A survey on problems in listening skill of english majored freshmen at tay do university

TAY DO UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF LINGUISTICS AND LITERATURE A SURVEY ON PROBLEMS IN LISTENING SKILL OF ENGLISH MAJORED FRESHMEN AT TAY DO UNIVERSITY Supervisor: Student’s name: Dang Minh An Wa Thai Nhu Phuong, MA Student’s code: 13D220201047 Class: Bachelor of English 8B Can Tho, April 2017 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT This research proposal could hardly finish without the enthusiastic help of many people First of all, I want to express my deep gratitude toward my supervisor, Ms Wa Thai Nhu Phuong, MA at Tay Do University This research could not have been complete without her enthusiastic and thoughtfulness Actually, she instructed, commented and provided me useful references so that I could complete my research proposal Secondly, I want to express my special thanks to all lecturers in the Faculty of linguistic and literature of TDU for their teaching and helping me to enlarge knowledge of English over the past four years COMMENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDMENT COMMENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale 1.2 The significance of study 1.3 The organization of the proposal CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 The definitions of listening 2.2 Some common problems of listening 2.3 Previous study CHAPTER RESEARCH AIM – RESEARCH QUESTION – HYPOTHESIS 3.1 Research aim 3.2 Research question 3.3 Hypothesis CHAPTER RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 4.1 Research design 4.2 Participants 4.3 Instruments 4.4 Questionnaire 4.5 Procedure CHAPTER EXPECTED OUTCOMES 10 REFERENCES APPENDIX A ABSTRACT Nowadays, students often take the wrong way when listening and this leads them to the poor result In order to help students improve their listening skill, it is needed finding out their listening problems which cause difficulties to them This research is an attempt to identify problems in listening skill faced by English majored freshmen at Tay Do University The participants of this research are 40 English majored freshmen at Tay Do University In this research, questionnaire is used to collect data from students to figure out some problems they usually encounter I hope that my research would bring students advantages and development to their listening skill CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale Nowadays, Vietnam is in the process of integrating with other countries around the world, so people will have many opportunities to cooperate and work with foreign partners both inside and outside the country Therefore, being able to use a foreign language proficiently is quite essential because it can help people work more effectively Actually, English has been considered as an international language and it becomes a decisive factor of employers in recruiting staff In other word, it is compulsory for people who want to get a job with high salary For that reason, many people, especially students nowadays learn English as their second language so that they can be successful in work However, learning English is not easy To study effectively, students must improve four basic skills including listening, speaking, reading and writing These four skills have a mutual relation Among these skills, listening is the most important part and plays a significant role in communication In fact, if people not understand what has been said, the conversation will be interrupted That is why listening is a subject which is compulsory for English students Without listening skill, people will never communicate effectively “Listening is far more difficult than many people can image” (Mee, 1990) Listening is a complex and long-term process To improve listening skill, students must spend much time to practice However, many of them think that listening is less important than grammar, so they don’t spend time to practice Similarly, students at Tay Do University, especially English majored freshmen, they usually encounter many problems when studying listening subjects They often wait for the information from the lecturers instead of finding their own materials for learning That drawback leads them to a series of problems including pronunciation, intonation, accent and so on This research is conducted to find out problems in learning listening skill of English majored freshmen at Tay Do University So, students can realize their own difficulties in listening skill Moreover, they might find out the way to overcome their problems based on this study 1.2 The significance of the study This study is expected to help students, especially English majored freshmen at Tay Do University, to realize their difficulties in learning listening skill In addition, based on the problems stated in this study, some useful solutions would be recommended to solve the problems to help them learn effectively 1.3 The organization of the proposal Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Literature review Chapter 3: Research aim – Research questions - Hypothesis Chapter 4: Research methodology Chapter 5: Expected outcome CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Definitions of listening In daily conversation, there must be an interaction between the speakers and the listeners In fact, many people think that their conversation will be successful if they use many words However, just speaking is not enough for successful communication Actually, communication will fail without the process of listening Listening plays an important role in second language instruction for several reasons If you cannot listen well, you will find it hard to communicate or perhaps you cannot pass your listening examination There has been a long standing assumption that listening skill is a passive one, and it is not until the ninety eighties that the role of listening was fully recognized by scholars From then on, increasing attention has been paid to the importance of this skill in second language acquisition The term of listening can be defined in many ways Underwood defined listening as “the activity of paying attention to and trying to get leaning from something we hear Mendelsohn regarded listening as listeners’ ability to comprehend the oral communication of native speakers (as cited in Gilakjani & Ahmadi, 2011) According to the ILA (International Listening Association) 1996, listening is “the process of receiving, constructing meaning from, and responding to spoken and/or nonverbal messages” Listening is not an easy process of communication because “listening in any language requires focus and attention It is a skill that some people need to work at harder than others” 2.2 Some common problems in listening There are common types of problems in listening comprehension 2.2.1 Problem related to speed of delivery Listeners cannot control the speed of delivery.'' Many English language learners believe that the greatest difficulty with listening comprehension is that the listener cannot control how quickly a speaker speaks'' (Underwood, 1989) 2.2.2 Lack of vocabulary Listeners have a limited vocabulary When listeners listen to the recording, sometimes they encounter an unknown word, and it is become a reason of the listener to stop listen and think about the meaning of that word and thus cause them to miss next part of speech As we know the speaker in recording may choose words that listener does not know This is one aspect of the problem above that all people speaking a foreign language have experienced at one time or another This often happens when you hear a word you half remember and find you have completely lost the thread of what was being said by the time you remember what it means, but can also happen with words you are trying to work out that sound similar to something in your language, words you are trying to work out from the context or words you have heard many times before and are trying to guess the meaning of once and for all 2.2.3 Lack of background knowledge Listeners may lack contextual knowledge Sharing mutual knowledge and common content makes communication easier Even if listeners can understand the surface meaning of the text, they may have considerable difficulties in comprehending the whole meaning of the passage unless they are familiar with the context Nonverbal clues such as facial expressions, nods, gestures, or tone of voice can also be easily misinterpreted by listeners from different cultures 2.2.4 Problem due to understanding word by word Students may have established certain learning habits such as a wish to understand every word Teachers want students to understand every word they hear by repeating and pronouncing words carefully, by grading the language to suit their level, by speaking slowly and so on The listener becomes worried if they cannot understand a word or phrase It is necessary for students to tolerate vagueness and incompleteness of understanding”(Underwood, 1989 as cited in Gilakjani & Ahmadi 2011, p 982) Despite the fact that we can cope with missing whole chunks of speech having a conversation on a noisy street in our own language, many people don't seem to be able to transfer that skill easily to a second language 2.3 Previous studies One of previous studies related to this topic is “Learners’ Listening Comprehension Difficulties in English Language” It was conducted by Abbas Pourhosein Gilakjani & Narjes Banou Sabouri (2016) In this research, the researchers reviewed the terms listening, listening comprehension, listening comprehension strategies, and listening difficulties The review of literature indicated that when teachers were aware of students’ learning difficulties they could help them develop effective listening strategies and finally solve their difficulties in listening and improve their listening comprehension abilities Another previous studies related to this topic is “an Investigation of Listening Comprehension Problems Encountered by Saudi Students in the El Listening Classroom” It was done by Hamouda (2013) He tried to investigate some listening problems on the first stages at Qasim university in Saudi Arabia To get the data, the researcher used questionnaire and interview for 60 students who took listening course While the data obtained from the questionnaire were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively, data obtained from interview were analyzed qualitatively The result of this study showed that accent, pronunciation, speed of speech, insufficient vocabulary, different accent of speakers, lack of concentration, anxiety, and bad quality of recording were the major listening comprehension problems encountered by EFL Saudi learners CHAPTER RESEARCH AIMS AND RESEARCH QUESTION – HYPOTHESIS 3.1 Aim of the study The research aims at investigating the problems in learning listening skill of English majored freshmen at Tay Do University to help them recognize their own problems 3.2 Research question This research is conducted to deal with the research question: “What are problems in learning listening skill of English majored freshmen at Tay Do University?” 3.3 Hypothesis According to most of English majored freshmen at Tay Do University, listening is the most difficult skill Most of them didn’t learn listening skill when they were in high school Through literature review and research question, it is hypothesized that there could be many problems the freshmen faced when they study listening skill CHAPTER RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 4.1 Research design The research is conducted to find out students’ problems in learning listening skill of English majored freshmen The main key of this research is participants This research is carried out in form of a survey at Tay Do University There are 40 English majored freshmen who will be delivered questionnaire so that the information about their problems will be collected The collected information will be analyzed to show the difficulty in learning listening skill 4.2 Participants The participants of this study are 40 freshmen from the English majored class, course XI at Tay Do University Their ages range from 18 to 22 They speak Vietnamese as their mother tongue and they learn English as their foreign language They have been learning English from to 10 years They will be given the questionnaire in order to get their personal information as well as the information about their problems 4.3 Instruments Questionnaire is used to collect the data from the participants about the difficulties in listening The questionnaire consists of 20 statements, divided into two parts Part one is about students’ background Part two is about common problems they usually encounter in listening In part two, there are five scales for students to evaluate, these are strongly agree, agree, no idea, disagree and strongly disagree 4.4 Questionnaire The questionnaire include parts Part is about the brief description of the researcher and some personal information of participants From question to question 12, the participants circle their choice on the answers given by the researcher, they can give specific answer if needed These question above aim to ask about the student’s point of view about listening skill In the next part, there are 20 statements about common problems students often faced in listening: - Lack of vocabulary: questions 4, 9, 10, 12, 16 - Lack of background knowledge: questions 1, 3, 6, 13, 19 - Problems due to understanding word by word: questions 2, 7, 11, 14, 17 - Problems related to speed of delivery: questions 5, 8, 15, 18, 20 4.5 Procedure Duration(12 weeks) Step 1: from the 1st Activities in study process - Choosing the topic - Designing the framework of the research/ week to 2nd week Outline - Designing questionnaires - Looking for the references Step 2: from the 3rd - Writing chapter and chapter week to 7th week - Get the teacher’s guidance - Editing chapter 1, and the questionnaires Step 3: from the 8th - Writing chapter - Writing chapter 4, and get the teacher’s week to 12th week guidance - Editing chapter 3, 4, and temporary completion of the main content in the research - The teacher checks the research and proposes some advices - Editing the whole research - Completing the paper CHAPTER EXPECTED OUTCOMES Listening plays an important role in learning a language, especially English English majored freshmen usually face many problems when learning listening subjects This research aim to point out some common problems freshmen usually encounter These problems are expected to fall into the following categories 5.1 Speed of speech Among many problems students usually face when listening, speed of speech is the most popular They cannot catch what speaker say In fact, the natural talk is very fast to second language learners so it makes up some trouble to the non-native speaker Thanks to the finding of my study, it is expected that the students would try to improve this problem by practicing listening more and more, especially authentic listening to materials such as news or radio 5.2 Vocabulary The second problem is the limitation of vocabulary power Some students may think that meaning resides within the unfamiliar words, so they need a huge amount of vocabulary When facing a new word, they tend to find out the meaning rather than infer it from the context For this problem, it is expected that students can recognize the importance of learning vocabulary, and they will read more to enlarge their vocabulary 5.3 Problem due to understanding word by word The third problem is recognizing the main points in listening comprehension If students cannot obtain any main points, failure will be an inevitable result Most students cannot recognize the main points in a listening because they concentrate too much on listening to word by word Through the study, I hope that student can recognize the importance of identifying the key words or the content words of the listening tasks They will spend more time practicing listening, especially listening to the conversation and try to get the keyword of the talk 10 REFERENCES Berman, M (2003) Listening strategy guide Dyed international Inc Brown, G (1992) Listening to Spoken English London: Longman Press Cohen, L & Manim, L (1998) Research methods in Education Croom Helm Gilakjani, A P., & Ahmadi, M R (2011) A Study of Factors Affecting EFL Learners’ English Listening Comprehension and the Strategies for Improvement [Electronic version] Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 2(5), 977-988 Hamouda, A (2013) An Investigation of Listening Comprehension Problems Encountered by Saudi Students in the EL Listening Classroom International Journal of Academic Research in Progressive Education and Development, 2(2), 113-15 Morley, J (1984) Listening and language learning in ESL: Developing selfstudy activities for listening comprehension Orlando: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Rost, M (1994) Listening London: Longman Underwood, M (1989) Teaching listening London: Longman APPENDIX A QUESTIONAIRE FOR STUDENTS Dear friends, my name is Dang Minh An I’m a student from class English8B and now I’m carrying out a research entitled: “A Study on Problems in Learning Listening Skill of English Majored Freshmen at Tay Do University” This is the questionnaire used to collect your information I’m very grateful to you for spending your time helping me Please carefully finish these questions below because your answer are very helpful to my research Thank you very much! Student’s full name: Age: Gender: Male Female Class: Part 1: Student’s background Please read the following question and circle the appropriate answer for each question How long have you studied English? Years Where you come from? a Urban area b Rural area Which subject did you learn when you were in high school? a Listening b Speaking c Writing d Reading Which subject you like best? a Listening b Speaking c Writing d Reading What you think about listening? a Very important b Important c Normal d Not important What you think about your listening skill? a Very good b Good c Normal d Bad e Very bad Have you ever failed your listening test? (tick out the best answer) a Never b Once c Twice d Three times e More than three times How often you self-study listening at home? a Never b Rarely c Sometimes d Often How you self-study listening? a Listening English music b Listening conversation of native speaker c Listening news d Other 10 What you before listening? (you can tick more than one) a Go through the questions and guess what the topic is b Nothing to just ready to listen c Guess the content of the listening d Ask about the new words e Read the task instruction 11 What you while you are listening for the first time? (tick out the best answer) a Listen to word by word b Listen for the detail information c Focus on the new words d Other 12 What you if you can not understand words or phrases while listening? ( tick out the best answer) a Ignore it and keep on listening b Try to guess its meaning c Feel depressed and can not listen anymore Part 2: Some common problems student faced in listening The table below are some problems that students usually encounter when learning listening subject Mark (X) in the suitable column to express your opinions Statements Strongly Agree You are afraid when you listen to other specialize topics like science, news You try to listen the conversation word by word You cannot listen well with unfamiliar topics You are lacking of vocabulary You cannot catch the speed of the speech Lack of background knowledge causes Agree No Idea Disagree Strongly Disagree you difficulty in listening You always try to listen all the word in the conversation You often miss many keyword in listening due to fast speed When you meet new word, you always stop to search for its meaning 10 You not guess meaning of new words in the speech 11 You think that you not know the meaning of listening text because you miss one word in it 12 Your vocabulary is limited so you cannot listen well 13 Unfamiliar listening topics are really a problem to you 14 You think that you have to listen every single word in the speech 15 You have listening problems because the speakers speak too fast 16 You find it difficult to deal with new words when you listen 17 Listening word by word makes you confused and tired 18 Speed is really a problem for me in listening 19 You can understand the meaning of the listening text, but you don’t know what is it about 20 You cannot listening well due to fast speed of the speakers