hisresearch has analyzed seven main types of learning obstacles including 22subgroups These are emotional barriers, habits in habits, learning difficultiesrelated to information processing, English proficiency, and learners' beliefsabout listening; the problem focuses on the nature and procedure of using thestrategy, and the listening materials the learner practiced This thoroughresearch 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 10years In fact, listening skills have not been paid attention to and investedproperly 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 oftextbooks for high school students He quoted a teacher as saying that hislistening skills were either ignored or not taught in his high school becauseboth teachers and students wanted to focus on exams that did not includetests listening skills With a small investment, listening skills still cause manydifficulties for intermediate and low-level students The purpose of the currentstudy is to collect information about the hearing difficulties of NHCUSS 10thgraders The research is guided by the following research question: Whatdifficulties 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 forhis research with a description of many scholarly studies However, it can beseen that some parts are not suitable for Vietnamese students, written inforeign contexts Therefore, the researcher hopes to compensate for the abovelimitation by his observations, and detailed descriptions are provided in thefollowing 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 andlearning listening skills at Nguyen Huu Canh upper secondary school in BienHoa city, it is necessary to answer the following questions:

1 What is the current situation of teaching and learning English listening skills in grade 10 at NHCUSS?

2 What difficulties do the students encounter in learning English listening skills in grade 10 at NHCUSS?

3 What are the possible solutions to improve the quality of teaching and learning listening skills at upper secondary schools?

3.2 Research design

This study used the survey for data collection, measurement, and analysis The survey was conducted at Nguyen Huu Canh upper secondary school

(NHCUSS) in Bien Hoa city After the data, which were questionnaires andinterviews (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 Canhupper secondary school (NHCUSS) in Bien Hoa city These students wereselected from 2 classes of grade 10 (10A1, 10A2) And 7 teachers from theEnglish Department at NHCUSS who are currently teaching listening skills atNHCUSS for years with the intention of finding difficulties in teachinglistening skills to the students at NHCUSS in Bien Hoa city

3.4 Data collection instrument

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

3.4.1 Survey Questionnaires

The questionnaire is constructed based on the theoretical framework ofliterature review and interview taken with 63 tenth form students at NguyenHuu Canh upper secondary school (NHCUSS), which aims to investigate thedifficult factors affect students’ perception of listening skills Section A of thequestionnaire contained Personal information, required the students to providetheir personal information including their gender, age, years of learningEnglish Section B of the questionnaire comprised items that were employed

to elicit the students’ opinions on the project-based approach In addition, the