A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES IN ENGLISH LISTENING SKILL OF THE SECONDYEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY AND SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS

A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES IN ENGLISH LISTENING SKILL OF THE SECONDYEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY AND SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES IN ENGLISH LISTENING SKILL OF THE SECONDYEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY AND SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES IN ENGLISH LISTENING SKILL OF THE SECONDYEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY AND SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES IN ENGLISH LISTENING SKILL OF THE SECONDYEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY AND SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES IN ENGLISH LISTENING SKILL OF THE SECONDYEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY AND SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES IN ENGLISH LISTENING SKILL OF THE SECONDYEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY AND SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES IN ENGLISH LISTENING SKILL OF THE SECONDYEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY AND SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES IN ENGLISH LISTENING SKILL OF THE SECONDYEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY AND SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES IN ENGLISH LISTENING SKILL OF THE SECONDYEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY AND SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES IN ENGLISH LISTENING SKILL OF THE SECONDYEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY AND SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES IN ENGLISH LISTENING SKILL OF THE SECONDYEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY AND SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES IN ENGLISH LISTENING SKILL OF THE SECONDYEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY AND SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS

THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF ENGLISH

UNIVERSITY AND SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS

Administrative Class : K53N5

HANOI – 2021

Currently, with the development of international trade, the integration offoreign companies or multinational corporations are increasing Demand of foreignlanguage, especially English, has also become more urgent than ever English isconsidered as a compulsory and basic skill for students to approach businesses,grasp job opportunities in reality We can’t deny the role of English for students inparticular and employees in general However, learning English now not onlyrequires to communicate or talk normally basic with foreigners, but also able toread, listen and understand well when approaching a professional workingenvironment

Listening skill is one of the most necessary skills to communicate in real lifeand it is also important in learning foreign language Everybody knows that in order

to listen a message is not as simple as hearing it, so the listener has to understandthe message and respond in the right manner

Especially, with the students of English faculty, Thuongmai University,English listening skill is a compulsory main subject and plays a very important role

in learning programs as well as equipping skills for students In study program, thebusiness students will have to practice some other subjects such as InterpretationPractice and Advanced Interpretation, which require students to have good listeningskill However, in the learning process, students usually get unsatisfactory resultsdue to lacking knowledge and skill, especially for those who are just exposed to thissubject

Most of these students met several difficulties when they studied Englishlistening skill The problems that students encounter can come from many differentreasons such as poor vocabulary, knowledge, understanding et cetera To identifycertain difficulties when listening English, the researcher has conducted a study ondifficulties in English listening skill by the second-year students of English faculty,Thuongmai University The aim of the study is to find out difficulties of studentsEnglish listening skill and suggest several solutions to improve students’ listeningskills

i

Secondly, I would like to show my special thanks to my teachers of Englishfaculty at Thuongmai University for their teaching In my four-years of study atThuongmai University, the college board, principal and teachers have given the bestcondition and facilities to us to finish our college curriculum.

Besides, I also want to thank all the students for spending their time to answer

my survey questions With their enthusiastic assistance, I have collected valuabledata to complete my survey Additionally, I also give my appreciation to all theauthors of the books, reliable data sources and other materials listed in the referencepart which have given me helpful consultancy to develop my graduation paper.Due to limited implementation time and knowledge, I look forward toreceiving comments and suggestions in order to perfect the graduation paper.Sincere thanks!

Hanoi, April 15th 2020

StudentNguyen Thi Kieu My

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS v

LIST OF TABLE AND FIGURES vi

CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY 1

1.1 Rationale 1

1.2 Previous studies 2

1.3 Aim of the study 4

1.4 Research subjects 5

1.5 Scope of the study 5

1.6 Research methodology 5

1.7 Organization of the study 5

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 7

2.1 Listening theory 7

2.1.1 Definition of listening 7

2.1.2 The importance of listening skills in learning 9

2.2 Listening Strategies 10

2.3 Difficulties in learning English listening skill 13

2.3.1 Difficulties from the speakers 13

2.3.2 Difficulties from learners 15

2.3.3 Difficulties from the materials 16

2.3.4 Difficulties from physical setting 16

CHAPTER 3: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 18

3.1 Results collected from the questionnaire 18

3.1.1 The students’ attitude toward English listening skill 18

3.1.2 Difficulties in English listening skill 24

3.2 Discussion 35

CHAPTER 4: RECOMMENDATION AND SUGGESTIONS 38

4.1 Suggestion for teachers 38

4.2 Suggestions for students 39

CONCLUSION 42 REFERENCES I

v

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

LIST OF TABLE AND FIGURES

Table 3.1: The reason why students study English listening skill 18

Chart 3.1: Listening level of students 19

Chart 3.2 The frequency of students self-studying listening 20

Chart 3.3: Time of practicing listening 21

Table 3.2 Student’s method self-study at home 22

Table 3.3 What students do before listening 22

Chart 3.4 What students do for the first listening 23

Chart 3.5 Student’s attitude when they cannot understand words or phrases 24

Chart 3.6 Main difficulties for the learners 25

Chart 3.7 Listening problems from the speakers 26

Chart 3.8 Listening problems from the listeners 28

Chart 3.9 Listening problems from the materials 30

Chart 3.10 Listening problems from the physical setting 32

Chart 3.11 Possible solutions for listening problems 33

vii

CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY 1.1 Rationale

Nowadays, listening plays a vital role in daily life People listen for differentpurposes such as entertainment, academic purposes, or obtaining the necessaryinformation Of the four language skills - Listening, Speaking, Reading, andWriting - that all language learners are supposed to acquire, listening is believed to

be the most challenging due to the complex and subtle nature of listeningcomprehension in a second or foreign language The teaching of listening hasattracted a greater level of interest in recent years than it did in the past Now,university entrance exams, exit exams, and other examinations often include alistening component, acknowledging that listening skill is a core component ofsecond-language proficiency, and also reflecting the assumption that if listeningisn’t tested, teachers won’t teach it

Listening is one of the receptive skills and as such, it involves students incapturing and understanding the input of English Reading, the other receptive skillinvolves students in understanding and interpreting the written word Listening isprobably more difficult than reading because students often recognize the writtenword more easily than they recognize the spoken word Furthermore, when reading,students can go back and reread a phrase whereas with listening they only get onechance With reading, it’s the reader who sets the pace whereas with listening it’sthe speaker or recording that sets the pace

Furthermore, English has been widely used as a major language in daily lifeand many education levels all over the world, both native and non-native Englishspeaking countries Listening comprehension is becoming more and more important

in acquiring a new language as well as knowledge displayed in lectures and media.Especially, it is a vital skill for most English as second language learners (ESL).Despite its importance in learning English listening, the state of teaching andlearning listening skills has long been ignored and gives little consideration It can

be seen that the Vietnamese education system focuses more on coaching examswith much attention to grammar, reading and vocabulary Therefore, listening isincluded in course books in many educational levels; however, it somehow isneglected by the teachers during the lessons As a result, many Vietnamese students,even those who get high marks in grammatical tests, cannot communicatesuccessfully with the foreigners in daily conversations According to Nguyen(2007), the inability to comprehend what the native speakers say because of thefailure at listening comprehension is the most severe reason Also, in Vietnam,countryside students have no exposure to the English language apart from what theyreceive in the classroom Students’ fundamental means of listening to English comefrom the teacher’s voice Furthermore, the low quality of cassettes has a detectableeffect on the process of practicing and testing listening, and especially in thecountryside, where the cassette players are either poor quality or run off batteries.The students have difficulties in listening because of the low-standard sound Forthose reasons, most of the students in rural and mountainous areas suffer a terribleshock when learning to listen in the university Despite the diversity of literature inthis field, little attention to the feasible solutions and practical purposes is paid.

Because of these issues, many students find listening difficult Listening taskscan be very disheartening and demotivating, especially if students have had aprevious negative experience It is therefore important to give our students plenty ofopportunities to practice the skill of listening in a supportive environment that helpsthem to learn We need to design tasks that help them learn rather than merelytesting their abilities This means that we guide them through the recording, pre-teach language and highlight the essential points of the recording This is in contrast

to testing, where the teacher simply plays the recording and the students listen andanswer questions

With the purpose of helping students to enhance their listening skills, thisstudy is conducted to raise the perception of the importance of listening in learningEnglish as well as their listening difficulties Additionally, this thesis provides thevaluable insights and pedagogical implications for both teachers and students

ix

1.2 Previous studies

Due to the importance of English in the context of globalization andinternational integration, companies and employers always prioritize candidateswho can use a fluent foreign language in work Hence, there are more and morestudents who invest their time and finance to learn English Learning anotherlanguage is not easy so many students sometimes meet difficulties and make errors

in the listening process To find out and overcome the difficulties, there are manystudies carried out These studies are also made by experienced students withclearly proving databases through real surveys Relating my graduation paper’stopic, there are several previous studies that I have consulted for my thesis

The first study was made by Mr Abbas Pourhossein Gilakjani and Mr.Mohammad Reza Ahmadi who were students of Islamic Azad University, Lahijan,Iran Their title was “A study on factors affecting EFL learners’ English listeningcomprehension and the strategies for improvement” In this study, the two studentsstudied some potential listening comprehension problems of learners, including lack

of controlling the speed of the delivery, limited vocabulary, lack of contextualknowledge, failure to recognize the signals from the speakers, etc Their study alsoshowed some teaching listening activities Listening activities are usuallysubcategorized as pre-listening, while-listening, and post-listening activities.Besides, they suggested some of the teaching methods for improving students’listening comprehension skill such as cultivating students’ listening skills, textbook-based learning and other listening contexts, passing on cultural knowledge inlanguage teaching, combining “intensive listening” with “extensive listening”,focusing on listening and combining listening with other skills

The second study was “Learners’ difficulties and strategies in listeningcomprehension” The study was implemented by Dwi Raza Saraswaty, who was astudent at Universitas Muhammadiyah Palembang, a university in Indonesia In thisstudy, he found out the difficulties in English listening, including quality ofmaterials, cultural differences, accent, length and speed of listening and unfamiliar

vocabulary He indicated that unfamiliar words, difficult grammatical structures,and the length of the spoken passages are the most important factors that causeproblems for learners’ listening comprehension He continued that clarity, lack ofinterest, and the demand for complete answers to listening comprehension questionsare the serious difficulties of students’ listening comprehension Finally, he alsogives some suggestions that teachers can help students overcome their listeningcomprehension problems The study was hoped to help learners improve theirEnglish listening skills and were a reference for readers to consult difficulties inlistening English.

Another one was “A study on difficulties and solutions in English listeningskill of the second-year students in Faculty of Foreign Language at University ofTechnology and Education” made by Phung Thi Tho, a student at the Faculty ofForeign Languages, Hung Yen University of Technology and Education In thestudy, she mentioned some major problems in listening as follows: lack of controlover the speed at which speakers speak, not being able to get things repeated, thelistener’s limited vocabulary, problems of interpretation, inability to concentrate Inparticular, colloquial language is another problem that can interfere with listeners inreal-life listening because they are familiar with standard written language Inmonologues and dialogues, the appearance of idioms, slang, reduced forms, andshared cultural language are common The study not only finds difficulties inEnglish listening but also figures out factors influencing the students’ listening andsuggests solutions to improve English listening skill

In summary, through these studies above, we realize some common problems

in English listening such as lack of vocabulary, lack of social and backgroundknowledge, bad/ incorrect pronunciation, quality of materials, cultural differences,accent, length and speed of listening and, so on Hopefully, after this study, studentscan find out the suitable ways to improve English listening skill

1.3 Aim of the study

Firstly, the main aim of the thesis is to figure out the special difficulties in

xi

English listening skill and then to have a good manner of studying The study alsoclassifies the difficulties and explains the causes which lead to the difficulties inlistening processes Secondly, the study offers some solutions for students andteachers to overcome the difficulties above and to improve learning and teachingtranslation and help them gain the best learning methods It is hoped to meet thestudents’ expectations in looking for a method to learn listening effectively.

1.4 Research subjects

The research subjects of the study are difficulties in English listening skill andsome suggested solutions The study also offers solutions for students and teachers

to obtain the best learning and studying English listening skill

A survey questionnaire is implemented with questions related to the title ofthis study The participants are given a questionnaire and complete one directly orvia the Internet Then I will select their answers for analyzing data in my study

1.5 Scope of the study

The second-year students of the English faculty at Thuongmai University arerequired to study a listening subject The study is conducted in the second term ofthe 2020-2021 curriculum because all of the students have to study English listeningskill and listening skill in Business English 1.2

Apart from clarification of the problems, the researcher desires to suggestsome possible solutions for the students to achieve a better result in learninglistening Therefore, proper teaching methods can be adopted to help themovercome difficulties

1.6 Research methodology

To study the students’ difficulties in English listening skill and get accuratefindings, the researcher uses two methods, including quantitative method andqualitative method The interviewers have received a questionnaire involving a list

of questions, after answering the questionnaire, the researcher will gather them andanalyze the original databases The survey was administered to 95 students fromboth classes K55N4 and K55N5 The quantitative method will help the researchercalculate, analyze and evaluate easily the information and data source Then, it willgive reliable figures which are displayed in charts or diagrams In the qualitativemethod, the researcher uses mini test papers which help exploit more informationand databases The qualitative method is used to analyze, synthesize and explain thedifficulties of the students All of the databases are collected from reliable sources

xiii

via books, newspapers, the Internet and websites.

1.7 Organization of the study

This study focuses on four primary following chapters, including:

The first chapter is an overview of the study In this chapter, a briefdescription of the study provides general information about the research Thechapter consists of seven parts that are rationale, previous studies, aims of the study,research subjects, scope of the study, research methodology and organization of thestudy The chapter helps readers understand generally about the study

The second chapter is the literature review In this chapter, it providesconcepts related to the term of listening, theories concerning English listening skill.Given that it is considered a premise for the assumptions and discussions in thethird chapter The theories in the study are from official and reliable sources, all ofthe referencing sources are quoted

The third chapter is the results and discussion It is divided into two mainparts The first part shows results from the survey which was collected from thequestionnaire and paper test It also finds issues in the English listening skillincluding lack of vocabulary, lack of social and background knowledge, bad/incorrect pronunciation, quality of materials, cultural differences, accent, length,and speed of listening The second part is the discussion which shows commondifficulties in English listening skill It discusses the difficulties and gives outdemonstrations for those discussed issues

The last chapter is recommendations and suggestions After finding out thedifficulties in English listening skill and showing demonstrations through the results

of the survey questionnaire, the research offers several solutions for both studentsand teachers to get the most effective learning and teaching methods in the listeningsubject It summarizes the whole study and presents some limitations of the studybefore ending with some recommendations for further study

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Listening theory

2.1.1 Definition of listening

In language teaching, “listening skills” means listening and understandingskills or listening comprehension skills This is also the sense of listening used inthis thesis, where listening is meant to try to understand the oral messages peopleare conveying

There are a large number of definitions of listening proposed by differentscholars

According to Wikipedia, listening is a term in which the listener listens to theone who produced the sound to be listened Listening differs from obeying Aperson who receives and understands the information or instruction, and thenchooses not to comply with it or not to agree to it, has listened to the speaker, eventhough the result is not what the speaker wanted There is a distinction betweenlistening and hearing "Hearing is a physiological phenomenon; listening is apsychological act." We are always hearing, most of the time subconsciously.However, listening is done by choice “It is the interpretative action taken by

xv

someone in order to understand and potentially make meaning of something theyhear” Listening may be considered as a simple and isolated process, but it would befar more precise to perceive it as a complex and systematic process It involves theperception of sounds made by the speaker, of intonation patterns that shows thefocus of the information, and of the relevance of the present topic discussed.

In the definition of Underwood (1989), listening is the activity of payingattention to and trying to get meaning from something we hear Meanwhile,Mendelsohn (1994) defines listening as the ability to understand the spokenlanguage of native speakers Superficially, listening appears to be a passive skill,but in fact, it is always an active process Listening is not just the process ofreceiving the information from the speakers, the students do not only listen to it butthey are also able to process it, interpret it, understand it, evaluate it and eventuallyrespond to it effectively (Underwood, 1989) It means that after perceiving the oralinformation, the students must be able to process it in their brains They can analyzethe illocutionary force of the utterances and after that make the response

Steinberg (2007) in Bingol mentioned the listening process as “the ability ofone individual perceiving another via sense, aural organs, assigning a meaning tothe message and comprehending it Listening includes some features The mostimportant features can be defined as coping with the sounds, understandingintonation and stress, coping with redundancy and noise, predicting, understandingcolloquial vocabulary, fatigue, understanding different accents, using visual andenvironmental clues Planning, exercises, listening materials, tasks and visualmaterials should be taken into consideration The teacher should produce a suitablediscourse while using recordings A preset purpose, ongoing learner response,motivation, success, simplicity, and feedback should be the things considered whilepreparing the listening comprehension That is the way listening is a complexprocess According to Buck (2001), listening comprehension is a process, a verycomplex process, and if they want to measure it, we must first understand how thatprocess works Thus, listening comprehension is a complex process to identify and

to understand dialog and monolog what the speaker said which used an audiocassette or watched VCD in English

Rost (2002) says that listening comprehension is regarded as a complex,interactive process in which listeners are involved in a dynamic construction ofmeaning Listeners understand the oral input from sound discrimination, priorknowledge of vocabulary, grammatical structures, stress and intonation, as well asother use linguistic, paralinguistic, or even non-linguistic clues in the contextualutterance Sharing the same ideas with Rost (2002), Hamouda (2013) definedlistening comprehension as an interactive process in which listeners are involved inconstructing meaning Listeners comprehend the oral input through sounddiscrimination, previous knowledge, grammatical structures, stress and intonation,and other linguistic or non-linguistic clues.

In summary, from all above definitions, we perceive that listening is not justhearing, but it is an “active and dynamic process” which contains various kinds ofactivities such as recognizing the messages from the speakers, remembering andmaking inferences based on them

2.1.2 The importance of listening skills in learning

Listening is one of the necessary life skills which are defined as “skills whichcan provide you with a better perspective on life, skills which can allow you tomaintain a higher awareness of both yourself and the world around you” It is one ofthe most vital ways that human beings feel life and live Everyone, in the real-life,often listens more than speaks, reads, or writes We listen everywhere and everytime We listen to everything and everybody For instance, at home, we listen to thenews, watch films or talk with others At school, students listen to the lecturersteaching At a meeting, the staff listens to the new plan from the director, etc.Without listening, the man becomes backward in each minute of their lives It isobvious that listening is really important in real life As it is mentioned in thedifferences between hearing and listening, hearing is a part of the five senses(hearing, smelling, tasting, touching and looking) but listening is a choice to hearand understand it

xvii

Listening is the most frequently used skill in daily life communication.Listening takes up forty-five to fifty percent of the total time in communication.Therefore, it is undeniable that listening is essential both to communicate and tolearn a foreign language Obviously, listening skill is extremely important inacquiring a language because it provides language input According to Krashen et al(1984, as cited in Hamouda, A., 2012), only when students absorb enoughcomprehensible input, does the acquisition happen In addition, Krashen believesthat without understanding the linguistic input, the students cannot acquire any level

of language Thus, listening is a fundamental language skill, and as such, it meritsthe top priority among the four skill areas for language students Listening,therefore, is regarded crucial to not only a receptive skill but also the development

of spoken language proficiency

As an integrative skill, listening plays an important role in the process oflanguage learning, acquisition and facilitating the emergence of other languageskill Listening is important in social communication, academic success andlanguage acquisition Needless to say, listening effectively is a sufficient conditionfor the students to take part in oral communication The communicating process willbreak down when the listeners fail to understand what the speakers say.Furthermore, being able to listen to English well, the students have a good chance toapproach the broad knowledge in the outside world Noticeably, listening is thebasic step to get input in learning a language In any language classroom, listeningskill plays a significant role in the development of other language skills Vandergriff(1997) claims that listening internalizes not only the rules of language skills but alsofacilitates the emergence of other skills To be more specific, listening helps thestudents to pronounce exactly and recognize the spoken form of words Whenlearning a new word, students have to listen to it several times before identifying it

It is said that listening provides a comprehensive supplier for understanding andacquiring a new language Precisely, without receiving the necessary language input

at the right level, the learning process cannot take place Several studies prove thatthe aural input plays such a vital role in funding all aspects of language and

cognitive development Understanding linguistic information is the key to acquiringlanguage What is more, the more the students listen, the more vocabulary,proficiency and the better language usage they have.

According to Nord (1980, p.17), listening is the way of learning the language

“It gives the learner information from which to build up the knowledge necessaryfor using the language When this knowledge is built up, the learner can begin tospeak The listening-only period is a time of observation and learning, whichprovides the basis for the other language skills” Most learners will spend more timelistening to the foreign language than producing it themselves Failing to understandspoken language, people may miss important information presented to them orrespond in a funny way So training in listening is really necessary It helps studentsmake the transition from classroom English to real-life English more easily andeffectively

2.2 Listening Strategies

It is very important to teach listening strategies to students and before doingthis, teachers should increase learners’ knowledge of vocabulary, grammar, andphonology Vandergrift (1999) pointed that the development of strategy issignificant for the training of listening and learners can guide and assess their ownunderstanding and answers Many researchers expressed that there are three types ofstrategies in listening comprehension They are cognitive, metacognitive, and socio-affective These strategies can change based on the level of learners

Cognitive Strategies:

Cognitive strategies are related to understanding and gathering input in term memory or long-term memory for later use Comprehension begins with thereceived data that is examined as consecutive levels of formation and a process ofdecoding A cognitive strategy is a problem-solving method that learners apply todeal with the learning activity and facilitate the learning of knowledge Derry andMurphy (1986) stated that cognitive strategies as problem-solving techniques thatlearners use for the acquisition of knowledge or skill Cognitive strategies have

short-xix

close relation to the learning activities and include direct utilization or change of thelearning materials Therefore, learners utilize cognitive strategies to assist theprocess, keep, and remember new information.

There are two kinds of cognitive strategies in listening: bottom-up and down Bottom-up strategies are word-for-word translation, arranging the rate ofspeech, repeating the oral text, and concentrating on prosodic characteristics of thetext Top-down strategies involve forecasting, guessing, explaining, andvisualization Advanced learners use more top-down strategies than beginners Athink-aloud procedure was used to examine the listening strategies of universitystudents learning Spanish The results of the quantitative study showed thatparticipants utilized more cognitive than metacognitive strategies and that femalesapplied more metacognitive strategies than males The findings of the qualitativestudy indicated that success in listening was related to factors like the application ofmany strategies, ability and flexibility in modifying strategies, stimulation, self-control, and sufficient use of prior knowledge

top-Metacognitive Strategies:

Rubin (1988) claimed that metacognitive strategies are managementtechniques used by learners to control their learning through planning, checking,assessing, and changing For instance, for metacognitive planning strategies,listeners clear the aims of a listening task and apply specific features of the aurallanguage input that make easy the understanding of aural input In this strategy,students are aware when listening to the text In this strategy, learners learn how toplan, monitor, and evaluate the collected information from the listening part.Learners who use metacognitive strategies can learn faster and integrate theknowledge outstandingly, can be constant receivers and deal with all situations,have the self-confidence to get help from partners, teachers, or family, and canobserve and assess themselves The use of metacognitive strategy in the listeningprocess increases learners’ self-confidence, motivation, and ability to complete theactivities

According to Baker and Brown (1984), there are two kinds of metacognitiveskills: knowledge of cognition and regulation of cognition Knowledge of cognitiondeals with the learners’ consciousness of what is going on and regulation ofcognition deals with what learners should do to listen effectively The differencebetween skilled and less-skilled listeners can be understood through theirapplication of metacognitive strategies Skilled listeners utilize more repairstrategies to redirect their attention back to the activity when there is acomprehension failure, while less skilled listeners cease listening Skilled listenersapplied twice as many metacognitive strategies as their less-skilled learners.According to Henner Stanchina (1987), metacognitive strategies played animportant role in listening comprehension She mentioned that skilled listeners canpermanently explain and what they hear through (1) utilizing their prior knowledgeand predictions to create theories on the text; (2) connecting new information withtheir continuing predictions; (3) making deductions to fill comprehension breaks;(4) assessing their predictions; (5) improving their theories And skilled listenerscan identify a failure in understanding and activate their background knowledge toget a better comprehension.

Socio-affective Strategies:

Socio-affective strategies are techniques that listeners use to cooperate withothers, to check their comprehension, and to reduce their apprehension Affectivestrategies are very significant because the learning situation and learners’ social-psychological factors are closely related to each other There is a significantrelationship between low anxiety and high listening performance: that is, the use ofaffective strategies makes it easy and improves listening O’Malley and Chamot(1987) represented that among the four strategies of listening comprehension, socialand effective strategies had the most effect on the learning context Socio-affectivestrategies are related to students’ interaction with other speakers and their reactionstowards learning In socio-affective strategy, students should know how to decreaseanxiety, feel confident during listening activities, and raise motivation in improvinglistening skill

xxi

2.3 Difficulties in learning English listening skill

It is taken for granted that people can listen in the mother tongue with little or

no effort However, learning to listen in the second language is more difficultbecause it does not only require the ability of the listeners but also is affected by thespeakers, the physical factors, the content of the listening text and the physicalsetting in the classroom

Many English students will sooner or later find themselves in real lifesituations where they need to listen to English for a range of purposes In thesecases, many problems arise

2.3.1 Difficulties from the speakers

The speed of the speakers

The speed of the speakers is one of the most challenges for the listeners Ithinders the learners in their effort of learning English because the students cannotsort them out when listening before they disappear It is so far different from theremaining reading text on the page When students read a text, they can retrieve itwhenever they want On the other hand, while they are working on the first part,they can miss the next part Most foreign language students perceive that nativespeakers speak too fast and that makes it difficult for them to follow Therefore,speed of delivery is one of the biggest obstacles to understanding The students canplay recorded materials again and again until getting the information

The accents

Many foreign language learners are surprised and dismayed when listening tosomeone else but not their teachers because they are used to their teacher’s accents.Moreover, understanding the spoken form of language requires the adaptation of theidiosyncrasies of a particular speaker Ikeno and Hansen (cited in Bloomfield et al.,2010) stated that unfamiliar accents lead to lower accuracy Accented speech hasbeen found to affect both the extent to which listeners successfully realize a

speaker’s message and the effort involved when listeners identify particular words

in the message In particular, in academic courses, the students are familiar withnative speakers like American or English; however, in reality, they can listen to thespeakers from non-native English speaking countries as well Consequently, theycannot catch the words or convey the messages of the conversations and the brokendown communication is the outcome

The intonation and stress

One of the outstanding features of English is stress and intonation Thepurpose of stress is to highlight content words to convey the meaning Studentssomehow cannot distinguish between the content and function words Additionally,they do not know the fact that words in spoken continuous speech are often notgiven the same stress as they are said in isolation (Underwood, 1989) As a result,they cannot hear the word that they already know Also, foreign students sometimesfail to recognize the grammar points in listening because of the stress

The reduced form, elision and assimilation

In articulating clauses, the speaker’s desire to express the meaningseffectively Hence, the words that play a less crucial role in the message may beslurred or dropped, and other words may be more prominent According to Madsenand Bowen (1978), spoken English is in particular characterized by three features ofsandhi-variation: contraction, reduction and assimilation

We know that accommodating phonological processes affects precisely thepoints at which the listener needs unambiguous information, namely wordbeginnings and endings To be more specific, students may have some troubles inmaterials such as assimilation, elision or linking word Liaison (the linking of words

in the speech when the second word begins with a vowel, e.g., an orange) andelision (leaving out a sound or sounds, e.g., suppose may be pronounced in rapidspeech) are common phenomena that make it difficult for students to distinguish orrecognize individual words in the stream of speech They are used to seeing words

xxiii

written as discrete entities in their textbooks.

2.3.2 Difficulties from learners

Lack of vocabulary and background knowledge

Lack of socio-cultural, factual, and contextual knowledge of the targetlanguage can pose an obstacle to comprehension because language is used toexpress its culture Knowledge of the world’s help is used to help understand themessages based on some key words To put it in another way, the more broadenedknowledge you have, the easier you can catch the point If the students listen to anunfamiliar topic, they will be panicked and confused; consequently, they may fail tolisten

Other than the shortage of background knowledge, the limitation ofvocabulary also prevents students from listening comprehensively The limitedvocabulary of collocations and slangs prevents the students from guessing andpredicting the content in general and the missing words and phrases in particular

Incorrect pronunciation:

It is obvious that good pronunciation contributes significantly to listeningskill It could help students to recognize and write down the correct form of words.Forming a habit of checking the vocabulary is one of the ways to improvepronunciation Researchers have provided evidence that learners with good Englishpronunciation are likely understood even if they make errors in other areas; whereaslearners with bad pronunciation will not even if their grammar is perfect

classroom atmosphere and surrounding environment also can distract them fromtheir listening For instance, the listeners cannot pay attention to the listening if theothers are talking or there are noises in the tape recording.

2.3.3 Difficulties from the materials

The density of information

It should be taken into account that density information is one of thedifficulties for the students, especially the beginners The dense passage is a longone with the great amount of information included Again, greater informationdensity is believed to make higher cognitive demands of listeners, which mayincrease the effort involved in listening comprehension

The complex text

In some cases, the organization of the text is rather complex In reality, wefound that listeners hearing a syntactically simplified version of a lecture scoredsignificantly higher on a recall test than did listeners hearing a more complexversion of the lecture Therefore, if the students do not have ability to draw a clearoutline of this text, they also fail to catch the information effectively

Unfamiliar topics

Familiar topics have a strong relationship to students’ reading comprehension.Topic familiarity highly contributed to students’ comprehension both in reading andlistening Moreover, we see that familiar topic enhanced students’ comprehension

It is reported that prior topic knowledge was correlated with listeningcomprehension It is no doubt that when students are familiar with the topic thatthey listen to, they will understand the message delivered easier Moreover, eventhough the teachers do not do any activities to build students’ backgroundknowledge on the topic, the students’ familiarity itself has assisted them tocomprehend the information Therefore, unfamiliar topics are big barriers for thelearners in listening subjects

xxv

2.3.4 Difficulties from physical setting

Using audio

In listening lessons, the students often practice with audio recording.Therefore, they cannot guess what the speakers are saying without watching On theother hand, video is a rich and valuable resource; and it is well-liked by bothstudents and teachers Obviously, video makes meaning clearer by illustratingrelationships in a way that is not possible with words, which proves a well-knownsaying that a picture is worth a thousand words This is in line with Yagang (1994)and Harmer (2001) that not seeing the speaker’s gesture and facial expressionsmakes it more difficult for the listener to understand the speaker’s meaning

Poor quality of the equipment and facilities

Unclear sounds resulting from poor-quality equipment can interfere with thelistener’s comprehension In addition, in a crowded classroom, the students who sit

at the end of the classroom may not listen to the lessons clearly According toChetchumlong (1987), the scarcity of opportunities to listen to a variety of spokentexts14 with the aid of good equipment and learn English with native speakers,especially in rural areas, contributes to listening performance Moreover, largeclassrooms, noises surrounding and crowded classes also have a negative impact onlistening

The noise and redundancy

When listening, the listeners often have to cope with the amount of noise.Some words may be drowned by outside interference, such as the surroundingsounds The foreign language learners must put more effort to grasp the meaningamong these noises Sometimes, they cannot get the point because of theinterruption of noise Besides, redundant utterances may take the form ofrepetitions, false starts, rephrasings, self-corrections, elaborations, tautologies, andapparently meaningless additions such as “I mean” or “you know” This redundancy

is a natural feature of speech and may be either a help or a hindrance, depending onthe students’ levels It may make it more difficult for beginners to understand whatthe speaker is saying; on the other hand, it may give advanced students more time to

“tune in” to the speaker’s voice and speech style

xxvii

CHAPTER 3: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

This chapter with the data collected from the questionnaire in listening skill bysecond-year students of English faculty, Thuongmai University Then, it will pointout difficulties which the students usually encounter in the listening process in orderthat they can find the best learning methods to improve their listening skills

3.1 Results collected from the questionnaire

In order to find out the difficulties in English listening skill, the surveyinvestigated 95 second-year students from English Faculty, Thuongmai Universityand the survey questionnaire consists of fourteen English questions The studentswere asked to tick the most suitable answers which correspond with their opinions

In the question, there are some options, the students can choose more than oneoption The reason why the researcher chose this kind of question is that it is veryuseful to select many different opinions of participants, so the researcher can deeplyand clearly understand what the students are facing Firstly, the study investigatesstudents’ attitude toward English listening skill, so the first question of the surveyquestionnaire is “the reason why students study listening” and the findings belowwill reveal to us why the students study listening

3.1.1 The students’ attitude toward English listening skill

Question 1: The reason why students study translation? Percentage

C It is practical It helps me enlarge my vocabulary and grammar 53.55%

D It helps me to learn more cultures in other countries and broaden

my knowledge

27.9%

F It helps to be more confident in communicating with foreigners 25.35%

Table 3.1: The reason why students study English listening skill

There are many reasons why students study English listening skill Thefindings of the survey reveal that when the students were asked about the reason for

studying listening, most of the students (65.3 per cent) answered that because it is acompulsory subject Because at Thuongmai University, students of English facultymust take part in listening courses including listening skill, listening in BusinessEnglish subject and listening is also important in Interpreting and AdvancedInterpreting subject Besides, listening is a useful subject helping them in manydifferent aspects 53.55 per cent of students answered that they study listeningbecause it is practical Listening helps them enlarge their vocabulary and grammar.When we study the listening subject, we have opportunities to listen to manydifferent fields such as fields of economy, politics, society and culture., etc fromwhich we can learn news vocabulary and grammar Due to listening to manydifferent fields, 27.9 per cent of the students agreed that it helps them to learn moreculture in other countries and broaden their knowledge In addition, listening is souseful that 40.2 per cent of the students assumed the reason for studying listeningbecause of its necessity for future job Finally, 25.55 per cent of the studentsanswered that because listening is their favorite subject and 33.3 per cent chose itfor a money-making tool In a word, the majority of these students study listeningskill subjects because it is a compulsory subject, it helps them enlarge theirvocabulary and grammar; and it helps them enlarge their vocabulary and grammar.

Question 2: How do you rate your translating English listening skill?

7.00%

73.00%

16.50%

3.50%

Poor Nomal Good Very good

Chart 3.1: Listening level of students

As we see in this chart, most of these students (73 per cent) evaluated thattheir English listening skill is normal It is evident because they are studying the

xxix

listening subject, their opportunity to practice listening in the class is limited.Besides, 16 per cent of these students rated good for their translating English –Vietnamese skills which shows that they are confident about their ability inlistening There are only 4 people rating a very good level for their listening skills.However, it is so sad that there are 7 per cent of these students rating poorly.Although they are the students of English faculty, listening skill is still difficult forthem In spite of good or poor level, to improve their listening skills, they need tofind out difficulties in listening and find the best way to solve it This might becaused by their previous failures or unhappy experiences in dealing with Englishbecause they had not received sufficient training in the first place Factors causingstudent’s listening comprehension problems are categorized into different sourcesincluding problems related to the learner themselves, the speakers, the listeningmaterials, and the physical setting The collected data will be analyzed in detailbelow.

Question 3 How often do you self-study listening at home?

11.00%

27.00%

55.00%

7.00%

Chart 3.2 The frequency of students self-studying listening

We can see in this chart that most of the students (55 per cent) sometimes and(27 per cent) rarely spend time self-studying listening at home We are quite happyfor this number because students have more concern for their studying, they want tohave their result better in listening subjects In particular, 7 per cent of these