An investigation into difficulties in listening skill of english majored freshmen at tay do university

TAY DO UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF LINGUISTICS AND LITERATURE AN INVESTIGATION INTO DIFFICULTIES IN LISTENING SKILL OF ENGLISH MAJORED FRESHMEN AT TAY DO UNIVERSITY Supervisor: PHAN THI MINH UYEN, M.A Student: NGUYEN NGOC LINH Code: 13D220201025 Class: English 8A April 2017 i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT My research could hardly finish without the help, guide and support of many people I would like to give my profound to everyone who helped me to complete it First of all, I want to express my sincere thanks to my supervisor for her guidance and continuous encouragement She spent her valuable time on guiding me during the time I was conducting the research Truthfully, my research could not be completed successfully without her dedicated assistance Secondly, I want to show my special thanks to all lecturers in the Faculty of Linguistic and Literature of Tay Do University who provided knowledge to me for the past four years Last but not least, I am honest to send my gratitude to my family and my friends who always stand by me and supported me during time I did the research Once again, thank you all very much ii COMMENTS iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLRDGEMENT i COMMENTS ii TABLE OF COTENTS iii ABSTRACT v CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale 1.2 The significance of study 1.3 The organization of study CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 The term of listening 2.1.1 The definition of listening skill 2.1.2 The importance of listening skill 2.2 Some problems affecting learning listening skill 2.2.1 Problems related to linguistics 2.2.1.1 Vocabulary 2.2.1.2 Grammar structure 2.2.1.3 Pronunciation 2.2.2 Problem related to background knowledge 2.3 Other elements affecting learning English listening skill 2.3.1 Learning environment 2.3.2 Length and speed of speech iv CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH AIMS - RESEARCH QUESTION – HYPOTHESIS 11 3.1 Research aims 11 3.2 Research questions 11 3.3 Hypothesis 11 CHAPTER 4: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 12 4.1 Designed 12 4.2 Participant 12 4.3 Instrument 12 4.3.1 Questionnaire 13 4.3.2 Paper interview 13 4.4 Procedure 13 CHAPTER 5: EXPECTED OUT COME 15 REFERENCES 16 APPENDIX 18 APPENDIX 22 v ABSTRACT The research on the topic '' An investigation into difficulties in listening skill of English majored freshmen at Tay Do University '' is conducted to figure out common problems that students have to face in listening process and it is also the main aim of the research Depending on the study, students have methods to improve listening skill The study is carried out within 10 weeks and participant of this research are freshmen of English 11 class at Tay Do University The questionnaire and paper interview are two main instruments in the study Besides, the results of the research will show the student’s difficulties in learning and using listening skill vi CHAPTER INTRODUCTION Chapter presents rationale, significance and organization of the study 1.1 Rationale Nowadays, English plays a necessary role for many people who use English because English is used as a general language to communicate or connect with people from different countries Thanks to English, they can open their knowledge outside, exchange culture and build many social relationships with other countries In addition, English is considered as a main factor which helps students to get good jobs, so there are many job opportunities for learners However, English has four main skills such as listening, speaking, reading, writing to learn Learners not know which skills are needed and principal for them, so they meet many difficulties in learning English Among these skills, listening is one of the most required skills to help learners improve English language, the learners who are good at listening English skill, they will succeed easier in both learning English at class and communication in social In fact, listening is a subject that it cannot be neglected for English learners because listening is the basic skill in language as Cross (1998) said that “without understanding input appropriately, learning simply cannot get any improvement In addition, without listening skill, no communication can be achieved” Moreover, Jeanette Winterson (1999) also declared that "everything in writing begins with language Language begins with listening" It means that without listening skill, learners cannot learn to communicate effectively, listening directly affects study a new language However, many learners often ignore this skill to focus on writing, grammar, reading, etc., so they not pay much attention to their listening skill and not practice listening frequently It results English learners’ failure Similarly, English majored freshmen at Tay Do University face many problems when studying listening subject It is hypothesized that students are too passive in learning Instead of voluntarily finding their own materials for their study process, they commonly wait for the information from the lecturers in class Besides, they cannot recognize their difficulties in learning English listening subject This leads to other problems related to background knowledge, pronunciation, grammar, intonation, accent, vocabulary and some other elements as well For those the reasons above, the researcher decides to conduct the study entitled “Difficulties in listening skill of English majored freshmen at Tay Do University” 1.2 The significance of the study This research is done to help English majored freshmen at Tay Do University figure out the problems that they are facing when learning listening subject Since then, students can realize their difficulties Moreover, students can overcome their shortcomings and improve their listening skills basing on the problems in this study 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 term of listening, some problems affecting learning listening skill and other elements affecting learning English listening skill 2.1 The term of listening 2.1.1 The definition of listening skill There are different definitions of listening stated by some researchers First, Goss (1982) considered that “listening is a process of taking what you hear and organizing it into verbal units to which you can apply meaning” It means that a sentence has not only one meaning but also lots of meanings Learners must have experience to know suitable meaning of different sentences Second, Thomlison (1984) defined listening as, “active listening, which is very important for effective communication” Besides, Barker (1971) denoted that “listening is the active and dynamic process of attending, perceiving, interpreting, remembering, and responding to the expressed (verbal and nonverbal) needs, concerns, and information offered by other human beings” Truthfully, listening is the natural process when people were born It still takes place when they sleep, but they only can listen without understanding Therefore, they must listen active and have cognitive clearly through learning language process Moreover, P Brett (1997) stated that “listening is a key second language skill, it has a vital role in the language acquisition process, and its development is of prime concern to language teachers” With this view point, it can be realized that listening was really an essential skill in the process learning any languages because of its importance and difficulties In short, there are various definitions by many researchers, but they shared the same opinion that listening skill is foremost for English learns They will understand what the others say and answer correctly from that they will succeed on everything because of having good listening skill 2.1.2 The importance of listening skill Listening skill is substantial because good it is compulsory to get into a profession in communications, management, planning, sales, etc especially in learning language Therefore, from the awareness of the role of listening skill, there are numerous viewpoints from divergent of researchers First, Bentley and Bacon (1996) had a view point that “listening was an important part of foreign language learning process, and it had also been defined as an active process during which listeners construct meaning from oral input” The way researcher saw that listening was the long-life process to learn and to get experience because this process need to take much time to learn vocabulary, pronunciation, complex grammar Besides, listening is an active process because it always requires learners who must understand the meaning of each case in sentence flexibly Second, Rost (1994) pointed out that “listening is vital in the language classroom” and “listening is thus fundamental to speaking” Simultaneously, Barker (1971) also announced “listening can also help student build vocabulary, develop language proficiency, and improve language usage” Truly, listening skill is an indispensable that learners should pay attention because a good listening will support speaking skill better as well as other skills Third, Michael P and Deborah (1997) stated that “listening established us in our real life situation and enables us to maintain meaningful relations with family, friends and professional associates” It means that listening skill will make the they should create new listening environment for exchange information and learning effectively In short, learning environment is a determine factor to learners’ success because if learners have a good learning environment they will become confident and get more information from others In addition, learners can solve their problem thank to others’ helping 2.3.2 Length and speed of speech Length and speed affect the listener’s perception of the speaker and the relative importance of the speech's message because the learners cannot catch up the speaker saying Azmi Bingol, Celik, Yidliz, and Tugrul Mart (2014) stated that “the level of students can have a significant role when they listen to long parts and keep all information in their mind” and they also said that “it is very difficult for lower level students to listen more than three minutes long and complete the listening tasks” It can be realized that short listening passages make easily listening comprehension for learners and avoid their tiredness, so the long listening text is supposed to be an obstacle to students in listening Actually, if the students the listening for a long time, they will be under pressure The result is that they cannot catch up and understand the speech Furthermore, if the listening text is too long, the listener is required the skill of note-taking However, the note-taking is not easy for students because they are not trained with this skill leads to they cannot take - note the key words of the speech in listening process Besides, Underwood (1989) “speed can make listening passage difficult If the speakers speak too fast students may have serious problems to understand” In this situation, listeners are not able to control the speed of speakers and this can create critical problems with listening comprehension In general, length and speed are problems with learners in process listening Thus, the skill of note-taking seems to be the most useful way when learners have to face a long task in listening This will help them to remember the main points or the precise information Besides, they should develop their own characters or symbols This is believed to be the most efficient way when they face with a long and fast listening speech 10 CHAPTER RESEARCH AIMS-RESEARCH QUESTION-HYPOTHESIS Chapter presents research aims, research questions and hypothesis 3.1 Research aims Students often face many difficulties in the process of listening English which is reason why student’s listening skill is not good Thus, this research is conducted to find out the difficulties in listening English-majored freshmen at Tay Do University 3.2 Research questions The research is expected to find out difficulties in listening skill of English-majored freshmen at Tay Do University Therefore, the study conducted to answer the following questions: What are common difficulties in listening skill of English majored freshmen at Tay Do University? How can English majored freshmen at Tay Do University overcome their difficulties in listening skill? 3.3 Hypothesis According to the literature review and the research questions, the study will figure out lots of learner's difficulties when learning listening skill Besides, the freshmen will be aware of their problems in the listening process Depending on this study, English majored freshmen at Tay Do University can have positive attitude and find out more motivation towards learning listening English 11 CHAPTER RESEARCH METHODOLOGY Chapter presents the design, participants, instruments and procedure 4.1 Design The research is conducted to answer the research questions and to test the hypotheses The study begins with the observation sheets The researcher wants to find out the difficulties when learning English listening skill of freshmen at Tay Do University Then, the questionnaire is designed to survey their problems Besides, the interview is also designed for students to understand clearly about the difficulties of freshmen, 10 students are invited to attend the paper interview to verify the truth of the information given in the questionnaire Finally, the result from observations, questionnaires and interviews will be analyzed and give the conclusion 4.2 Participants Participants of this research include all students of English majored freshmen course XI (2016-2020) at Tay Do University They speak Vietnamese as their mother tongue and English is considered as their foreign language They have been learning English to 12 years They will be given questionnaires about difficulties that have faced in listening skill Besides, two teachers who have been teaching them will provide information about difficulties in listening skill of students 4.3 Instruments The instruments of this study are questionnaires and paper interview The questionnaire is used to gather information from students It can survey the difficulties in English listening Furthermore, the questionnaire can be used to find the causes of the difficulties In addition, paper interview is designed with the aim of confirming the hypothesis and getting more detailed information to understand the issues deeply 12 4.3.1 Questionnaire The questionnaire had two parts Part included questions that aim at getting background information from student such as participants’ years of learning, learners’ practicing time, learning motivation, etc Part was a table about 15 difficulties of English majored freshmen at Tay Do University in listening skill It had 15 statements corresponding to five levels such as strongly agree, no idea, disagree, and strongly disagree Students could tick on the appropriate column next to the statement 4.3.2 Paper interview The paper interview for students is designed to get information about the difficulties in the process of listening subject It consists of interview questions Firstly, question is to investigate students’ attitude about listening English Question is designed to know freshmen’s practicing time In the question 3, students would point out difficulties that they often get when learning listening Question aims at surveying to know what the most difficulty of students when listening English 4.4 Procedure This research is conducted in 10 weeks as the following procedure: Step - Meeting, introducing the topic of the research and discussing to find out good and effective way for the study (time: week) - Receiving related materials - Writing outline Step - Searching for materials to support the research (time: weeks) - Writing chapter 1, 2, 13 - Teacher suggested chapter 1,2,3 the first time Step - Designing the questionnaire and the interview (time: weeks) - Writing chapter - Teacher suggested chapter 1,2,3 the second time Step - Teacher suggested chapter 1,2,3 the third time (time: weeks) - Writing chapter - Completing and submitting the research 14 CHAPTER EXPECTED OUTCOME English majored freshmen at Tay Do University have many difficulties about linguistics, background knowledge and other elements which are showed in chapter to help them at Tay Do University recognize their difficulties in listening skill First, learners face many obstacles in listening comprehension what the others said because they lack the vocabulary Moreover, students are not able to understand new structures in listening process Pronunciation is also their problem Thus, they need to learn vocabulary, grammar structures and pronunciation harder Second, most of students have background knowledge's limit To expand knowledge, students should study more fields about social cultural, factual, and contextual It supports for students about knowledge to express their listening skill better Finally, learning environments have directly effects to learners In addition, length and speed are difficult with learners in process listening They cannot catch up the speech, so they should study listening very hard In a nutshell, basing on the problems mentioned in this study, the researcher expects that English majored freshmen at Tay Do University can realize and improve their problems in listening skill to learn English better In addition, lecturers can encourage and suggest suitable solutions for students in order to help students overcome their problems in listening skill 15 REFERENCES References from books: Azmi, B M., Celik, B., Yidliz, N., & Tugrul, M C (2014) Listening Comprehension Difficulties Encountered by Students in Second language Learning Class Journal of Educational and Instructional Studies in the World, 4(4), 1-6 Barker, L L (1971) Listening behavior Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall Bentley, S & Bacon, S E (1996) The all new, state-of-the-art ILA definition of listening: Now that we have it, what we with it? Listening Post, 1-5 Brent Gayle Wilson (1996) Constructivist Learning Environments: Case Studies in Instructional Design Celce-Murcia, M., Brinton, D., & Goodwin, J (1996) Teaching Pronunciation: A reference for teachers of English to speakers of other languages New York: Cambridge University press Cross, D (1998) Teach English Oxford: Oxford University Press Goss, B (1982) Listening as information processing Communication Quarterly,30, 304-06 Michael, P and Deborah B (1997) Listening in language learning London: Longman Nakata, Y (1999) The effects of listening strategy training on listening competence Paper,AILA, Tokyo 10 Nation, Paul (1994) New Ways in Teaching Vocabulary TESOL 11 P Brett (1997) A Comparative Study of the Effects of the Use of Multimedia on Listening Comprehension 12 Proverb, R (1990) Applying Strategies to the Four Language Skills Language Learning Strategies: what every teacher should know 13 Rost, M (1994) Introducing listening London: Penguin 16 14 Schmitt, N (2000) Vocabulary in language teaching Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 15 Thomlison, T Dean (1984) Relational listening: theoretical and practical considerations Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the 5th International Listening Association 16 Underwood, M 1989 Teaching Listening [M] Longman group Limited 17 Wilkins, D.A (1972) Linguistics in Language Teaching London: Edward Arnold 18 Yagang, F (1994) Listening: Problems and solutions In T Kral (ed) Teacher Development: Making the Right Moves Washington, DC: English Language Programs Divisions, USIA References from the internet: English grammar – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Retrieved from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_grammar Jeanette Winterson (1999) in Jeanette Winterson quotes Retrieved from: http://mobile.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/j/jeanettewi349481.html Oxford Dictionary Retrieved from: https://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/grammar?searchDictCode=a ll 17 APPENDIX A QUESTIONAIRE FOR STUDENTS Dear student, My name is Nguyen Ngoc Linh and I am currently a senior of English major Now, I research “Difficulties in English listening skill of English majored at Tay Do University”, so I think that your ideas are important information to my research Please take your time to read and fulfill these following questions Thank you very much Student’s name: Gender: Class: Age: Part Please read the following questions and circle the appropriate answer to your opinion Give the specific answers if needed Where you come from? a Urban area/ city b Rural area/ countryside How long have you studied English? …………… years Which skill you like best? a Listening b Speaking c Reading d Writing 18 How you feel when listening to English? a Easy b Difficult c Excited d Bored e Other ideas………………… 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 19 Part 2: This below 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 agree No idea Disagree Strongly disagree I not have enough vocabulary to understand the topics I can’t identify the suitable words when I listen I usually make grammatical errors in listening because I don’t know grammar structures thoroughly I don’t understand new structures in the process of listening I often face many difficulties in learning listening because my pronunciation is not good Lacking background knowledge is one of my obstacles in listening I usually translate all the information I hear into Vietnamese I often get anxiety when listening 20 Long listening texts make me feel stressful 10 Learning environment affect directly to me THANKS FOR YOUR HELP! 21 APPENDIX B STUDENTS’ INTERVIEW Dear student, My name is Nguyen Ngoc Linh and I am currently a senior of English major Now, I research “Difficulties in English listening skill of English majored at Tay Do University”, so I think that your ideas are important information to my research Please take your time to read and fulfill these following questions Thank you very much Student’s name: Gender: Class: Age: Do you like listening skill? Why/ why not? _ _ _ _ How often you learn listening skill? 22 Do you face certain difficulties when you learn listening skill? (Pronunciation, vocabulary, background knowledge, etc) If yes, identify some of them _ _ _ _ _ In your opinion, which one is the most difficult? (Listening skill, reading skill, speaking skill, writing skill) _ _ _ _ _ THANKS FOR YOUR HELP! 23