Rationale
As English nowadays has become a prerequisite for job seekers, there is a growing number of English learners who wish to sit for worldwide standardized English tests such as IELTS, TOEFL or TOEIC Among these, TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication) has been increasingly applied in both workplace and educational institutions Many universities offer English courses basing on the students’ TOEIC test scores Enterprises and organizations also use TOEIC scores as one criterion for employing new recruits and promoting employees
At Hanoi Law University (HLU), the TOEIC test has been used since 2010 as a standardized test to classify students’ English proficiency, place them into the right classes and evaluate their learning progress Students have to get at least TOEIC 450 scores to meet the requirements for graduation
Traditionally, a TOEIC test consists of two sections, which are designed to test candidates’ two skills: listening and reading Generally, listening skill is always considered the most essential as well as the most difficult skill for both teachers to teach and for learners to learn Listening in TOEIC is not an exception because it comprises different task types with various topics “An exploratory study on the teaching and learning of TOEIC listening skill at a university in Hanoi” has been conducted to gain insights into the difficulties encountered by teachers and students in TOEIC listening with the hope to contribute to the improvement of English teaching and learning at HLU.
Objectives of the study
The purpose of this study is to explore the real situation of teaching and learning TOEIC listening skill at HLU Therefore, the study aims to answer the following research questions:
1 What difficulties do students encounter in learning TOEIC listening skill?
2 What difficulties do teachers encounter in teaching TOEIC listening skill?
3 What are some suggestions to improve the teaching and learning of TOEIC listening skill at HLU?
Significance of the study
This study investigates the real difficulties that teachers and students at HLU face in the listening part of the TOEIC test By doing this research, the researcher wishes to help HLU students foresee the problems and overcome them in order to improve their listening scores Also, the study has been done to help HLU teachers beware of some teaching problems and adopt appropriate techniques to teach listening skill.
Scope of the study
The study focuses on the teaching and learning of TOEIC listening skill at HLU The study has been conducted under the scope of an exploratory study with a small number of teachers and students who are teaching and studying TOEIC courses at the university.
Methodology
The major research method used in the study is quantitative The data are collected from two survey questionnaires which intend to find out the difficulties teachers and students encounter in the teaching and learning of TOEIC listening skill at HLU
Basing on the data collected from the respondents, the researcher examines and analyzes the causes of those difficulties and suggests some solutions to improve the quality of teaching and learning TOEIC listening at HLU.
Organization
Part A Introduction presents the rationale, objectives, significance, scope, methodology and organization of the study
Part B Development is divided into two chapters:
Chapter 1 Theoretical Background lays the theoretical foundation for the research and reviews the previous studies
Chapter 2 The study deals with the subjects, research instruments, and procedure as well as results and discussions Some recommendations based on the findings are also provided in this chapter
Part C Conclusion summarizes the major findings of the study Limitations of the study and some suggestions for further research are mentioned as well
The Appendices where the survey questionnaires can be found come after the References
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
Notions of listening
There have been numerous definitions of listening, which present different views of linguists towards the concept
According to Underwood (1989), “listening is the activity of paying attention to and trying to get meaning from something we hear” (p.1) In other words, to be a good listener, one does not only need to understand the words themselves but also has to figure out the meaning implied by the speaker
Another definition is given by Brown and Yule (1983), who distinguish the literal meaning of the words and the speaker’s intended meaning The authors conclude that listening is actually the process where the listener achieves “a reasonable interpretation” of the speaker’s intention in the communication
In 1989, O’Malley and Chamot claim that listening is “an active and conscious process" in which the meaning is constructed from “contextual information” and
“existing knowledge” (p.420) This view is shared by Field (1998) who states that listening is “an invisible mental process” in which the listener must “discriminate between sounds, understand vocabulary and grammar structures, interpret stress and intention, retain and interpret this within the immediate as well as the large socio- cultural context of the utterance” (p.38)
From the above definition, it can be concluded that listening is a process in which the listener constructs meaning out of the information provided by the speakers This process involves the understanding a speaker’s accent or pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary and grasping his meaning Rost (1994) points out:
Listening is vital in the language classroom because it provides input for the learner
Without understanding input at the right level, any learning simply cannot begin
Listening fosters the learning of a second language because it provides input for the learning process Thus, listening plays an important role in the acquisition of a language.
Process of listening
Listening process involves complex physiological and cognitive processes Listening process is proposed to consist of three different processes They are perceptual processing, parsing and utilization In the perceptual processing, the sounds enter the echoic memory and are organized into meaningful units basing on the listener’s linguistic knowledge In the parsing, the meaning is constructed in the short-term memory by comparing the incoming information with the previous knowledge The utilization involves the transfer of short-term information to the long-term memory for other purposes (Underwood, 1989; O’Malley and Chamot, 1989)
Duzer (1997) agrees, for the most part, listing the following nine stages in listening process: (1) determining a reason for listening; (2) taking the raw speech and depositing an image of it in short-term memory; (3) attempting to organize the information by identifying the type of speech event (a conversation, a lecture, a radio ad) and the function of the message (to persuade/inform/request); (4) predicting information expected to be included in the message; (5) recalling background information to help interpret the message; (6) assigning a meaning to the message; (7) checking that the message has been understood; (8) determining the information to be held in long-term memory; and (9) deleting the original form of the message that has been received into the short term memory
Concerning how the knowledge is applied to the incoming sounds, there are two critical views of bottom-up and top-down processes in second language listening instruction (Nunan, 1991) In the bottom-up process, the meaning is constructed by combining increasing larger units of meaning from the phoneme-level up to discourse- level features In other words, in this process learners attempt to understand a listening passage by decoding sounds to form words, linking words to form phrases and sentences These sentences build a complex text, the meaning of which is then constructed by the listener
On the contrary, in the top-down process, the contextual and prior knowledge of the listener is utilized to build a conceptual framework for comprehension This view emphasizes the prominence of background knowledge already possessed by the learners in making sense of the information they hear As such, a significant lack of background knowledge can trouble the attempts to comprehend a particular utterance
Anderson and Lynch (1988) compare the bottom-up view of listener as “tape recorder” with the top-down view of listener as “model builder” An able listener should utilize both bottom-up and top-down knowledge in order to get the meaning of the spoken discourse.
Classification of listening
Listening can be categorized differently on the basis of different grounds Regarding the reasons for listening, Galvin (1985) divides listening into five categories: (1) to exchange in social rituals; (2) to exchange information; (3) to exert control; (4) to share feelings; and (5) to enjoy yourself
Basing on the situations in which listening occurs, Underwood (1989) forwards a detailed classification which consists of listening to live conversations in which one takes no part ; listening to announcements; listening to the news, the weather forecast;
7 listening to the radio for entertainment; watching a live performance of a play; watching a film in a cinema; listening to records; following a lesson; attending a lecture; listening on the telephone; following instructions; and listening to someone giving a public address
In a later work, Nunan (1991) classifies the aural texts into monologues and dialogues with the first being produced by only one speaker and the latter being created by two or more speakers The monologue can be either carefully structured, planned or unplanned The dialogue can be sub-divided basing on its purposes into interpersonal and transactional dialogues An interpersonal dialogue is socially oriented talk while the aim of a transactional dialogue is obtaining and providing information A further distinction is made between familiar and unfamiliar interpersonal dialogues on the ground of whether the interactants are acquaintances or strangers This can be schematized as below:
Figure 1: A classification of aural texts (extracted from Nunan, 1991, p.21)
Affective factors in listening
There are a great number of studies conducted in order to find out the factors contributing to listening difficulties According to Brown and Yule (1983), there are four groups of factors which can affect the difficulty of oral language tasks These are
Familiar the speaker (the number of speakers, the speaker’s speaking speed and the speaker’s accent ); the listener (the role of the listener, the requirement of listening task and the listener’s interest in the subject); the content (grammar, vocabulary, information structure, and background knowledge); and the support (pictures, diagrams, and visual aids)
This view is shared by Boyle (1984), who details the affective factors in listening as follows:
1 Experience/practice in listening to the target language: use of the media (cinema, TV, radio, etc.)
3 General background knowledge of the world MORE SPECIFIC
4 Physical and educational (age/sex, home background, size of family, educational background and type of school, physical health and alertness)
5 Intellectual (knowledge of the target language in its various aspects: phonology, lexis, syntax, and cohesion; powers of analysis and selection: ability to distinguish between main and supporting points; knowledge of the specific topic or subject; memory (short term and long term)
6 Psychological (motivation and sense of purpose while listening; attitude of the listener to the speaker; attitude of the listener to the message: level of interest; listener’s powers of attention and concentration)
1 Language ability of the speaker: native speaker - beginner-level non-native speaker
2 Speaker’s production: pronunciation, accent, variation, voice, etc
4 Prestige and personality of the speaker
C FACTORS IN THE MATERIAL AND MEDIUM
1 The language used to convey the message: phonological features, including stress, intonation, weak forms (especially in conversation), lexis, syntax, cohesion, etc
2 Difficulty of content and concepts, especially if the material is abstract, abstruse, highly specialized or technical, esoteric, lengthy, or poorly organized
3 Acoustic environment: noise and interference
4 Amount of support provided by gestures, visuals, etc
Table 1: Affective factors in listening (extracted from Boyle (1984, p.35))
Byrnes (1986) identifies three main problems in learning to listen The first listening problem is learners’ limited experience of the language Therefore, beginning-level listeners must concentrate very hard on form and might fail in getting the meaning The second problem is that the learners must listen - often for a longer time than listening in real life - and respond to a task which has been designed beforehand In practice, a lengthy spoken discourse often makes listeners physically tired and bored People listen for many purposes in their real life, not just to complete a given task The third problem that makes listening difficult is that the learners are divorced from the context Listeners cannot either look at the speakers and their meaning expressed via the gesture, eye contact and body movements or witness the setting in which the discourse occurs Thus, the process of grasping the meaning becomes much more challenging
Anderson and Lynch’s work (1988) asserts that the affective factors in listening fall into three principal categories: the type of language; the purpose in listening and the context in which the listening takes place After a series of experiments, the authors finally found out the five most influential factors in listening They include the organization of information; the familiarity of the topic; the explicitness and sufficiency of the information; the type of referring expressions used; and the type of relationship described in the text
In 1989, Underwood claim that one of the reasons why listening is challenging comes from the special features of spoken English First, the English language contains many unknown or unusual sounds for foreign listeners Second, English has a rhythmic intonation Next, unlike the written discourse, the spoken discourse is generally not well-organized, which makes it really hard for the listener to follow Another problematic aspect comes from the syntax and vocabulary of the utterance, which is much simpler and less specific The use of incomplete sentences, interactive
11 expressions, pauses and fillers also contribute to the listening difficulties Finally, the utilization of colloquial language causes troubles to students who get used to formal and academic language used in the classroom
Some potential problems for learners in learning to listen to English as pointed by Underwood (1989) include (1) lack of control over the speech; (2) not being able to get things repeated; (3) the limited vocabulary; (4) failure to recognize the signals; (5) problems of interpretation; (6) inability to concentrate; (7) established learning habits
In this study, the researcher will focus on the factors proposed by Boyle (1984)
However, only some of the most prominent aspects will be selected and discussed As such, difficulties in learning to listen will be categorized into the Listener factor, the Speaker factor and the Material/Medium factor The following section discusses each characteristic
1.4.1 Listener factor 1.4.1.1 Experience and practice in listening
Practice makes perfect Apart from the formal listening lessons conducted in class, learners are advised to practice listening by watching movies, watching news, listening to the radio or listening to songs The frequent exposure to the target language will help
“train the ears” and bring about more experience to the learners in listening
According to Rubin (1994), background knowledge has an impact on understanding a subject Learners construct meaning during the comprehension process by segmenting input into meaningful units, then matching the intake with their existing knowledge and filling the gaps with logical guesses Therefore, students who have broad background knowledge are said to be better listeners
1.4.1.3 Knowledge of the target language
Listeners’ knowledge of the target language includes the knowledge of the language’s phonology, vocabulary, grammar, and cohesion During the listening process, an able listener must recognize the sounds, decode them into words, understand the grammatical structures that connect words together, as well as catch the signals that make the discourse cohesive Also, successful listening requires the power of analysis and selection (that is, the ability to distinguish between main and supporting points)
Learners’ psychological factors can be categorized into motivation, sense of purpose, attitude of the listener to the speaker, attitude of the listener to the message, level of interest, and listener’s power of attention and concentration
As English nowadays has been globalized, the voice of speakers recorded in listening tapes varies greatly in terms of pronunciation and accent The different pronunciations of English versions (British, American, Indian, Canadian, Australian) make it difficult to perceive the sounds Especially students who are used to the accent of their teachers might feel dismayed when they cannot listen to other speakers
Stages of a listening lesson
This is the stage in which the context of the listening passage is established, the tasks are explained and assistance is offered There are various activities that students can do in pre-listening stage, such as reading something relevant, looking at pictures, discussing a topic, answering questions, doing written exercises, considering strategies for the tasks These activities can either help activate students’ relevant prior linguistic and background knowledge or provide them clues for the following listening passage
However, the choice of pre-listening activities depends on a number of factors: the time available; the material available; the ability of the class; the interests of the class; the interests of the teacher; the place in which the work is being carried out; the nature and content of the listening text itself
At this stage, the students listen to the passage and fulfill their tasks During this phase, there can be a period when students discuss their responses The listening can be repeated for students to complete the activity or to clarify their missing information
Examples of while-listening activities include putting pictures in order, completing pictures, drawing pictures, arranging items, following a route, completing grids, completing chart, labeling, deciding True/False statements, doing multiple-choice questions, gap-filling, spotting mistakes, and predicting Whatever activities, it is highly suggested that teachers provide immediate feedback on students’ performance
The purpose of post-listening stage is to encourage learners to use what they have got from the listening text and reinforce their overall command of English through a combination of skills To be more specific, students needs to act upon what they have heard to clarify meaning and extend their thinking Well-planned post-listening activities are just important as those before and during listening There are a variety of
TOEIC
post-listening activities such as summarizing the speaker’s presentation, reflecting on what they have listened to, using information from the listening text for problem- solving and decision-making activities, identifying relationships between speakers, establishing mood/attitude/behavior of the speaker, role-play and so on
1.6 TOEIC 1.6.1 Overview of a TOEIC test
TOEIC, which was developed by Educational Testing System (ETS) in Japan in 1979, is an English-language proficiency test for non-native learners It measures the everyday English skills of people working in an international environment in business, commerce, and industry
Traditionally, TOEIC is a two-hour paper-and-pencil test It consists of 200 multiple- choice questions which are divided into two sections: Listening and Reading Separate scaled scores are provided for each section, the part score scales ranging from 5 to 495 and the total score scales ranging from 10 to 990 The Listening section tests how well the test taker understands spoken English and the Reading section written English The overall structure of the test is summarized as below
TOEIC Listening and Reading Test Listening Comprehension
Text Completion: 12 questions conversations with 3 questions each
Talks: 30 questions; 10 talks with 3 questions each
Single Passages: 28 questions Double Passages: 20 questions
Examples of the topics that examiners may find in the TOEIC test questions include the following:
Corporate Development: research, product development
Dining Out: business and informal lunches, banquets, receptions, restaurant reservations
Entertainment: cinema, theater, music, art, exhibitions, museums, media
Finance and Budgeting: banking, investments, taxes, accounting, billing
General Business: contracts, negotiations, mergers, marketing, sales, warranties, business planning, conferences, labor relations
Health: medical insurance, visiting doctors, dentists, clinics, hospitals
Housing/Corporate Property: construction, specifications, buying and renting, electric and gas services
Manufacturing: assembly lines, plant management, quality control
Offices: board meetings, committees, letters, memoranda, telephone, fax and e- mail messages, office equipment and furniture, office procedures
Personnel: recruiting, hiring, retiring, salaries, promotions, job applications, job advertisements, pensions, awards
Purchasing: shopping, ordering supplies, shipping, invoices
Technical Areas: electronics, technology, computers, laboratories and related equipment, technical specifications
Travel: trains, airplanes, taxis, buses, ships, ferries, tickets, schedules, station and airport announcements, car rentals, hotels, reservations, delays and cancellations
(Extracted from “TOEIC Examinees Handbook” (2008, p.3))
The entire listening test, which lasts approximately 45 minutes, is broken up into four main parts differing in the length and structure of the listening passage
In part 1, for each of the ten questions, the candidate will see a photograph either about people or things and hear four descriptive statements related to the photograph
Examinees are asked to select the one statement that best describes the picture The difficulty in this part may come from (1) words that sound like the correct answer; (2) words related to the correct answer; (3) words used out of context; (4) incorrect details provided; and (5) incorrect inferences made
(A) The girl is stretching (incorrect detail) (B) The girl is next to the dog (correct answer) (C) The girl is dancing (incorrect detail)
(D) The girl is under the dog (related words: girl, dog)
(Extracted from Taylor and Byrne, Very Easy TOEIC, p.46)
Part 2: Question-Response (approximately 15 minutes)
In part 2, the candidate will hear 30 questions or statements that may ask about time, people, an opinion, a choice, a suggestion, a reason, or a location For each of the questions or statements there are three possible responses The candidate’s job is to select the best response to the question or statement Generally, the questions in Part 2 are informative questions belonging to one of the following types: (1) Interrogative questions (using Who, Whose, Whom, Which, What, Where, When, How, Why); (2) Non-interrogative questions (using Be/Do, auxiliary verbs); and (3) other question types like Indirect questions, Tag questions, Negative questions, Alternative questions, Declarative sentences and Suggestions
The choices in this part may be difficult and confusing due to (1) similar-sound words,
(2) repeated words, (3) words used in a different context, (4) incorrect verb tense or person, and (5) inappropriate response to the type of question
Mary is never late for her meetings
(A) He is always on time (incorrect person)
(B) Her meeting is running late
(words used in a different context) (correct answer)
In part 3, the candidate will hear 10 conversations between two people at the office, at the hotel reception, at the restaurant, or over the telephone After each conversation, he/she will be asked to answer three questions about what the speakers say The questions normally ask about the general idea of the conversation and the examinees are often required to identify an activity, an emotion, a relationship, a reason, a location or an opinion The reasons for confusing choices are quite similar to those in part 2, including: (1) words that sound like the correct answer; (2) words in a different context or a different meaning; (3) incorrect details provided; (4) incorrect inferences made; and (5) irrelevant details provided
Speaker A: I’d like to book a flight to Santiago
Speaker B: Certainly When would you like to fly?
Speaker A: Next Monday Can you make a hotel reservation for me, also?
(correct answer) (incorrect inference) (incorrect detail)
In part 4, the candidate will hear 10 talks given by a single speaker and will be asked to answer three questions about what the speaker says in each talk The talk can be an airport announcement, a news report, a book review, an informal talk, a formal speech, a telephone message or an introduction The question types in this part can be Main Idea Question, Fact and Detail Question, Inference Question or Cause-and-Effect Question The sources of difficulty listening to this part are similar to the ones in part 2 and part 3
“Next Tuesday is Library Forgiveness Day All overdue books and late fines are forgiven Return your overdue books to the library on Tuesday and you won’t be charged a late fine.”
What are library users asked to do next Tuesday?
Give new books to the library
Charge the fines to their credit card
(incorrect detail) (correct answer) (sounds like correct answer) (incorrect detail)
Review of previous studies
Research papers on the teaching and learning of listening skill have been carried out so far by some candidates of the Faculty of Post-Graduate Studies at the University of Languages and International Studies, VNU
Bui (2009) studied the problems faced by Vietnamese learners in learning IELTS listening The findings suggest that the sources of difficulties come from (1) unfamiliar topics of the listening text; (2) learner’s limited vocabulary, grammar and background knowledge; (3) the speaker’s speed and accent; (4) the time allowance for listening; (5) cultural differences and (6) types of listening tasks Among these, the unfamiliarity of the listening topics is ranked the most difficult to IELTS listeners
Nguyen (2010) conducted a research on the current situation in teaching and learning English listening at a high school in Hanoi She found out three main listening problems experienced by 10 th grade students These include (1) the method of assessment which focuses on grammar and vocabulary only; (2) poor listening techniques and strategies such as trying to listen and understand every single word and not being able to keep up with the rate of the listening passage; and (3) students’ negative mood in the listening lessons
Nhu (2012) investigated the common errors in the TOEIC listening test made by pre- intermediate students at Haiphong Foreign Language Center The three most frequently made mistakes are reported to result from (1) similar-sound words; (2) different accent, stress and intonation; and (3) limited linguistic and background knowledge
In conclusion, the reviewed literature serve as a base in understanding the nature of listening and the factors that affect listening comprehension The previous and influential researchers (Brown and Yule, Byrnes, Anderson and Lynch, Underwood and Boyle) have investigated different sources of difficulties that ESL learners may encounter in listening acquisition and comprehension However, their studies do not focus on the listening factors relating to Vietnamese background and the context of teaching and learning English in Vietnam As for the M.A theses conducted by Vietnamese researchers, the reality of teaching and learning English listening skill has been studied either in a different setting or from a different perspective Therefore, it is essential for the present researcher to fill in the gap by conducting “An exploratory study on the teaching and learning of TOEIC listening skill at a university in Hanoi”.
Situation of teaching and learning TOEIC listening skill at HLU …
At HLU, the teaching and learning of TOEIC has been applied since 2010 Students all have to take a placement test and based on the result of the test, they are classified into three groups:
Group 1 includes those whose TOEIC stores are less than 200 These students cannot enroll into TOEIC classes They must continue studying at some foundation classes either at home or at private classes and re-take the placement test
Group 2 includes students whose TOEIC scores range from 200 to 450 They will be placed into the TOEIC course which lasts in two continuous semesters The core textbook used in the course are Longman Preparation Series for the New TOEIC Test – Introductory Course Teachers are English lecturers at the English Division of
HLU During the course, the students have to get five progress tests as the requirement of the attendance check and one final-term test
Students from group 3 are considered as having met the required English level They don’t need to attend classes in English
THE STUDY
Subjects
There are two groups of participants in the study:
One group included 50 students chosen at random from eight TOEIC classes at HLU
They are all second-year students at HLU The ratio of male and female were 12/38
All of them attended the placement test and got the TOEIC scores ranging from 200 to under 450
Another group consisted of 14 teachers who are working at the English Division and have been teaching TOEIC classes All of them are female, aged 25-53 All the teachers are qualified in English teaching
The data were collected through two questionnaires – one for the teachers and the other for the students The researcher used survey questionnaires to collect quantitative data because a well-structured questionnaire “can provide data economically and in a form that lends itself perfectly to the purposes of the study” (Verma and Mallick, 1999, p.24) Surveys are also a useful tool to gather “information about affective dimensions of teaching and learning, such as beliefs, attitudes, motivations, and preferences”
(Bension and Voler, 1997, p.10) Brown (1987) also explains that using questionnaires allows for more uniformity across questions, that respondents are less likely to skip questions because of their length or complexity, and that responses are relatively easy to interpret
The survey questionnaire for students consists of 12 questions which are divided into three main parts: students’ general information, students’ common difficulties in TOEIC listening and students’ difficulties in separate parts of TOEIC listening test
The survey for teachers has 8 questions which are categorized into teachers’ general information and teachers’ difficulties in teaching TOEIC listening
The questionnaires for students were delivered during the TOEIC listening courses at the university The students were asked to fill in the questionnaire objectively and seriously within 10 minutes Before administering the questionnaire, the researcher had time to explain the purpose and the importance of the study as well as clarify any questions that learners had It took one week for the researcher to collect the data because the classes were not at the same day and classroom as well The questionnaires for teachers were delivered on a meeting at the English Division because all the teachers gathered on the day The same procedure as above was taken by the researcher
The data collected from the questionnaires were classified on the basis of the research questions After that, they were analyzed carefully The results were then displayed in forms of tables and charts
2.4 Results and discussion 2.4.1 The teaching of TOEIC listening 2.4.1.1 Teachers’ general information
The teachers vary greatly in terms of age Interestingly, the number of teachers aged 21-30 is equal to the number of those aged 50+ and the proportion of teachers aged 31-
40 is the same as that of those 41-50 As such, one half of the teachers are young and middle-aged (21-40) while the other half include the elder teachers (41-50+)
29% of the teachers have a B.A degree in English Teaching These teachers used to be Russian teachers and then they were re-trained to become English teachers Half of the teachers hold an M.A degree and the remaining 21% are studying M.A courses in English teaching
Class lecturer Division Management Others
The majority of the teachers (64.29%) are only responsible for teaching classes
21.43% have extra work as division management Some other responsibilities reported by the teachers are executive members of Trade Union, Youth Union leaders, teaching private classes at home or teaching part-time at other universities/language centers
Chart 1.4: Teachers’ length of time teaching TOEIC listening
TOEIC has been used at HLU since 2010 At the time the study was conducted, the teaching of TOEIC listening has been applied for 3 years A great number of teachers (71.43%) had 3-5 years teaching experience 21.42% have less than 3 years experience teaching as they are new teachers at the division and only 01 teacher (which makes up 7.14%), who has taught TOEIC classes at other foreign language centers, has more than 5 years experience This data indicates that most teachers do not have much experience in teaching TOEIC listening
2.4.1.2 Teachers’ difficulties in teaching TOEIC listening
Pre-listening stage difficulties Percentage providing the context of the listening passage 0% explaning tasks/giving instructions 0% providing vocabulary/grammar related to the passage 0% designing extra pre-listening activities 57.14% motivating learners to listen 85.71% having enough time for pre-listening activities 35.71% providing students with listening strategies and techniques 0%
Table 3.1: Teachers’ difficulties at pre-listening stage
The highest percentage of teachers (85.71%) stated that motivating students to learn is a big problem for them in the pre-listening stage The second biggest problem, which is encountered by more than half of the population, is designing extra pre-listening activities Having enough time for pre-listening activities is another difficulty which accounts for 35.71% of the teachers
While-listening stage difficulties Percentage
Providing feedback on students’ mistakes 0%
Adjusting tasks to suit students’ ability and interest 42.86%
Offering help in case students cannot listen and get the message 0%
Varying the level of difficulty of the text 14.39%
Providing extra authentic listening texts 42.86%
Table 3.2: Teachers’ difficulties at while-listening stage
The most outstanding problem in while-listening stage that teachers encounter is designing various tasks which makes up 71.43% This may be due to that fact that TOEIC listening test consists of only multiple-choice questions which are difficult to transfer into other task types Almost half of the teachers (42.86%) have troubles in adjusting tasks to suit students’ ability and interest as well as providing extra authentic listening texts Another problem is varying the level of difficulty of the text, which is encountered by 14.39%
Post-listening stage difficulties Percentage
Having enough time for post-listening activities 64.29%
Involving all students into post-listening activities 50%
Desiging extra tasks and activities 35.71%
Working on form (vocabulary/grammar) 0%
Table 3.3: Teachers’ difficulties at post-listening stage
Lack of time is a big obstacle for the majority of teachers at the percentage of 64.29%
Involving students into post-listening activities is another problem among 50% of the teachers whereas the problem of designing post-listening extra tasks activities is encountered by 35.71% of the teachers
Noise in/outside the classroom 42.86%
Listening facilities (CD player, CDs) 0%
As can be seen from the table, all teachers are dissatisfied with big class size As a matter of fact, there are about 35-40 students in an English class at HLU The classrooms where English lessons are taught are often lecture halls, which are designed for up to 150 students Thus, this teaching condition causes extra difficulties for teachers to teach listening A perce ntage of 42.86% said that their teaching is affected by environmental noise as well
2.4.2 The learning of TOEIC listening 2.4.2.1 Students’ general information
The majority of the students are female (76%) and the percentage of male students is 24% This male/female ratio is typical of the institutions whose majors are social subjects HLU is not an exception
To fulfill the course requirement
To prepare for the future job
Chart 2.2: Reasons for studying TOEIC
As can be seen from the chart, students have clear aims in attending TOEIC classes
The majority of the total population (73%) learnt TOEIC as a course requirement to get a graduation degree The remaining 27% leant TOEIC to prepare for their future job
None of the students think that the reasons for their studying come from interests or desire to improve English
Chart 2.3: Students’ length of time learning English
The majority of the students (92%) have learnt English for 5-7 years This implies that most students learnt English at secondary and high school A small number of students at 8% even have more than 7 years learning English
Only learning at the university
Going to extra English classes
Getting access to the media
Procedure
The questionnaires for students were delivered during the TOEIC listening courses at the university The students were asked to fill in the questionnaire objectively and seriously within 10 minutes Before administering the questionnaire, the researcher had time to explain the purpose and the importance of the study as well as clarify any questions that learners had It took one week for the researcher to collect the data because the classes were not at the same day and classroom as well The questionnaires for teachers were delivered on a meeting at the English Division because all the teachers gathered on the day The same procedure as above was taken by the researcher
The data collected from the questionnaires were classified on the basis of the research questions After that, they were analyzed carefully The results were then displayed in forms of tables and charts.
Results and discussion
The teachers vary greatly in terms of age Interestingly, the number of teachers aged 21-30 is equal to the number of those aged 50+ and the proportion of teachers aged 31-
40 is the same as that of those 41-50 As such, one half of the teachers are young and middle-aged (21-40) while the other half include the elder teachers (41-50+)
29% of the teachers have a B.A degree in English Teaching These teachers used to be Russian teachers and then they were re-trained to become English teachers Half of the teachers hold an M.A degree and the remaining 21% are studying M.A courses in English teaching
Class lecturer Division Management Others
The majority of the teachers (64.29%) are only responsible for teaching classes
21.43% have extra work as division management Some other responsibilities reported by the teachers are executive members of Trade Union, Youth Union leaders, teaching private classes at home or teaching part-time at other universities/language centers
Chart 1.4: Teachers’ length of time teaching TOEIC listening
TOEIC has been used at HLU since 2010 At the time the study was conducted, the teaching of TOEIC listening has been applied for 3 years A great number of teachers (71.43%) had 3-5 years teaching experience 21.42% have less than 3 years experience teaching as they are new teachers at the division and only 01 teacher (which makes up 7.14%), who has taught TOEIC classes at other foreign language centers, has more than 5 years experience This data indicates that most teachers do not have much experience in teaching TOEIC listening
2.4.1.2 Teachers’ difficulties in teaching TOEIC listening
Pre-listening stage difficulties Percentage providing the context of the listening passage 0% explaning tasks/giving instructions 0% providing vocabulary/grammar related to the passage 0% designing extra pre-listening activities 57.14% motivating learners to listen 85.71% having enough time for pre-listening activities 35.71% providing students with listening strategies and techniques 0%
Table 3.1: Teachers’ difficulties at pre-listening stage
The highest percentage of teachers (85.71%) stated that motivating students to learn is a big problem for them in the pre-listening stage The second biggest problem, which is encountered by more than half of the population, is designing extra pre-listening activities Having enough time for pre-listening activities is another difficulty which accounts for 35.71% of the teachers
While-listening stage difficulties Percentage
Providing feedback on students’ mistakes 0%
Adjusting tasks to suit students’ ability and interest 42.86%
Offering help in case students cannot listen and get the message 0%
Varying the level of difficulty of the text 14.39%
Providing extra authentic listening texts 42.86%
Table 3.2: Teachers’ difficulties at while-listening stage
The most outstanding problem in while-listening stage that teachers encounter is designing various tasks which makes up 71.43% This may be due to that fact that TOEIC listening test consists of only multiple-choice questions which are difficult to transfer into other task types Almost half of the teachers (42.86%) have troubles in adjusting tasks to suit students’ ability and interest as well as providing extra authentic listening texts Another problem is varying the level of difficulty of the text, which is encountered by 14.39%
Post-listening stage difficulties Percentage
Having enough time for post-listening activities 64.29%
Involving all students into post-listening activities 50%
Desiging extra tasks and activities 35.71%
Working on form (vocabulary/grammar) 0%
Table 3.3: Teachers’ difficulties at post-listening stage
Lack of time is a big obstacle for the majority of teachers at the percentage of 64.29%
Involving students into post-listening activities is another problem among 50% of the teachers whereas the problem of designing post-listening extra tasks activities is encountered by 35.71% of the teachers
Noise in/outside the classroom 42.86%
Listening facilities (CD player, CDs) 0%
As can be seen from the table, all teachers are dissatisfied with big class size As a matter of fact, there are about 35-40 students in an English class at HLU The classrooms where English lessons are taught are often lecture halls, which are designed for up to 150 students Thus, this teaching condition causes extra difficulties for teachers to teach listening A perce ntage of 42.86% said that their teaching is affected by environmental noise as well
2.4.2 The learning of TOEIC listening 2.4.2.1 Students’ general information
The majority of the students are female (76%) and the percentage of male students is 24% This male/female ratio is typical of the institutions whose majors are social subjects HLU is not an exception
To fulfill the course requirement
To prepare for the future job
Chart 2.2: Reasons for studying TOEIC
As can be seen from the chart, students have clear aims in attending TOEIC classes
The majority of the total population (73%) learnt TOEIC as a course requirement to get a graduation degree The remaining 27% leant TOEIC to prepare for their future job
None of the students think that the reasons for their studying come from interests or desire to improve English
Chart 2.3: Students’ length of time learning English
The majority of the students (92%) have learnt English for 5-7 years This implies that most students learnt English at secondary and high school A small number of students at 8% even have more than 7 years learning English
Only learning at the university
Going to extra English classes
Getting access to the media
As shown above, students’ practice is quite limited The biggest percentage of the population only practice listening in the classroom which accounts for 78% Only 24% attend extra classes and 18% practice listening via the media such as watching TV or listening to the radio A very small number of students (at 4%) ever attempt to talk to foreigners
Table 4: Students’ feelings in learning TOEIC listening
Most of the students claimed that they felt confused (86%), nervous (60%) and unable to concentrate (56%) However, none of them had extremely negative feelings such as stress, de-motivation and tiredness during listening lessons Still there is a minor number of students who are confident, comfortable and motivated in listening
Chart 2.5: Students’ evaluation of the level of difficulty of TOEIC listening test
The highest percentage of students at 72% consider the TOEIC listening test difficult
18% think that the test is very difficult and 4% extremely difficult Only 6% of the students said that they had little difficulty in TOEIC listening
Chart 2.6: Students’ evaluation of the most difficult part of TOEIC listening test
Among the four parts, part 4 is voted by most students (81%) as the most difficult
2.4.2.2 Students’ general difficulties in learning TOEIC listening
Difficulties related to Listener factor Percentage little experience of listening in English 86% lack of practice 78% limited background knowledge 42% limited linguistic knowledge 100% phonology 96% vocabulary 80%
35 grammar 34% cohesion 30% analyzing/selecting ideas 22% lack of motivation in listening 36% lack of purpose in listening 32% poor attention and concentration 18%
Table 5.1: Students’ difficulties related to Listener factor
One hundred percent of the students admit that their listening difficulties are due to limited knowledge of the language To be more specific, their poor knowledge of English phonology (including pronunciation, stress and intonation) and lack of vocabulary greatly affect their listening ability The second problem is students’ inexperience in English listening, which makes up 86% of the population Lack of practice also causes difficulties in listening among 78% of the learners
Difficulties related to Speaker factor Percentage pronouncing/recognizing sounds in English 26% different accents 98% stress/intonation in English 94% fast speed 100%
Table 5.2: Students’ difficulties related to Speaker factor
Almost all the factors related to the speaker cause tremendous challenges for the learners
100% of the students find the speaker’s fast speed troublesome for them Followed is the difference in speakers’ accents (making up 98%) and stress and intonation in English (94%)
Difficulties related to Material/medium factor Percentage too colloquial / formal language style 22% specialized content 68% long passage 13% poorly-organized discourse 0% background noise on the recording 0% environmental noise 28% lack of gestures and visuals 54%
Table 5.3: Students’ difficulties related to Material/medium factor
Factors related to material and medium seem to cause less trouble for students in comparison to the previous factors Among these, specialized content of the listening passage is voted by 68% of the students Lack of gestures and visuals is another problem for 54% of the whole population
2.4.2.3 Students’ specific difficulties in TOEIC listening parts
Words related to the correct answer 82%
Table 5.4: Students’ difficulties in Part 1
The most problematic aspect of students’ listening in this part is similar-sound words (88%) Listening to words related to the correct answer is the second aspect which troubles 82% of the population The third problem for students is words used in a different context, making up 78% Overall, students’ difficulties in Part 1 are closely related to their limited knowledge of English vocabulary
Words used in a different context 46%
Inappropriate response to a question type 64%
Not understand the speaker’s intention 52%
Table 5.5: Students’ difficulties in Part 2
Recommendations
Based on the facts and figures, the researcher would like to give some suggested solutions to improve the teaching and learning of TOEIC listening skill at HLU
Firstly, to make listening lessons more effective, teachers, cooperating with the authority officials, need to reduce the size of the TOEIC classes In foreign language learning, class size has great impact on students’ performance Students seem to do worse in big classes Also, the classrooms should be designed especially for learning English with the appropriate area and the reasonable level of noise resistance
Secondly, teachers should try to motivate students by improving teaching techniques and developing listening materials Normally, students are motivated to listen if the listening passage is of their interests and capabilities A study by Bone (1988), cited in White (1998) showed that “People only listen at only 25% of their potential and ignore, forget, distort or misunderstand the other 75% Concentration rises about 25% if they think that what they are hearing is important and they are interested in, but it never reaches 100%” (p.7) Therefore, apart from the principal tasks in the core textbook, teachers should supplement extra tasks and activities that match students’ proficiency, background knowledge and personal interest Listening materials can be taken from other sources such as the Internet, reference books, and authentic texts Teachers’ flexibility in organizing the lessons also helps minimize students’ difficulty and get them interested in listening lessons
Finally, different parts of the test deal with different kinds of listening It is suggested that teachers provide students with listening strategies to cope with different task types
For example, in part 1, students are suggested to observe photos by asking such questions as “Who?”, “What”, “Where” In part 2, it is advisable that students identify the first word of the question as it often suggests what kind of answer is required In part 3, students should watch out for distracting numbers such as dates, times, number of things/people In part 4, it is important to listen closely to the introduction preceding the talk as it will tell what type of information listeners will hear (news report, advertisement, recorded message, announcements, etc.)
First and foremost, students should devote time for practicing listening and develop learning autonomy It is suggestive that students spend a certain amount of time every day to listen to English in different text types similar to TOEIC listening format (announcements, weather forecast, news report, advertisements, telephone conversation, etc.) This practice will help students familiarize with the language, speakers’ accents as well as English stress and intonation
Moreover, it is necessary for students to improve their vocabulary An effective way is reading extensively, which helps widen vocabulary as well as background knowledge
Do more vocabulary exercises on TOEIC topics such as travel, news, office, restaurants, etc To overcome the confusion of similar-sound words and related words, for instance, students should learn homographs (words having the same spelling but totally different meaning such as bear(animal)/bear(to stand); bank(financial institution)/bank(river side) and homophones (words having the same pronunciation but different meaning such as aunt/ant; buy/by; I/eye ) Learning minimal pairs (pairs of words which differ in only one phonological element) in English is a good way to help students identify the difference between similar sounds and avoid choosing the wrong answers especially in Part 1 and 2 Examples of minimal pairs are bag/bad, pit/pet, pen/pan
Last but not least, the learning of TOEIC listening skill will be much easier if students learn its sub-skills Among the sub-skills of listening are
(1) ability to follow the general trend of what is said
(2) ability to understand specific details
(3) ability to check a specific piece of pre-knowledge against what is said
(4) ability to understand the speaker’s intention (why did s/he say something?)
(5) ability to understand the speaker’s attitude (how s/he felt)
(Lewis & Hill, 1992:62) Therefore, it is advisable that students try to improve sub-skills in order to become an efficient listener
Summary of the study
TOEIC is a challenging examination and there is no magic way to help students to get a higher level immediately However, the awareness of the difficulties in TOEIC listening and adoption of the appropriate strategies and techniques can help students to perform to the best of their ability
This present study has displayed an exploration into the difficulties in the teaching and learning of TOEIC listening skill at a university in Hanoi The difficulties as identified by teachers and students are highly related It seems that one problem results in another within a circle, which causes ineffective teaching and learning
To answer the research question 1, the difficulties faced by teachers in teaching TOEIC listening can be categorized into different stages of a listening lesson At pre- listening stage, teachers have some difficulties such as motivating learners to listen, designing extra pre-listening activities and having enough time for pre-listening activities Difficulties at the while-listening stage come from several sources, including designing various listeing tasks, adjusting tasks to suit students’ ability and interest, providing extra authentic listening texts and varying the level of difficulty of the text Regarding post-listening stage, the barriers found out from the data analysis consist of having enough time for post-listening activities, involving all students into post-listening activities, and desiging extra tasks and activities Other teaching difficulties are related to big class size and the environmental noise
To answer the research question 2, students’ difficulties in the learning of TOEIC listening skill are viewed from two perspectives From the first perspective, students’ difficulties can be systematized into Listener factor, Speaker factor and
Material/medium factor From the other perspective, difficulties can be divided into specific parts (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4) of TOEIC Listening test On the ground of the Listener factor, limited knowledge of the language (especially English phonology and vocabulary), little experience of listening, and lack of practice cause the most difficulty to students Regarding the Speaker factor, students have troubles in speakers’ fast speed, different accents and stress/intonation Among the difficulties related to Material/medium factor, specialized content and lack of gestures and visuals are the most outstanding ones The four parts of the TOEIC listening test are different in their text types and tasks Accordingly, difficulties faced by students in each part vary as well Part 1 is troublesome in terms of similar-sound words, words related to the correct answer and words in another context whereas inappropriate response to a question type and understanding the speaker’s intention are tricky in
Part 2 Part 3 is difficult due to incorrect inferences and details Lastly, unfamiliar topics, too long listening passage and following the organization of the talk are typical problems of Part 4
To answer the research question 3, the researcher has suggested some solutions to the teachers and students on the basis of the most common difficulties they encounter To the teachers, it is advisable that the size of the TOEIC classes be reduced Teachers should improve teaching techniques and develop listening materials in order to motivate students to learn Also, teachers provide learners with listening strategies and tips related to separate parts of the test To the students, they are advised to practice more listening, improve power of vocabulary and learn listening sub-skills.
Limitations of the study
Though the study has been carried out to the best of the researcher’s effort, there remains several shortcomings for a number of reasons
Firstly, the research only involves a small number of teachers and students at HLU
Therefore, the results cannot be generalized to teachers and students in other educational contexts
Secondly, as the only instrument used in the study is survey questionnaires, there is possibility that not all questions were answered with due care Thus, the results of the study would have been more reliable if other research instruments were exploited
Finally, since the researcher’s practical experience as well as professional knowledge in teaching TOEIC listening skill is limited, the recommendations are likely to be subjective and incomplete.
Suggestions for further study
The issues mentioned in this study can be reviewed and studied again Further studies might look into the undone aspects of the research such as difficulties in the teaching and learning of TOEIC reading, writing and speaking skills or techniques and strategies in learning TOEIC listening skill
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APPENDICES APPENDIX 1 DIFFICULTIES IN TEACHING TOEIC LISTENING SKILL
My name is Nguyen Thu Trang, a teacher of English at the English Division I am now conducting “an exploratory study on the teaching and learning of TOEIC listening skill at a university in Hanoi” The questionnaire is designed to collect data for my MA thesis Please indicate your opinions by completing these following items based on your experience I hereby certify that all the information achieved from this questionnaire would be dealt with anonymously
Thank you for your cooperation!
Please respond to the questions by putting a tick or fill in where appropriate You can tick more than once
2 Which of the following qualifications do you have? a B.A in English teaching b M.A in English teaching Others (please specify):
3 Do you have any extra responsibilities in the university? a Class lecturer b Division management Others (please specify):
4 How long have you been teaching TOEIC listening skill? a 1-3 years b 3-5 years c 5+ years Part 2: Teachers’ difficulties in teaching TOEIC listening
5 Which of the following do you find difficult in teaching at pre-listening stage? a providing the context of the listening passage b explaning tasks/giving instructions c providing vocabulary/grammar related to the passage d designing extra pre-listening activities e motivating learners to listen f having enough time for pre-listening activities g providing students with listening strategies and techniques Others (please specify):
6 What are your problems in teaching at while-listening stage? a Designing various listeing tasks b Providing feedback on students’ mistakes c Adjusting tasks to suit students’ ability and interest d Offering help in case students cannot listen and get the message e Varying the level of difficulty of the text f Providing extra authentic listening texts
7 Which of the following difficulties do you face in teaching at post-listening stage? a Having enough time for post-listening activities b Involving all students into post-listening activities c Desiging extra tasks and activities d Working on form (vocabulary/grammar)
8 Have you got any difficulties related to………… ? a Noise in/outside the classroom b Big class size c Listening facilities (CD player, CDs) d Textbook
THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION!
APPENDIX 2 DIFFICULTIES IN LEARNING TOEIC LISTENING SKILL
My name is Nguyen Thu Trang, a teacher of English at the English Division I am now conducting “an exploratory study on the teaching and learning of TOEIC listening skill at a university in Hanoi” The questionnaire is designed to collect data for my MA thesis Please indicate your opinions by completing these following items based on your experience I hereby certify that all the information achieved from this questionnaire would be dealt with anonymously
Thank you for your cooperation!
Please respond to the questions by putting a tick or fill in where appropriate You can tick more than once
2 What are your reasons for learning TOEIC? c To fulfill the requirements of a training course d To be prepared for the future job e To improve English proficiency f To satisfy your interest Others (please specify):
3 How long have you been learning English? g Less than 3 years h 3-5 years i 5-7 years j 7+ years
4 How do you practice listening to English? k Only learn English at the university l Go to English extra classes in the evening m Get access to media in English n Talk to foreigners Others (please specify):
5 How do you often feel in TOEIC listening? a Confident b Stressed c Comfortable d De-motivated e Motivated f Unable to concentrate g Nervous h Tired i Confused
Part 2: Students’ common difficulties in TOEIC listening
6 In your opinion, the level of difficulty in the TOEIC listening test is……… a Little difficult b Difficult c Very difficult d Extremely difficult
7 Which TOEIC listening parts do you find the most difficult? a Part 1 (Photographs) b Part 2 (Question-Response) c Part 3 (Conversations)
8 Decide whether the following statements are True/False basing on your experience:
My difficulties in listening are due to … True False little experience of listening in English lack of practice limited background knowledge limited linguistic knowledge phonology vocabulary grammar cohesion analyzing/selecting ideas lack of motivation in listening lack of purpose in listening poor attention and concentration
I have problems with ……… True False pronouncing/recognizing sounds in English different accents stress/intonation in English fast speed
I find it difficult to listen because of True False too colloquial / formal language style specialized content long passage poorly-organized discourse background noise on the recording environmental noise lack of gestures and visuals Have you got any other difficulties in learning to listen? Please specify
Part 3: Students’ difficulties in separate parts of TOEIC listening test
9 What difficulties do you face in Part 1? a Unclear and invisible photograph b Similar-sound words c Words related to the correct answer d Words used in different context e Incorrect details f Incorrect inferences Others (please specify): ………
10 What difficulties do you face in Part 2? a Similar-sound words b Repeated words c Words used in different context d Incorrect verb tense or person e Inappropriate response to the type of question