(Luận văn Đại học Thương mại) A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES AND SOLUTIONS IN LISTENING COMPREHENSION OF FIRST YEAR ENGLISH MAJORS AT THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY

THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY ENGLISH FACULTY - - GRADUATION PAPER A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES AND SOLUTIONS IN LISTENING COMPREHENSION OF FIRST YEAR ENGLISH MAJORS AT THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY Supervisor : Nguyen Thi Thuy Chung Student : Nguyen Thi My Hanh Class : K54N2 Student’number : 18D170061 Hanoi, 2021 i LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ABSTRACT Although listening is one of the important skills when it comes to learn a foreign language, it seems to be a difficult task for students The study is aimed at finding out the difficulties in English listening comprehension of first-year major English students at Thuongmai University and giving some effective solutions to deal with this reality For the objective, 100 students were invited to participate in this study They were asked to a survey questionnaire which have to identify the obstacles The results of the study revealed that the major listening comprehension problems encountered by students at Thuongmai University such as insufficient vocabularies, fast speed of the speaker, lack of concentration, different accent of speaker, noises, long spoken text, limited contextual knowledge From the results, the researcher proposed some suggestions to help students solve these problems and enhance their listening comprehension skill The results of this study may also be useful for those who are interested in this field ii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ACKNOWLEDGMENTS During the four years of studying at the Thuong Mai University, I have received the enthusiastic guidance of teachers, until now, I have learnt a lot of valuable knowledge I would like to express my sincere thanks to the teachers of Thuongmai University, especially the teachers of the English department during my study at the university Thank you to the teachers in the department for your dedication and commitment with the spirit and responsibility, not only imparting knowledge, experience, and skills to me but also guiding me to strive With deep gratitude, I would love to send my gratitude to Mrs Nguyen Thi Thuy Chung - my supervisor for her valuable and constructive suggestions as well as her patient guidance, enthusiastic encouragement, and unfailing support to the completion of this study Furthermore, I would also like to thank those first-year English majored students at Thuongmai University who have enthusiastically participated in this study Their participation has been crucial to the completion of the research Due to the lack of time and the limits of personal knowledge, my graduation report may not avoid certain mistakes Therefore, I hope that I can receive personal opinions or any comments from teachers in order to improve the dissertation as well as broaden my horizons Ha Noi, April 15th 2022 Student Nguyen Thi My Hanh iii LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS TABLES Table 1: The methods freshman self-study English listening at home Table Listening difficulties related to listener Table Difficulties related to the Listening materials Table Difficulties related to physical settings Table 5: Solutions to improve English listening skill CHARTS Chart The period of time which the students have been learning English Chart The level of the first-year students in listening comprehension Chart 3: Students’ attitudes toward learning English listening comprehension Chart 4: Students perceive the level of the importance of English listening comprehension Chart 5: Students’ assessment about the level of the difficulties of English listening comprehension skill Chart Students’ attitude toward the English listening self-studying Chart The time students spend listening English at home iv LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com TABLE OF CONTENT ABSTRACT ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS iv CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY 1.1.Rationale of the study 1.2 Previous studies 1.3 Aims of the study 1.4 Research questions 1.5 Scope of the study 1.6 Research Methodology 1.7 Organization of the study CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Overview of listening comprehension 2.1.1 Definition of listening comprehension 2.1.2 The significance of listening comprehension skill 2.1.3 Types of listening comprehension 2.2 Factors making listening comprehension difficult for English learners 10 2.2.1 Factors relating to listeners 10 2.2.2 Factors relating to listening materials 12 2.2.3 Factors relating to physical setting 14 2.3 Ways to improve English listening comprehension skill 15 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH FINDINGS 18 3.1 The participants of the study 18 3.2 Data collection instruments 18 3.3 Data analysis 18 3.3.1 Students’ background information 19 3.3.2 Students’ attitude toward learning English listening comprehension skill 20 3.3.3 First-year English majored students’ difficulties in English listening 25 3.3.4 Activities to improve English listening comprehension 30 CHAPTER 4: RECOMMENDATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 33 4.1 Recommendations for improving English listening comprehension 33 v LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 4.1.1 Recommendations for listeners 33 4.1.2 Recommendation for teachers 34 4.2 Limitation of the study 35 4.3 Suggestions for further studies 35 CONCLUSION 36 REFERENCES 37 APPENDIX 39 vi LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY The first chapter includes an overview of the research topic The first problem mentioned is the reason for studying the topic as well as previous research and the aims of the study Chapter also points out the research questions and scope of the study Moreover, this is the chapter outlining the research methodology used in the study process Finally, summarizing the parts of the organization of the study 1.1 Rationale of the study In the trend of globalization and increasing technological development, English is spoken as a second language in the most countries in the world, it is also considered an indispensable support tool in human communication and business activities As a result, learning English is becoming more essential than ever In Vietnam, English is compulsory subject in schools and universities Among four skills of English, listening is considered to be the most challenging because of the complex process to identify and to understand what the speaker said As a researcher, I would like to present the dissertation titled: “A study on difficulties and solutions in English listening comprehension of first-year English majors at Thuongmai University” for some reasons The first reason is that learning listening will allow us to greatly improve the ability to communicate People need to hear different forms of English regularly and consistently if they want to communicate properly and meaningfully Listening ability is the critical component in achieving understandable language input Without understand inputs at the right level, any kind of learning simply cannot occur Moreover, in learning a language, listening skills not only help many students broaden their horizons but also advance them to improve other language skills such as speaking and writing Secondly, listening English comprehension is difficult since English is not our first language Plus, most of high school education focus on the preparation for the University entrance exam which tests reading and writing directly; listening wasn’t paid attention LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com From my observation after studying for nearly years at Thuongmai University, most of first-year students majoring in English still face with numerous of obstacles in English listening comprehension Because of that, it is necessary to find out the problems as well as propose some solutions to help English majored freshmen at Faculty of English overcome those difficulties 1.2 Previous studies In the world, a number of studies have been conducted concerning students’ listening comprehension Khamprated’s study (2012) explored the English listening and speaking problems faced by private vocational school students and determined the possible causes of their problems Quantitative data was gathered using questionnaire One of the major findings was the types of English listening problems that the participants commonly faced such as local accents, the speakers’ speed, cultural differences, and limited English grammar and lexical resources Next, Hamouda (2013) found in his research titled “An Investigation of Listening Comprehension Problems Encountered by Saudi students in the EL Listening Classroom The study was a mixed-methods approach utilizing a questionnaire and an interview The research was carried out with the participation of 60 first-year students majoring in English language and translation at Qassim University Their ages range from 20-22 years old He revealed that listening comprehension seems to be the weakest skill The finding showed that students at Qassim University encounter various kinds of listening problems in learning comprehension such as problems relating to speech delivery including the speed of speech, the bad quality of recordings, or the different accents of the speakers and to listeners such as a lack of concentration, anxiety, and insufficient vocabulary Another study was investigated by Alrawashdeh and Al-Zayed (2017) in their research of the difficulties encountered by teachers of English in listening comprehension teaching Quantitative and qualitative data were collected by means of questionnaire for teachers and informal interviews The teachers pointed three major problems, namely the learning environment, the availability of source and teaching aids, and the teachers’ proficiency hindered them from teaching English LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com listening comprehension effectively Besides, the thesis submitted by Fouad Abdalhamid named “Listening comprehension strategies of Arabic speaking ESL learners” The listening test and listening strategy which used questionnaire data was run through multiple statistical tests, including factor analysis, multiple regression, and t-tests, to identify the strategies used by the research participants and explain the relationship between strategy use and listening comprehension The results indicated that cognitive strategies are the most powerful predictor of listening comprehension, followed by socio-affective strategies, whereas metacognitive strategies were the predictor that accounted the least for listening comprehension In Vietnam, many studies related to difficulties in learning English listening skills have been conducted First, Nguyen Luong Ha Lien collaborated with Nguyen Thi Thanh Ha, who are English lecturers in English Faculty at Quy Nhon University contributed a study named “Methods of improving listening skills for English nonmajored students” This study focused on the difficulties in listening comprehension which non-English majored students faced with, then providing some recommendation for improvement They carried out a survey by using a questionnaire of 400 randomly selected freshmen from Quy Nhon University Descriptive statistics, factor analyses, and multiple regression analysis were used to analyze the data The resulted revealed that lack of vocabulary, background knowledge, long listening texts, unfamiliar topics are the main problems for learners to understand the listening contexts Proposal solutions may help students to overcome those obstacles such as increase vocabulary knowledge, exposure to multiple fields in listening topics and various accents The study titled: “Insights into Listening Comprehension Problems” (2019) was conducted by Thao Quoc Tran and Tham My Duong The research was conducted at a high school in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam with the participation of 368 students in eleven grade who answered a questionnaire and EFL teachers who took part in semi-structured interviews The collected quantitative and qualitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics The result agreed with Anderson (1995) and Goh (2000) that listening comprehension problems which listeners often cope with are LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com three phases of perception, parsing, and utilization In particular, the students encountered phonological and lexical problems (i.e high speech rates and challenging vocabulary), semantic and syntactic problems (i.e long utterances), and discoursal problems (i.e implied meanings, unfamiliar topics, and organization of ideas) They also propose some suggestions for students to facilitate English listening comprehension, for example, equip with note-taking skills, activate one’s background knowledge, and guess meanings from the context, etc 1.3 Aims of the study This study attempts to explore a broad view and in-depth knowledge about the understanding of how freshmen at English faculty at TMU cope with listening difficulties Firstly, the study identify the students’ perception to the importance of studying listening comprehension Secondly, most students find it difficult to learn listening so I would like to investigate the most common difficulties in learning listening comprehension skills perceived by first-year English majors at TMU, then identifying the causes of the problems Finally, based on the major findings, the study would provide some possible solutions for students to minimize the difficulties and enhance effectiveness in listening comprehension 1.4 Research questions The study aims to answer the following research questions: What problems freshmen of English Faculty at Thuongmai University face with when listening to English? What are the solutions for students to overcome these listening comprehension problems? 1.5 Scope of the study The scope of this study focuses on the freshmen of English Faculty at Thuongmai University to investigate common difficulties that they usually encounter then give some solutions to overcome difficulties and to improve listening LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com with the theory realized by Hamouda (2013) who identified that unfamiliar topic is one of the numerous difficulties which can be confronted in listening skill c Accent of speaker Another barrier of listening comprehension is the accent of speakers The questionnaire results showed that more than 80% of the participants (21% sometimes, 38% often, 23% always) admitted that it’s hard to comprehend the recorded materials due to various speaker’s accents The percentage of this problem is high since students not have much exposure to different accents from different countries They have been familiar with their own teachers’ accents then they usually find it difficult to understand someone else d Speed of speakers It is noticeable from table that speed of speakers are rated at a high level (93%) This is the most serious problem related to listening materials that students viewed as obstructing to their comprehension According to the figurres, most of the students pointed out that they miss information when speakers talk too fast This result is also consistent with the studies conducted by Hayati, A (2010) who have reported that their subjects unanimously rated speed of delivery as one of the greatest obstacles to understanding On the other hand, a small number (4% never; 3% rarely) of students did not consider it as a listening comprehension difficulty Based on the results of the questionnaires, listening materials itself is the main source of listening comprehension difficulties In particular, fast rate of delivery places the first position which hinder comprehension during listening English following by unfamiliar topics, long spoken texts; last but not least is various accents ❖ Difficulties related to physical settings Besides the factors come from the listening materials; the listener; environment surrounding the students are also the factor to inhibit listening comprehension The result can be seen in the following table: 29 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Item Statements Noises surrounding classroom affected corridors, my other 10 33 57 29 64 29 45 26 listening comprehension It is difficult for me to concentrate with noises around Unclear sounds resulting from a poorquality audio interfere with my listening comprehension Table Difficulties related to physical settings a Noises around As illustrated in table the noise around (both outside and inside classrooms) is a main obstacle to listening comprehension A great number of students revealed that it’s hard to concentrate on listening with noises around (29% often; 64% always) This problem is rated at high level because when the listening task is carried out with noises around (i.e Noises surrounding corridors, other classroom), students will be easily distracted by the noise, which interrupts the students form listening and focusing on the task b Poor quality of audio The majority of the students think the difficulties they face in listening comprehension are due to the poor quality of audio More than 70% of students (45% often; 26% always) reported that unclear sounds resulting from a poor-quality audio interfere with their listening comprehension The findings concurred with those of Bingol, Celik, Yidliz &Tugrul Mart’s (2014) studies who observed that the quality of sound system had impact on the listening comprehension of the students 3.3.4 Activities to improve English listening comprehension Based on the difficulties which hinder students learning listening skills, the researcher suggested some solutions for students The researcher asks students to choose suggestions (can tick more than one option) that improve their English listening comprehension The answer is re-listed in the following table: 30 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Solutions Numbers of Percentage students Listen to radio channels, podcast in English 48 48% Use voice chat on the internet to communicate with 20 20% Watch British or American tv series 60 60% Watch movie with English subtitles for the first time 56 56% Listen to English songs 50 50% Listen to news in English 30 30% Manipulate listening strategies 43 43% Expand vocabulary 80 80% Others………………………………… 5% friends and rewatch without subtitles for the next time Table 5: Solutions to improve English listening skill As illustrated in the table, 80% of the students think that “Expand vocabulary" is the best way to improve their English listening skill As mentioned above, students admitted that insufficient vocabulary interfered with their English listening, that’s why there’s a need to broaden their vocabularies It lays the foundation to understand English listening spoken text Next, "Watch British or American tv series" is the second rate with 60% This solution not only help students improve their skills but also is a good way to relax They can expose to various accents through tv series Being in the third position is "Watch movie with English subtitles for the first time and rewatch without subtitles for the next time" (accounting for 56%) The repetition is key when it comes to practice listening a foreign language Watching the same movie again and again gives students a chance to listen and reproduce the language they hear The next ones are listening to English songs; listening to radio channels, podcast, or news in English These are great ways to update world information and there are a lot of available videos with a various topic on YouTube for free Besides, 43% of respondents think they need to manipulate listening strategies to tackle their difficulties The option "use voice chat on the internet to communicate with friends" 31 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com takes 20% The blooming of social media creates more opportunities for students connect with native speakers Using voice chat to communicate with friends, teachers can improve not only listening skills but also their speaking skills There is also remaining 5% of students have other solutions for improving their English listening 32 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com CHAPTER 4: RECOMMENDATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS Based on the facts and figures, I proposed some recommendations for both students and teachers to enhance learning and teaching English listening comprehension 4.1 Recommendations for improving English listening comprehension 4.1.1 Recommendations for listeners For students, to develop the listening skill for the long term, the students themselves must be aware of their role in the learning process They must actively study to improve their listening comprehension skill in the classroom and at home as well 4.1.1.1 Before listening Before listening is very important because it is the foundation for the listening process Pre-listening activities are the things to before the students hear the passage to help them get the most out of what they are going to hear In order to understand a piece of spoken discourse, the listeners are required to have not only knowledge of the language but also some background knowledge of the world Prelistening activities make it possible for all students to share common background knowledge before listening In addition, since each document has its style, and if the learner can understand nonverbal clues such as tone of voice, listening will become easier even from the different cultures Background knowledge also helps students a lot in understanding the topic of the listening documents Therefore, students should spend more time reading books, newspapers, and magazines to gain more information and knowledge 4.1.1.2 During listening While-listening stage is the time for students to listen to the text and understand it The listeners need to highly concentrate and pay attention to the spoken text Turn off phones, ignore messages which easily get distracted Furthermore, it is impossible and not necessary for students to memorize the exact words or sentences They just need to catch and summarize the main ideas In the case, they catch the word that they don’t know the meaning, just ignore it, keep on listening, write down the key points 33 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com and then link them together to guess Plus, when listening students should not translate the listening text into their native language (in this case is Vietnamese), instead try to understand it in the target language (English) 4.1.2 Recommendation for teachers Teachers play a crucial part in improving students’ listening skill Without sufficient instruction, students will not determine their way to achieve their own learning • Using different kinds of input The teacher should provide students with different kinds of input, such as lectures, radio news, films, TV plays, everyday conversation, interviews, English songs, and so on Besides, using different native-speaker accents’ spoken text is necessary It will exposure to various accents, especially in extensive listening The American accent is quite different from the British, Australian, and Canadian Teachers also familiarize their students with the rules of pronunciation in order to help them hear the different forms of rapid natural speech and ask them to imitate native speakers’ pronunciation, tones and rhythm • Providing background knowledge and linguistic knowledge Encouraging the learners to think about and discuss what they already know about the content of the spoken text Teachers can also provide the background needed for them to understand the text, it can be their personal experience or through reading books, articles It can draw student’s attention on what to listen for Then, students predict what they might hear and make connections with what they already know, increasing the relevance of the information • Giving and gaining the necessary feedback During the lesson, the teacher should provide as much feedback as possible since it not only promotes student’s error correction but boots their motivation as well It can aid students to heighten their confidence in their ability to tackle listening problems Besides, teacher also ought to ask students’ feedback about the lesson as it can assist the teacher to determine where the class is going and how it should be taught 34 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com 4.2 Limitation of the study Although the study has certain positive aspects such as data collection methods, survey questionnaires for students, it can be admitted that the study has got a number of shortcomings First of all, due to the limited time, lack of experience, and prolonged Covid 19 pandemic, the data was only collected through one main instrument - the questionnaire then it was sent online to students Secondly, due to the limitation of scope of the study, the researcher only focuses on first-year students in English Faculty of which account for a small number of students at Thuongmai University As a result, the study's findings cannot be broadly generalized Besides, the author was unable to cover all the aspects of difficulties In spite of the mentioned limitations, I expect that this study will contribute to improve the teaching and learning in English listening comprehension at Thuongmai Universtity 4.3 Suggestions for further studies For further studies, other researchers can combine interview results with survey questionnaires to get more persuasive conclusions Further research needs to be conducted with more comprehensive samples including secondary or high school so as to get a complete picture of the problem 35 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com CONCLUSION This research was conducted with the aims to find out the difficulties of listening comprehension and solutions to deal those problems The research was based on the survey questionnaires The findings allowed me to come to the following conclusion: First-year English majored students at Thuongmai University well perceive the importance of listening comprehension However, most of them have difficulties understanding the listening texts The difficulties that students encountered in listening comprehension were related into three categories Each category had different obstacles such as insufficient vocabulary; fast rate of speaker; a variety of accents, inability of concentration; noises; the length of spoken text; listening strategies and limited contextual knowledge Based on the findings of the study, some suggestions that could be employed for students and teachers to encounter listening comprehension problem including improving vocabulary, background knowledge and practicing habit on the part of students As for teachers, they can provide background knowledge and linguistic knowledge; Give and gain the necessary feedback It is hoped that the study may be useful for 1st year students of English majors at Thuongmai University to improve their reading skill in particular and other skills in general 36 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com REFERENCES Abdalhamid, F (2012) Listening comprehension strategies of Arabic-speaking ESL learners Boyle, J P (1984) Factors affecting listening comprehension ELT Journal, 38(1), 4-38 Brown, G (1986) Investigating listening comprehension in context Chen, S W (2002) Problems in listening comprehension for learners of EFL Studies inEnglish Language and Literature Darti & Andi, A (2017) Analyzing Students' Difficulties toward Listening Comprehension Goh, C (2000) A cognitive perspective on language learners’ listening comprehension problems Hamouda, D A (2013) An investigation of Listening Comprehension problems encountered by Saudi students in the EL listening classroom Khamprated, N (2012) The problems with the English listening and speaking of students studying at a private vocational school in Bangkok, Thailand Retrieved from http://thesis.swu.ac.th/swuthesis/Tea_Eng_For_Lan(M.A.)/Nualsri_K.pdf Lien, N H (2018) Methods of improving listening skills for English non-majored students Lin, S H (2000) A study of English listening comprehension strategies used by senior high school students in Taiwan Unpublished Master’s thesis, NationalKaohsiung Normal University, Kaohsiung City, Taiwan, R.O.C Nguyen, Q N., & Thai, D C (2018) Listening comprehension: First-year Englishmajor students’ perceptions and problems Can Tho University Journal of Science, 54(2), 75-83 Rost, M (2002) Teaching and researching listening LonDon: Longman Thao Quoc Tran & Tham My Duong i ( 2020) Insights into Listening Comprehension Problems: 37 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com Underwood, M (1989) Teaching Listening New York: Longman Usti, D & (2016) A study on Listening Comprehension Problems Faced by Seconyear Students of English Study Program FKIP UR Vandergrift, L (1997) The comprehension strategies of second language (French) learners: A descriptive study Foreign Language Annals Vandergrift, L (1999) Facilitating second language listening comprehension: Acquiring successful strategies ELT journal, 53(3), 168-176 38 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com APPENDIX Dear students! This survey questionnaire is designed for my graduation paper namely: “A study on difficulties and solutions in English listening comprehension of first-year English majors at Thuongmai University” In completing these questions, please choose the answer by ticking the items in a checklist or expressing your idea in the blanks All your personal information as well as your answers will be kept confidentially and not be used for other purposes Sincerely thank you! PART I: PERSONAL INFORMATION Please choose the best answer How long have you been learning English?  Less than years  5-7 years  7-10 years  More than 10 years How rate your current English listening comprehension level?  Poor  Average  Good  Excellent PART II: WHAT ARE THE ATTITUDES OF FIRST-YEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS TOWARD LEARNING ENGLISH LISTENING COMPREHENSION SKILL? Please choose the best answer What is your attitude toward learning English listening comprehension skills?  Really like  Like  Normal 39 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com  Dislike In your opinion, how important is English listening comprehension?  Extremely important  Important  Slightly important  Unimportant What you think about the difficulty of listening comprehension skills?  Difficult  A little bit difficult  Normal  Not difficult at all How often you listen English at home?  Never  Rarely  Sometimes  Often By what ways you practice listening?  Listening to English news, podcast, songs  Using voice chat on the Internet communicating with friends  Watching movies, shows in English  Others…………………………………………………………………… How many hours per day you spend listening English?  30 minutes  Less than 30 minutes  1-2 hours  More than hours PART III: THE DIFFICULTIES IN ENGLISH LISTENING COMPREHENSION SKILL 40 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com (+) How often you encounter these difficulties in listening comprehension? (Tick out the best answer) Never Rarely Sometimes Often Always Difficulties related to listeners Item Statements 1 5 I am unable to concentrate because I search for the answers, and I listen to the text at the same time I find it difficult to really concentrate on listening Complex grammatical structures interfered with my listening comprehension My limited vocabulary makes it difficult to improve my listening skills I stop listening to think about an unknown word then I miss the rest of texts I use my experience and background knowledge of the topic to understand the spoken text I cannot use listening strategies very often I get somewhat difficult to apply listening strategies Difficulties related to listening materials Item Statements It is difficult for me to interpret the meaning of a long listening text 41 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com I feel fatigue when I listen to a long spoken text It’s not easy for me to infer the meaning of an unknown word while listening I often miss information when speakers speak too fast It’s hard to understand the recorded materials when speakers speak different accents Difficulties related to physical settings Item Statements Noises surrounding classroom affected corridors, my other listening comprehension It is difficult for me to concentrate with noises around Unclear sounds resulting from a poor-quality audio interfere with my listening comprehension PART IV: SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS TO IMPROVE ENGLISH LISTENING COMPREHENSION SKILL In your opinion, what are suggestions that improve your English listening comprehension skills? (You can tick more than one answer)  Listen to radio channels, podcast in English  Use voice chat on the internet to communicate with friends  Watch British or American television channels 42 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com  Watch movie with English subtitles for the first time and rewatch without subtitles for the next time  Listen to English songs  Listen to news in English  Manipulate listening strategies  Expand vocabulary Others……………………………………………………………………… 43 LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com ... entrance exam which tests reading and writing directly; listening wasn’t paid attention LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com From my observation after studying for nearly years... suggested solutions are mentioned to LUAN VAN CHAT LUONG download : add luanvanchat@agmail.com improve English listening comprehension and conclusion In addition, it gives summary and limitation of. .. the participation of 60 first- year students majoring in English language and translation at Qassim University Their ages range from 20-22 years old He revealed that listening comprehension seems