Dificulties in learning listening skill faced by 11th form students in nong cong ii high school

HONG DUC UNIVERSITY FOREIGN LANGUAGE DEPARTMENT GRADUATION THESIS DIFFICULTIES IN LEARNING LISTENING SKILL FACED BY 11TH FORM STUDENTS IN NONG CONG II HIGH SCHOOL Supervisor: Le Thi Minh, M.A Student: Le Thi Thuan Class: K40 – FLD - HDU Course: 2018 – 2021 Thanh Hoa, June, 2021 i DECREATION I certify my authorship of the study report entitle "Difficulties in learning listening skill faced by 11th form students in Nong Cong II high school" This graduation paper is the result of my own research and the substance of this thesis has not been submitted for a degree to any other university or institution and that if this declaration is found to be false, disciplinary measures and penalties can be taken and imposed in accordance with university policies and rules ii ACKNOWLEDGMENT During the process of doing this graduation paper, I have received many indispensable assistances, precious ideas and timely encouragements from my teachers, family and friends This paper could not have been completed without the help, encouragement and support from a number of people who all deserve my sincerest gratitude and appreciation First of all, I wish to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor - Ms Le Thi Minh, the English teacher of Faculty of Foreign Language, who has always been willing to give me valuable advices and suggestions in order that I can complete successfully this study I also would like to take this opportunity to show my sincere thanks to all my teachers at the Faculty of Foreign Languages, Hong Duc University, who have handed me basic knowledge to complete this study I am so thankful to students of 11A2 at Nong Cong II high school their for a whole - heart participation in the study I would like to acknowledge my thanks to all the authors of the books, magazines, and the other materials listed in the reference part for their ideas that have been reflected and developed in the study I am equally indebted to my classmates for their suggestions and encouragements in the process of my study Last but not least, my particular thanks are given to my parents for their encouragement and support which played an important role in my paper iii graduation ABSTRACT Listening skill is one of the most necessary skills to communicate in the real life In learning a foreign language, the listening skill is being more and more important to learn by students Everybody knows that in order to listen to a message is not as simple as hearing it, the listener has to understand the message and respond in the right manner The thesis will study the subjective and objective difficulties of the students in learning the listening skill Then, it would like to find out the reasons for those problems and the solutions for both teachers and students in teaching and learning the listening skill I applied the qualitative and quantitative methods to the research The collecting data instruments like questionnaires, interviews were used to the study The results of the research will point out the difficulties that students face when they learn the listening skill More importantly, through research, I can find the personal of those people difficult so that I can make appropriate suggestions and solutions to overcome those problems With the hope of improving students' listening competence, I have tried my best to this thesis by my own experiences and knowledge in English teaching methodology iv TABLE OF CONTENT DECREATION ii ACKNOWLEDGMENT iii ABSTRACT iv TABLE OF CONTENT v CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale of the study 1.2 The aims of the study 1.3 Research questions 1.4 The scope of the study 1.5 The method of the study 1.6 The organization of the study CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW…………………………………… 2.1 Overview of listening skill 2.1.1 Definition of listening skill 2.1.2 Types of listening skill 2.1.3 The importance of listening skill 2.2 Factors affecting the English listening 10 2.2.1 The class atmosphere 10 2.2.2 Students' motivation 10 2.2.3 Quality of Recorded Material 10 2.2.4 Accent 11 2.3 Difficulties in learning the English listening skill 11 2.4 Summary 13 CHAPTER : THE STUDY 14 The setting of the study 14 3.1 The participants 15 3.1.1 The teachers 15 3.1.2 The students 15 3.2 Data collection instruments 15 v 3.2.1 The survey questionnaire 15 3.2.2 The interview 16 3.3 Data collection procedures 16 3.4 Data analysis and discussion 17 3.4.1 The important of listening skill 17 3.4.1.1 The reality of students learning English listening skill 18 3.4.1.2 The difficulties 18 3.4.1.3 The kinds of listening text which students expect to practice more 21 3.4.2 Cause affecting English listening skill 22 3.4.2.1 The difficulties that students often have when learning Englsh listening skill 22 3.4.2.2 The factor have fluence on the interested in English listening skill 23 3.4.3.1 Activities that students like the most in listening skills 25 Table 4: Students' opinion about the activities that they like most in listening English class 26 3.4.3.2 Activities students should before listening to more efficiency 27 3.5 Finding and discussion 29 3.5.1 Students awareness of English listening skills 29 3.5.2 Current situation in teaching and learning English listening skill 29 3.5.3 Suggestions for improving English listening skill 30 3.6 Recommendations 31 3.6.1 For Students 31 3.6.2 For teachers 32 CHAPTER 4: CONCLUSION 34 4.1 Summary of the study 34 4.2 Suggestions for the further study 35 REFERENCES 36 APPENDIX 37 APPENDIX Survey questionnaires for teachers 41 APPENDIX INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR STUDENTS 44 vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS HDU: Hong Duc University FFL: Faculty of Foreign languages vii LIST OF TABLESAND CHARTS Chart 1: Teachers and students' attitudes towards the importance of English listening skills 17 Chart 2: The students' opinion of learning English listening skill 19 Table 1: The interview results of students' opinion in English listening skill 19 Table 2: Teacher's opinion on difficult of learning English listening skill 19 Chart 3: The students' interest in learning English listening skill 20 Chart 4: Students' interest in extra listening activities 21 Chart 5: Students difficulties in learning English listening skill 22 Table 3: The teacher's opinion on the difficulties of students often have in 23 English listening skill 23 Chart 6: Teacher opinion about factors motivating students' learning English24 listening skill 24 Chart 7: The subjective factors affecting the students' learning 25 English listening skills 25 Table 4: Students' opinion about the activities that they like most in listening English class 26 Chart 8: What students before listening 27 Chart 9: What students while listening 28 Chart 10: What teachers before listening 28 viii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale of the study Nowadays, listening plays a vital role in daily lives People listen for different purposes such as entertainment, academic purposes or obtaining necessary information Of the four language skills-Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing-that all language learners are supposed to acquire Listening is believed to be the most challenging due to the complex and subtle nature of listening comprehension in a second or foreign language As a researcher, I would like to present the thesis title "Difficulties in learning listening skill faced by 11th form students in Nong Cong II high school" for several reasons First of all, listening is the most important skill in communication in the real life Listening and speaking are two major parts of communication They are closely interdependent We are able to talk sensibly when we understand what is said to us If we fail to understand spoken language, we may miss important information and respond in a funny way Moreover, in learning a language, listening is a useful means of providing students with comprehensible input, which is an essential component of the whole language learning process And teaching listening skill in classroom helps students make transition from classroom English to real-life English more easily and effectively Therefore, I would like to this research to help the students and teachers pay more attention to listening skill Secondly, learning listening skill is the most difficult in learning a foreign language Listening, like reading, is a receptive skill but it is often the most daunting for students When reading, a reader usually has more opportunities to refer back to the text to clarify understanding, which a listener cannot in most listening contexts such as TV programs, meetings, discussion, lectures or conversations Last but not least reason for choosing this thesis title is that many students are not interested in learning listening skill They find listening classes In conclusion, in order to get the maximum benefits of offered technique, some recommendations are proposed to the major 11 th class students at Nong Cong II high school 3.5.3 Suggestions for improving English listening skill "Getting the right answer is not our only goal The main goal is the listening itself' (Leaf, 2001) How much listening that learners can understand all depends on how well- prepared teachers are and the use they can make of the listening texts? So activities are indeed crucial The writer would like to classify the suggested activities into three stages ♦♦♦ Pre-listening activities The pre-listening stage is very important because it is the base 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 listener has to have not only knowledge of the language but also some background knowledge of the world Pre- listening activities make it possible for all students to share common background knowledge before listening because it is impossible to expect all students to have the same level of knowledge about a particular world event ♦♦♦ While-listening activities While-listening stage is the time for students to listen to the text and understand it It is not necessary for students to understand all about the listening text They not need to memorize the exact words or sentences that are said They just need to catch the major ideas There are various kinds of techniques which can be used to lead the students to focus on the general idea and the subject matter of the text they are listening to Directed listening helps the students to extract the relevant information from the spoken discourse Thus, teacher should ask more global rather than partial comprehension questions Specific questions are asked only after the students have recognized the major 30 ideas of the listening texts Moreover, the teacher should prepare beforehand some forms or worksheets for the learners to fill in when they listen ♦♦♦ Post-listening activities As it has been introduced in the background, in this stage, students take the information they have gained from the listening text and use it for another purpose Some following activities can be applied for this stage • Summarizing: learners write up the information that they have in their listening They reconstruct the text in their own words using the notes or drawings as cues They can practice writing in groups, in pairs or individually • Recalling the story: it is another form of summarizing the story but in oral way Learners re-tell the story in the listening text in their own words They practice speaking in groups or in pairs • Role play: learners dramatize the listening text, taking the roles of the characters in the story they have just heard 3.6 Recommendations 3.6.1 For Students The Students wants to learn the listening better, they themselves ought to try their best to change their habits of listening and to improve their background knowledge Today there are many ways to learn English , to improve you’re a short English news According to the survey, most students had habits of listening to very word in the recoding so they soon got tired and frustrated of listening As a consequence, they answered the listening tasks mainly by guessing but not by understanding the text It is not necessary for learners to understand very word in order to understand the information they need from the recording There before, learner should learn to focus on the message When listening the learners should summarize the ideas they listen and take notes They had better not translate the listening text into the mother tongue , but try to understand it in the target language Moreover, outside the listening class, students have to practice regularly such as listening to English songs , listening in VOA, watching foreign channels (such as: HBO,CINEMAX, you can watch 31 the American films to improve your English listening comprehension) so as to get acquainted with the native accent in normal speech In addition, they must enrich themselves with general knowledge of the English speaking countries, English language and social and cultural knowledge 3.6.2 For teachers Teachers play a crucial part in improving learners' listening skill Teaching methods was the most considered factor that the learners mentioned in the survey In teaching the listening skill to the beginners, the teachers have to pay attention to the following elements Additionally, teachers should provide more interesting topics for further listening The authentic listening material is usually interesting because the listeners are exposed to the real life With the listening text in the text book, the teachers can create more exciting activities to motivate students to take part in Meanwhile, to help the learners omit their bad habits; they should be encouraged not to panic when they miss a piece of information On the other hand, teachers have responsibility for providing necessary background knowledge which relates to the listening texts for the learners before they listen In addition, teachers can warm up by exciting games which introduce more about the culture, society and countries in the world For example, pre-listening, teachers can held games to the students, such as true/false statements used for prediction: the teacher writes -10 statements on the board based on the main ideas in the listening text Only half statements are true Students work in pairs and guess these statements true The teacher does not say they are right or wrong until they listen to the text The requirement should be clear and also given before listening so that the learners can draw a clear purpose to listen It is easier for them to catch the message they need In teaching, teachers should require the learners to obey some regulations For example, let students listen in a certain number of times, then ask them to express their own ideas with evidence and let students discuss together before giving confirmation When checking their answers, teachers should not be led 32 by some strong students, but all of them must be asked and get information Because of the various differences in the learners, teachers should upgrade the level of the listening tasks in order to encourage them 33 CHAPTER 4: CONCLUSION This chapter will deal with a summary of the major findings, limitations of the study and some suggestions for further studies 4.1 Summary of the study To reach what the author aimed at this study; the study was divided into four chapters with their own purpose The first chapter briefly covers the theories related to the study The second chapter presented the overview on situation of learning English listening skill for 11th class, Nong Cong II high school The third chapter presented the research methodology and author's findings of the approach to listening at the students 11th class through the questionnaires and interview This chapter also helps the author find the answers for three research questions that stated in the introduction The last chapter is some recommendations and suggestions to improve English listening skill at Nong Cong II high school Limitation of the study Although the study has certain strong points such as collection methods, namely interviews, survey questionnaires for students, due to limited time, lack of sources, the researcher's ability and other unexpected factors, it is obvious that the study has got a number of short-comings First of all, due to the limited of time, experience to some extent, the researcher could not conduct other methods such as classroom observation which can make the obtained results more reliable Secondly, due to the limitation of scope of the study, the researcher only focus on the 11th class students, Nong Cong II high school Therefore, the result of the study can't be generalized Besides, the researcher could not cover all the aspects of difficulties In addition, the techniques suggested in this research are selected from different reliable but limited sources 34 In spite of the mentioned limitations, I hope that this exploratory research will contribute to the better situation of teaching and learning English listening skill at 11th class, Nong Cong II high school 4.2 Suggestions for the further study Because of the limitation, this study could not cover all of aspects of the study Besides, the study only focuses on difficulties for only 11th class students learn English in order to help them improve their listening skill Moreover, for the further studies, to get better results, the researcher should invite more participants and the data collection method Together with using survey questionnaires and interviews, observation is also necessary to get more persuasive conclusions All in all, despite the study can avoid to the limitation, the research has been completed under the guiding of the supervisor and self-effort Any comments and criticism will be highly appreciated for better further study 35 REFERENCES Brown, H.D (2001), Teaching by Principles: An Interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy Second Edition Essex: Longman Bentley, S., & Bacon, S (1996) The all new, state-of-the-art ILA definition of listening: Now that we have it, what we with it? Listening Post, 56, 1-5 Gary Buck (2001), Assessing Listening Goh, C (1998) How ESL Learners with Different Listening Abilities Use Comprehension Strategies and Tactics Language Teaching Research, 2, 124-147 Hutchinson T., Carol T., Jenny Q., and Kate E (2007), English for Life – Beginner Teacher's book Oxford: Oxford University Press Harman, Willis W "Rationale for good choosing." Journal of Humanistic Psychology 21.1 (1981): 5-12 Howett, A and J Dakin (1974), Language laboratory materials, ed J P B Allen, S P B Allen, and S P Cored Laci, T (2001), Teaching Listening Comprehension Regional Board of Education- Monastir, Tunisia Munro, M & Dewing, T M (1999) Foreign Accents, Comprehensibility and Intelligibility in the Speech of Language Learners Language Learning 10 Nation, I.S.P (1990), Language teaching techniques Victoria University of Wellington English Language Institute 11 Nord, J.R (1980), Developing listening fluency before speaking: An alternative paradigm, System 12 Nguyen Thi Van Lam & Ngo Binh Phuong (2006), English Teaching Methodology Vinh University Websites: http//www.academicinnovations.com/report.html#listen http://www.anglais.edunet.tn/tutorials/elt_train/pdf/teachinglistening.pdf http://www.ehow.com http//www.esl.about.com/od/englishlistening/a/listen_tips.htm 36 APPENDIX Survey questionnaires for students This survey questionnaire is designed for my graduation paper namely: ’’ Difficult in learning listening skill faced by 11th form students in Nong Cong II high school “ in completing these questions, please choose the answer by circling the letter next to your choice, ticking off the items in a checklist or expressing your idea in the blanks All your personal information as well as your answers will be kept confident and not be used for the other purposes Thanks for your help! Personal information: Your gender: A Male B Female How old are you? A I am six years old How long have you been learning English? B I am seventeen years old A About years C About years B About years D Over years I Your opinion on studying listening skill In your opinion, English listening skill is A Very difficult B Difficult C Quite difficult D Not difficult E Others Do you like English listening lessons at class? A I like very much B I like C I don't mind D I don't like 37 A What you think about the importance of English listening skill? Very important B Important B Quite important C Not important D Others How often you have problems in your listening skill? A Always B Often C Sometimes D Rarely E Others What kinds of listening text you expect to practice more? (Put the tick (V) in your choice) Kinds of listening text Unintereste Normal Favorite d Most favorite A Songs B Films or stories C News, speech or lecture D Dialogues: conversations, interviews, etc II The causes affecting to listening English skill Which of the following reasons make you difficult to learn listening English? A Poor -quality CDs and CD players B Unfamiliar content listening text C Limited practice time at class D Fast speed speaking E Other: …………………………… 10 What makes you interested in learning English listening skill best? 38 Items A Interesting topic Most Influenti A bit Not influentia al influenti influentia l al l B Exciting activities C Adequate modern equipment D Good teaching methods 11 In listening classes, you often A Try to listen to every words so you can't catch up the speed of the speech B Only listen to stressed words C Need to listen more than three times to understand D Feel tired and unconcentrated when listen more than three times E Other: III Activities for improving English listening skill 12 13 What listening activities you like best? A Tick off (phrases/ pictures/items) B Complete the missing words C Choose the correct answers D Answer comprehension questions E Other: What should you before listening? (more than one choice) A Should pre-taught some related new words B Should predict the content of the listening texts by the activities that the teacher gives C Both a & b D Do nothing E Other: 39 14 While listening, you should: A Listen and take notes B Listen and answer the questions C Listen only D Other: Thank you very much for your cooperation! 15 In listening classes, you often A Try to listen to every words so you can't catch up the speed of the speech B Only listen to stressed words C Need to listen more than three times to understand D Feel tired and unconcentrated when listen more than three times E Other: III Activities for improving English listening skill 16 17 What listening activities you like best? A Tick off (phrases/ pictures/items) B Complete the missing words C Choose the correct answers D Answer comprehension questions E Other: What should you before listening? (more than one choice) A Should pre-taught some related new words B Should predict the content of the listening texts by the activities that the teacher gives 18 C Both a & b D Do nothing E Other: While listening, you should: A Listen and take notes B Listen and answer the questions C Listen only D Other: Thank you very much for your cooperation! 40 APPENDIX Survey questionnaires for teachers This survey questionnaire is designed for my graduation paper namely: "Difficult in leaning listening skill faced by 11th form students in Nong Cong II high school" in completing these questions, please choose the answer by circling the letter next to your choice, ticking off the items in a checklist or expressing your idea in the blanks All your personal information as well as your answers will be kept confident and not be used for the other purposes Thanks for your help! Personal information: Your gender: A Male B Female How old are you? How long have you been teaching English? A About years C About years B About years D Over7years I Your opinion about the English listening skill How you feel about English listening skill? A It is very interesting B It is very difficult C It is very difficult but very interesting D It is quite easy and very interesting E It is very difficult and boring What you think about the importance of English listening? A Very important B Important C Quite important D Not important E Others 41 How often your students have problem in listening skill? A Always B Often C Sometimes D Rarely E Others What kind of listening text that you think your students often practice A Songs B Films or stories C News, speech or lectures D Dialogues: conversations, interviews, etc E Other: more? The causes affecting to English listening skill II Which of the following reasons make your students difficult to learn listening English? A Poor -quality CDs and CD players B Unfamiliar content listening text C Limited practice time at class D Fast speed speaking E Other: What makes your students interested in learning English listening skill best? A Interesting topics B Exciting activities C Adequate modern equipment D Good teaching methods E Other: 42 III Activities to teach listening skill 10 What listening activities your students like best? F Tick off (phrases/ pictures/items, etc.) G Complete the missing words H Choose the correct answers I Answer comprehension questions J Other: 11 What should you before listening? A Pre-teaching some new words B Brainstorming C Giving guiding questions, summarizing the listening texts 43 APPENDIX INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR STUDENTS What you think of the difficulty of English listening skill? What you think of the importance of English listening skill? What kinds of activities in class you like most? 44