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

TAY DO UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF LINGUISTICS AND LITERATURE (Logo Đại Học Tây Đô) A SURVEY ON DIFFICULTIES IN LISTENING ENGLISH OF ENGLISH MAJORED FRESHMEN AT TAY DO UNIVERSITY Supervisor: PHAN THI MINH UYEN, M.A Student: NGUYEN NGOC HUYEN Code: 13D220201018 Class: Bachelor of English 8A April 2017 i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT My research could not be done without the guide, assistance and help of many people I would like to extend my profound gratitude to the supports of all who helped me to complete this research Firstly, I would like to express my special thanks to my supervisor for her enthusiastic guidance and useful admonition during the study process Secondly, I want to extend my sincerest thanks to Tay Do University, especially the lecturers in Faculty of Linguistic and Literature for teaching, helping and providing knowledge to me for the past four years Finally, I want to give my deep gratitude to my family and my friends for always supporting and encouraging me throughout the years of studying This is the motivation to help me complete this research ii COMMENTS iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKOWLEDGEMENT i COMMENTS ii TABLE OF CONTENTS iii ABSTRACTS v CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale 1.2 The significance of the research 1.3 The organization CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Definition of listening and its importance 2.1.1 Definition of listening 2.1.2 The importance of listening 2.2 Difficulties in learning Listening English 2.2.1 Difficulties related to linguistics 2.2.1.1 Pronunciation, intonation and accent 2.2.1.2 Vocabulary 2.2.2 Difficulties related to background knowledge 2.2.3 Other elements affecting learning listening English 10 2.2.3.1 Unfamiliar topics 10 2.2.3.2 Lack of practice 11 iv CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH AIMS - RESEARCH QUESTION - HYPOTHESIS 12 3.1 Research aims 12 3.2 Research question 12 3.3 Hypothesis 12 CHAPTER 4: RESEARCH METHOLOGY 13 4.1 Design 13 4.2 Participants 13 4.3 Instruments 13 4.3.1 Questionnaire 14 4.3.2 Interview 14 4.4 Procedures 14 CHAPTER 5: EXPECTED OUTCOMES 16 REFERENCES vi APPENDIX viii QUESTIONNAIRE FOR STUDENTS viii APPENDIX xii STUDENT’S INTERVIEW xii v ABSTRACT The research “difficulties in listening English of English-majored freshmen at Tay Do University” is conducted to figure out common problems in studying listening of students majoring in English The participants of this research are English majored freshmen course 11 at Tay Do University Questionnaire and interview are used as the two main instruments of the study process to collect the data This research will show some difficulties that English majored freshmen at Tay Do University are facing in listening English about linguistic (pronunciation, vocabulary), background knowledge, unfamiliar topics, etc and some soluble advice vi CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale To day, English is considered as the international language to interchange information in the world English becomes an essential factor in strengthening trade and travel in many countries, the necessity of knowing and using English is increase In Vietnam, employment opportunities for people who know English are numerous because more and more foreign companies invest to Vietnam People who are good at English are easy to look for a good job with admirable salary Therefore, in recent years Vietnam has promoted English language training across the country because of its importance In Tay Do University, many students choose English as their major because they know the value of English in job opportunities However, learning English is not easy, there are four basic skills including listening, speaking, reading and writing that students have to learn in studying English Among four skills, listening is considered as the one which is hard to learn That is the main reason for the research about difficulties in listening English of English majored freshmen at Tay Do University Many students think that listening is not as important as other skills, so they not spend much time to practice it The result is that they not succeed in process of listening English In fact, listening is a longterm and complicated process that people should spend a lot of time and effort to practice for improving listening skill because listening has a big effect on studying a new language and in daily life’s communication Students majoring in English at Tay Do University have to face many difficulties in listening English because they cannot realize their problems in listening progress This leads to several problems related to linguistic knowledge such as pronunciation, intonation, accent and vocabulary, background knowledge and others elements as well Consequently, this research is made to help English majored freshmen at Tay Do University find out the difficulties that they are facing in listening English process Since then, students can recognize or overcome their problems 1.2 The significance of the research Students often think that listening skill does not play as an overriding role as speaking, reading and writing skill in studying English However, many English learners have to face several problems in listening English course Especially, this research is conducted to figure out the difficulties of the freshmen majoring in English at Tay Do University when studying listening English In addition, some necessary solutions would be recommended to help them improve their listening abilities 1.3 The organization of the study The research consists of five chapters: Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Literature review Chapter 3: Research aim- Research question- Hypothesis Chapter 4: Research methodology Chapter 5: Expected outcome CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW Chapter presents the definition of listening and its importance, the difficulties in listening English subject: Linguistics elements (pronunciation, intonation, accent problems, vocabulary, grammar,) background knowledge, and other elements affecting the process of listening English to students (listening strategies, psychological obstacles, unfamiliar topics, long listening and lack of practice) 2.1 Definition of listening and its importance 2.1.1 Definition of listening Listening is a principal element in daily life especially in communication To know clearly about listening, there are several definitions of listening stated by authorities Thomlison (1984) defined that, “Active listening, which is very important for effective communication” Besides, Howatt and Dakin (1974) stated that: “Listening is the ability to identify and understand what others are saying”, These statement showed that listening is the active and conscious process to get information, ideas, thinking, emotions, etc of the speaker Bulletin (1952) also explained that "listening is one of the fundamental language skills It's a medium through which children, young people and adults gain a large portion of their education, their information, their understanding of the world and of human affairs, their ideals, sense of values, and their appreciation" From this statement, it can be said that listening is the key to all kinds of effective communication, listening is the ability to receive information and then interpret the message in the process of communication In general, listening is a required skill for communication, it is the vital skill allowing people to perceive, understand and evaluate information in communication It is also the instrument to receive ideas or thoughts of others and reply precisely 2.1.2 The importance of Listening In daily life, communication is an indispensable activity of human Communication by spoken language is the basic way to interact with each other; it is also the best way to transfer information quickly and most effectively in a conversation This interaction consists of two elements: speaking and listening When two or more people talk at the same time without the listeners, it is very difficult to continue the conversation because there is no interaction of speakers and listeners Effective communication is considered as the successful transfer of information from one person to another one and the receivers can understand the messages According to Dr Lyman K Steil (2004), from Communication authority and former Executive Director of the International Listening Association “9% of our communicating time involves writing, 16% is used to read, 30% is used speaking to others, and the largest segment, 45%, involves listening, that means people spend about half the time for listening in life” Therefore, listening is very important to communicate well Among four basic skills that people need, listening is a primary skill In developmental process, people learn to listen before they speak, read, or write Listening is a skill that often developing during childhood, as Underwood (1989) observed: “a child receives listening as the first skill comes from the observation of how children acquire the mother tongue” Similarly, listening is also essential in learning, especially listening in language learning also occupies a significant position that cannot be replaced, so listening is a vital skill for language learners Feyten (1991) indicated: “Listening has emerged as an important component in the process of second language acquisition” Afterward, listening takes place when the listener has schematic knowledge, knowledge of the context and systemic knowledge” 2.2.3 Other elements affecting learning listening English Likewise linguistic and background knowledge, there are some other elements that students have to face in process of listening They are unfamiliar topics and lack of practice 2.2.3.1 Unfamiliar topics Another problem that students have to face in listening is unfamiliar topic In learning listening process, there are some strange topics related to economics, medical, transportation, etc appear in listening textbooks In addition, besides listen to textbooks in the standard curriculum, teachers often let students listen to the songs or watch videos to help students adapt to listen English and improve their listening skills The above factors lead many problems for students while listening, English majored learners are less exposed to these fields so they not experience to these topics Moreover, there are the appearances of many specialized vocabularies and new knowledge in that, students will rarely understand what is mentioned in the speech These topics are strange knowledge, students cannot follow the speech and realize the messages of the content They will feel strange, uncomfortable, discouraged and bored of what they are hearing Dr Barb Schmidt-Rinehart, professor of Spanish at Ashland University carried out a study with the main purpose of discovering the effects of topic familiarity on learning language listening comprehension The participants, who are Spanish university students with three different levels, listened to two familiar passages, one about a familiar topic and another about a novel topic The result was that familiar 10 topic scored considerably higher than the unfamiliar topic in the tests She concluded that background knowledge in the form of topic familiarity emerges as a powerful factor in facilitating listening comprehension Consequently, unfamiliar topic will have negative influences about the result of listening process and the psychology of students 2.2.3.2 Lack of practice English practice is an important factor that students should pay attention, especially in listening English During studying process at high school, English majored freshmen did not have any chances to practice listening because almost teachers were only focus on grammar, vocabulary, reading and writing but they did not concentrate on practice listening and speaking Students have no chance to practice listening, so when learning listening subject or listening to the lessons of English teachers, they will feel strange, unconfident, psychologically uncomfortable, scared and nervous Therefore, lack of practice listening could not enable students to contact with English was spoken by native speakers, with pronunciation, accents, speeds, intonation, etc, so students have to face many problems in English listening process 11 CHAPTER RESEARCH AIMS – RESEARCH QUESTION – HYPOTHESIS This chapter states the research aims, research questions and hypothesis 3.1 Research aims The research is conducted to find out the difficulties in English listening of English majored freshmen at Tay Do University are facing to help them recognize their difficulties Moreover, this research is expected that could help students overcome these difficulties and improve their listening skill easier in listening English 3.2 Research question This research is conducted to focus for the following research questions: What are some common difficulties in listening of English majored freshmen at Tay Do University? How can students overcome those difficulties? 3.3 Hypothesis According to almost of English majored freshmen at Tay Do University, listening is not easy in learning English Although students try to learn listening, they are facing many difficulties in listening process Therefore, through the literature review and research questions, it is hypothesized that linguistic, background knowledge, unfamiliar topic, etc, in process of listening English are considered as the factors that make difficulties for students 12 CHAPTER RESEARCH METHODLOGY Chapter IV presents the design, participants, instrument, procedures of the research 4.1 Design This proposal is performed to find out difficulties in English listening of English majored freshmen at Tay Do University have to face in learning listening subject The design is based on the research question and hypothesis The main key of this survey was participants who are English majored freshmen at Tay Do University Questionnaire is supposed to be sent to students for collecting the information about their difficulties in learning listening English The research data will be collected and analyzed objective then show the common difficulties in learning listening English that English majored freshmen are facing Finally, the researchers will use interview method to confirm the correct of the information in questionnaire 4.2 Participants The participants of this research are English major freshmen of English class course 11 at Tay Do University These students come from different areas both rural and urban, both males and females and the ages ranged from 18 to 20 Vietnamese is their mother tongue and they learn English as their foreign language Besides, students have been learning English from to 12 years To get the results of this research, students will be received questionnaires about difficulties that they have faced in learning listening English 4.3 Instrument Questionnaires and interview are instruments of this research The questionnaires are used to find out difficulties of participant in learning listening English of 13 English majored freshmen at Tay Do University It is very useful to collect information of students Besides, the interview is used to confirm the correct of questionnaires and help researching more details in the survey 4.3.1 Questionnaires The questionnaire includes two parts Part one consists of eight questions about the students’ background The information are student’s hometown, student’s year of studying English, student’s attitude toward listening and their frequency of practicing listening English In part two, there are 16 statements listed in a table Statement and focus on the importance of listening, and the statements from to 16 are the difficulties of students in English listening process 4.3.2 Interview The interview paper includes open questions which focus on the attitude and difficulties that English major freshmen have faced, they can share their own ideas without limit 4.4 Procedure This research was done within 12 weeks and the process was divided into steps in the following table: Duration (12 weeks) Activities in study process Step 1: from the 1st - Choosing the topic week to 2nd week - Designing framework of the research/ outline - Designing questionnaires and interview - Looking for references Step 2: from the rd - Writing chapter and chapter week to 7th week - Getting the teacher’s guidance 14 - Editing chapter 1, 2, the questionnaires and interview Step 3: from the th - Writing chapter - Writing chapter 4,5 and getting 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 15 CHAPTER EXPECTED OUTCOME Listening is a key point in learning English but it is not easy to study English majored freshmen at Tay Do University often face many difficulties related to linguistic, background knowledge, etc However, it is hard for students to realize their problems in listening process In the difficulties related to linguistic, lack of vocabulary is a big problems of students while studying listening, it can cause limited the understanding of students about what they listen Besides, students face many problems about improper pronunciation, intonation in sentences and different accents in listening English, these problems are the reason of misunderstanding in English communication On the other hand, lacking background knowledge about social, cultural, geography, etc can cause troubles for students in listening process, it can cause reduced ability to understand the content of speech Unfamiliar topic is also the problem that students often face Almost students are only familiarity with academic field, sometimes they feel bored in the listening process because of the appearance of unfamiliar topics such as economic, sport, etc Moreover, lack of practice listening will lead to poor results in listening English For these reasons, I this research with the desire that students can realize their difficulties in listening English and they can look for some suitable ways to improve their listening skill 16 REFERENCES References from books: Abu Rabia, S (1998) Social and cognitive factors influencing the reading comprehension of Arab students learning Hebrew as a second language in Israel Journal of Research in Reading, 21, 201-12 Anderson, A., & Lynch, T (2000) Listening Oxford: Oxford University Press Feyten, C M (1991) The Power of Listening Ability: An overlooked Dimension in Language Acquisition The Modern Language Journal 75:173-80 Folse, Keith S (2004) Vocabulary Myths: Applying second language research to classroom teaching University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor Gilbert, J (1995) Pronunciation practices as an aid to listening comprehension In D J Mendelson and J Rubin (Eds), A Guide for the Teaching of Second Language Learning (pp 97-111) Howatt, A & J Dakin (1974) Language laboratory materials, ed, J P B Allen, S P B Allen, and S P Corder Proverb, R (1990) Applying Strategies to the Four Language Skills Language Learning Strategies: what every teacher should know Roach, P (2009) English Phonetics and Phonology, Fourth Edition, Cambridge University Press Schmidt-Rinehart, B C (1994) The effect of topic familiarity on second language listening comprehension Modern Language Journal, 78(2), 179-189 10 Underwood, M 1989 Teaching Listening [M] vi 11 Wilkins, D (1972) Linguistics in language teaching (pp 111-112) References from the internet 12 Bulletin (1952) Retrieved from: http://iteslj.org/Articles/Saricoban-Listening.html 13 Lyman K Steil Retrieved from: http://www.net-temps.com/careerdev/crossroads/print.htm?id=4273 14 Rost, M (1994) Introducing listening London: Penguin Retrieved from: http://jalt-publications.org/old_tlt/files/97/sep/nunan.html 15 Rost, M (2002) Teaching and Researching Listening London, UK: Longman Retrieved from: http://www.llas.ac.uk/resources/gpg/67 16 Thomlison (1984) Retrieved from: http://www.tutorvista.com/english/define-listening-skills vii APPENDIX QUESTIONNAIRE FOR STUDENTS Dear students, I am Nguyen Ngoc Huyen, senior student majoring in English I would like to thank you for spending your times to help me complete this questionnaire Now my research is about “Difficulties in listening English of English majored freshmen at Tay Do University”, this questionnaire used to collect necessary information from you, so please take your time to read and fulfill these following questions carefully because your answer are very helpful to my research Thank you very much Student’s full name: Gender: male  female  Class: Age: Please read the following questions and circle the appropriate answer to your opinion Give the specific answers if needed How long have you studied English? …………… years Where you come from? a Urban area/ city b Rural area/ countryside What are your purposes of learning English? a Study abroad b Communicating with foreigners c Finding a good job viii d Overseas residence e Others: According to you, learning English is a Very important b Important c Normal d Not important Which English skill you like best? a Listening b Speaking c Reading d Writing What you think about listening subject? a Very important b Important c Normal d Not important e Not important at all How is your listening skill? a Very good b Good c Normal d Bad e Very bad How much time you spend practicing listening a day? a ……… hour(s) a day b ……… minute(s) a day ix This table is about your difficulties in listening English Please read the following statements and mark (  ) in suitable column to express your opinion Statements Strongly agree Listening is important in studying and daily life If I am not good at listening skill, I can meet misunderstanding in communication Learning listening English is not easy for me I have faced many challenges in learning listening I often face many difficulties in listening English because my pronunciation and intonation are not good I cannot recognize the familiar words when they are spoken since I have mispronunciation of those words The same sentences with the different intonation will lead to several meanings It is hard to distinguish which word was mentioned when hearing a new x Agree No idea Disagree Strongly disagree accent for the first time I often listen and translate word by word to Vietnamese in listening process 10 I not have enough words to understand the conversation in listening English 11 A word can have several meanings in different situations 12 Background knowledge is a key feature in listening materials 13 Lacking background knowledge is difficult for me to understand the content of speech 14 Unfamiliar topics make me feel uncomfortable and bored 15 I cannot understand the messages of unfamiliar topics 16 Lack of practice will prevent the development of my listening skill The end Thanks for your help! xi APPENDIX STUDENTS’ INTERVIEW Dear students, My name is Nguyen Ngoc Huyen and I am a senior of English major I would like to thank you for spending your valuable time to help me with the interview questions This interview used to collect the information from you, please take your time to fulfill these below questions carefully to help completing my research Thank you very much Student’s full name: Gender: male  female  Age: Class: Why you choose English as your major? Do you like learning listening English? Why or why not? xii Do you think listening is the most difficult skill in English? Why or why not? What are your difficulties in English listening process? Which factor has become your biggest difficulty in learning listening (vocabulary, pronunciation, background knowledge, unfamiliar topics, etc)? Why? In your opinion, what should you to improve your listening skill? xiii