Immigration officers’ english listening difficulties and use of strategies a study at ho chi minh city immigration office

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY - NGUYEN QUANG MINH IMMIGRATION OFFICERS’ ENGLISH LISTENING DIFFICULTIES AND USE OF STRATEGIES: A STUDY AT HO CHI MINH CITY IMMIGRATION OFFICE Major: English Language Course code: 60220201 HO CHI MINH CITY, SEPTEMBER 2021 i MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY - IMMIGRATION OFFICERS’ ENGLISH LISTENING DIFFICULTIES AND USE OF STRATEGIES: A STUDY AT HO CHI MINH CITY IMMIGRATION OFFICE Total words: 18,706 Submitted to the Faculty of English Language in partial fulfillment of the Master’s degree in English Language Class: 19SNA11 By NGUYEN QUANG MINH Supervised by LE VAN TUYEN, Ph.D HO CHI MINH CITY, SEPTEMBER 2021 i The thesis entitled IMMIGRATION OFFICERS’ ENGLISH LISTENING DIFFICULTIES AND USE OF STRATEGIES: A STUDY AT HO CHI MINH CITY IMMIGRATION OFFICE was successfully defended and approved on ……….… at Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HUTECH) Academic supervisor: Dr LE VAN TUYEN Examination Committee Nguyen Thi Kieu Thu, Ph.D Chair Tran Quoc Thao, Ph.D Reader Luu Thi Mai Vy, Ph.D Reader Nguyen Ngoc Tran Chau, Ph.D Member Duong My Tham, Ph.D Secretary Member On behalf of the Examination Committee Chair Nguyen Thi Kieu Thu, Ph.D ii HCMC UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY POSTGRADUATE INSTITUTE HCMC, September 2021 MASTER’S THESIS REPORT Student name: Nguyen Quang Minh Sex: Male Date of birth: 30/01/1984 Place of birth: Ho Chi Minh City Major: English Language Student code: 1941900017 I- Thesis title: Immigration Officers’ English Listening Difficulties and Use of Strategies: A Study at Ho Chi Minh City Immigration Office II-Objectives and contents: This study aims at exploring difficulties in English listening skills and use of strategies of immigration officers at HIO The specific objectives of this study are as follows: § to find out difficulties in English listening skills; § to examine which strategies used by immigration officer to overcome difficulties in English listening skills This study was conducted at Ho Chi Minh City Immigration Office The study focused on English listening difficulties and strategies of immigration officers The participants were the officers who were also from different backgrounds The ages of the participants ranges from 19 to 30 over with an average of 25 The findings found out common listening difficulties that immigration officers had in listening iii skills such as the difficulties related to the content of dialogue, the content of linguistic factors, the listener, the speaker and the physical setting Moreover, the findings showed that immigration officer frequently used the cognitive, metacognitive and socio-affective listening strategies to deal with listening difficulties In order to gain the results, the quantitative and qualitative methods were applied In addition, two instruments used for data-collection were questionnaire and semi-structured interview III- Starting date: (as stated in the Decision issued by the University) IV- Completing date: V- Academic supervisor: (full name, title) LE VAN TUYEN, Ph.D ACADEMIC SUPERVISOR FACULTY DEAN Le Van Tuyen, Ph.D Nguyen Thi Kieu Thu, Ph.D iv CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I certify my authorship of the Master’s Thesis submitted today entitled: IMMIGRATION OFFICERS’ ENGLISH LISTENING DIFFICULTIES AND USE OF STRATEGIES: A STUDY AT HO CHI MINH CITY IMMIGRATION OFFICE In terms of the statement of requirements for Theses in Master’s programs issued by the Higher Degree Committee of Faculty of English Language, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology Ho Chi Minh City, September 2021 NGUYEN QUANG MINH v RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS I hereby state that I, NGUYEN QUANG MINH, being a candidate for the degree of Master of Arts (English Language) accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Master’s Theses deposited in the Library In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my Master’s Thesis deposited in the Library should be accessible for purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Librarian for the care, loan, and reproduction for theses Ho Chi Minh City, September 2021 NGUYEN QUANG MINH vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would first like to express my deepest gratitude to Dr Le Van Tuyen, my supervisor, for his patience, guidance, insightful advice, and constant encouragement throughout the whole research process Under any circumstances, he always gives me his warm support and dedication He has been a wonderful mentor and I feel grateful for having such a wonderful teacher Without his support and guidance, this thesis would never have been completed Second, I would also like to show my profound gratitude to all the lecturers of the Institute for Postgraduate and the Department of English Language in HUTECH for their tirelessly devoting time and efforts to enrich, broaden and deepen my knowledge over the past two years Last but not least, my deepest and sincerest gratitude goes to my family, including my mother, my father, my wife, my daughter, and my parents-in-law with their unconditional love, understanding and help I would like to dedicate this thesis to my beloved mother who has provided me strong spiritual and material support vii ABSTRACT Though listening ability is one of the important skills in foreign language learning, there has been relatively little research in this specific area Listening skill is one of the most necessary skills to communicate in the real life and all daily activities In learning a foreign language, it is more and more important to learn this skill Everyday people listen for different purposes such as entertainment, academic purposes or obtaining necessary information It is essential for learning languages since they enable to acquire insights and information, and to achieve success in communicating with others Everybody knows that in order to listen to a message is not as simple as hearing it, so the listener has to understand the message and respond in the right manner Through the years, investigations into difficulties in English listening and listening strategies have been the subject of many researchers Additionally, Vandergrift (1999) likewise specifies that the main roles of human listening are data social occasion and delight, however there are different reasons, like sympathy, appraisal and analysis As per Wilson (2009), listening includes the unraveling of the messages, which happens over the long haul It is unique in relation to perusing, who includes the deciphering of the message and it happens over space pages, signs, the backs of envelopes Most spoken data is not recorded and has no long lasting record In light of unconstrained execution typically vanishes from the memory in practically no time Wilson (2009) describes the difficulties into four general categories: characteristics of the message, the delivery, the listener and the environment Characteristics of the message relate to the listeners in recognizing the speech Other difficulties consist of unknown words, lexical density (short spaces of time between content words, forcing listener to concentrate harder), and complex grammatical structures viii With the hope to find out the answer for these issues, this research aimed at discovering immigration officers’ difficulties in listening and the use of listening strategies to cope with difficulties at Ho Chi Minh City Immigration Office (HIO) Improving officers listening skills effectively is strongly related to being aware of the factors which have an effect on their listening performance This study employed qualitative and quantitative methods and descriptive method to the research So the collecting data instruments like questionnaire, interview was used to the study A total of ninety eight immigration officers participated in answering the questionnaire and five officers joined the semi structure interview questions The data collected from the questionnaire were analyzed by SPSS 20.0 in terms of descriptive statistics (Mean and Standard deviation) The findings show that immigration officers had to deal with many difficulties in listening such as the difficulties related to the listener, the content of the dialogue, the speaker, the physical setting and the linguistic factors Besides, the frequency of using listening strategies was relatively high The cognitive listening strategies were the most frequently used The following strategies were metacognitive and socio affective cognitive strategies Based on the findings, some implications were made to contribute to the administrations and staffs at HIO Keywords: English listening skills, listening difficulties, listening strategies, immigration officers ix Thanajaro, M 2000 Using Authentic Materials to Develop Listening Comprehension in the English as a Second Language Classroom Retrieved on March 4th 2013 from 202.28.199.34/multim/9974216.pdf Trismasari, M., Sudarsono & Eni, R (2016) Factors influencing English listening difficulties Jurnal Pendidikan dan Pembelajaran Khatulistiwa, 5(12), 1-13 Underwood, M (1989) Teaching listening London: Longman Ur, P (2000 ) Listening Comprehension Beijing People Education Press & Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press & Cambridge Press Vandergrift, L (1997) The comprehension strategies of second language (French) listeners: A descriptive study Foreign Language Annals, 30(3), 387~409 Vandergrift, L (1999) Facilitating second language listening comprehension: acquiring successful strategies ELT Journal, 53(3), 168‐276 Vandergrift, L (2007) The comprehension strategies of second language (French) listener Language Learning, 53(3), 463-496 Walker, N (2010) Listening: The most difficult skill to teach Encuentro, 23(1), 167175 Watson, K & Smeltzer, L (1984) Barriers to Listening: Comparison Between Students and Practitioners Communication research Reports , , 82-87 Wenden, A L (1998) Metacognitive knowledge and language learning Applied Linguistics, 19(4), 515-537 Wilson, J.J 2009 How to Teach Listening New York: Pearson Longman Wolvin, A D & Coakley, C G (1982) Listening Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill Yan, F (2006) Listening to the voices of pupils: An alternative route to a balancedcurriculum for junior middle schools in China Proceedings of the Asia Pacific Educational Research Association Conference, Hong Kong Nov 30th Dec 2nd 79 Yagang, F (1994) Listening: Problems and Solutions: Teacher Development Making the Right Moves US Information Agency: Washington D.C., pp: 189-196 Yule, G (1983) Teaching the spoken language Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Zao, Y (1997) The effects of listeners’ control of speech rate on second language comprehension Psychology, 2(1), 32-43 80 APPENDIX A QUESTIONNAIRE Dear colleagues, I am conducting a research project on “Immigration officers’ listening problems and strategies used oral communication” I would like you to help complete this questionnaire The questionnaire has three parts with 59 items Please not let any item unanswered All the information you provide for me will be used for research purposes only and will be kept completely confidential Thank you very much Part A: Personal information Your gender: Male ☐ Female ☐ Your age: 19-22☐ 23-25☐ 26-28☐ 29-over☐ How long have you been using English in the workplace? years Your estimated English proficiency level Advanced ☐ Upper-intermediate ☐ Pre-intermediate ☐ Intermediate ☐ Elementary ☐ How often you use English in communication in the workplace? Never ☐ Rarely ☐ Sometimes ☐ Often ☐ Always ☐ Part B: Difficulties in listening to English Please tick (ü) the appropriate response in the box, using the scale as follow: Not at all true for me Rarely true for me Sometimes true for me Often true for me 81 Always true for me No Items Listening difficulties related to the content of the dialogue 1.1 I find it difficult to understand the dialogue in which there are too many unfamiliar words 1.2 I find it difficult to understand the dialogue when it contains jargon, idioms and slang expressions 1.3 I find it difficult to understand the dialogue when it contains complex grammatical structures 1.4 A long dialogue makes me tired or distracted when I listen to the speaker 1.5 I find it difficult to grasp the meaning of all words when the topic of the dialogue is unfamiliar 1.6 I rarely use my experience and background knowledge of the topic to understand the dialogue 1.7 I find it difficult to understand every single word of every dialogue 1.8 I find it difficult to understand the whole dialogue Listening difficulties related to the content of the linguistic factors 1.9 I find pronunciation familiar but cannot recognize the words 1.10 I cannot recognize the words I know while listening 1.11 I find it difficult to recognize the signals, which 82 3 4 5 indicate that the speaker is moving from one point to another 1.12 I stop listening and start thinking about the meaning of word when encountering an unknown word 1.13 I find it difficult to infer the meaning of an unknown word while listening 1.14 I find it difficult to follow the sequence of the dialogue when the sentences are too long and complex Listening difficulties related to the listener 1.15 I am unable to concentrate because I look for the answers and listen to the dialogue at the same time 1.16 I lose my concentration when the dialogue is too long 1.17 I lose the flow of speech because I concentrate very hard on understanding every word or phrase I hear 1.18 I find it difficult to understand dialogues because of my poor pronunciation 1.19 I find it difficult to understand dialogues because of poor vocabulary and grammar 1.20 I find it difficult to understand dialogues because of my low English proficiency level 1.21 I am not good at predicting what would come next in a dialogue 1.22 I feel nervous when listen to my customers’ speaking English 83 1.23 I am very slow at guessing the meaning of words in a dialogue 1.24 I find it difficult to follow a dialogue when I am not interested 1.25 I find it difficult to follow a dialogue because of my poor listening skills Listening difficulties related to the speaker 1.26 I find it difficult to understand the meaning of words which are not pronounced clearly 1.27 I find it difficult to understand the dialogue without seeing the speaker’s body language 1.28 I have difficulty understanding speakers with unfamiliar accents 1.29 I find it difficult to understand when speakers speak too fast 1.30 I find it difficult to understand the dialogue when the speaker does not pause long enough 1.31 I find it difficult to understand when the speaker uses unfamiliar stress and intonation patterns 1.32 I find it difficult to understand when the speaker does not come from the Inner cycle Listening difficulties related to the physical setting 1.33 I find it difficult to concentrate with noise around 1.34 I find it difficult to listen to a group of speakers at the same time 84 Part C: Listening strategies used in oral communication in the workplace Please rate how much you think these statements are true about you by crossing (X) (1) Never (2) Seldom No (3) Sometimes (4) Usually Items Meta-cognitive listening strategy 2.1 I clarify objectives of listening activities 2.2 I prepare my mind to concentrate on clients’ spoken messages 2.3 I have a clear plan in my head for how I am going to listen 2.4 I prepare my mind to select specific information 2.5 I keep in my mind on prepared plans to keep up with clients 2.6 I reflect on my problems such as strange words that I not understand 2.7 I evaluate how much I can understand by confirming the contents with my clients Cognitive listening strategy 2.8 I notice the stressed words from clients’ spoken messages 2.9 I try to understand each word in client’s spoken 85 (5) Always 4 5 messages 2.10 I guess the meaning of words by connecting them with speakers’ gestures 2.11 I take notes of key words and stressed words 2.12 I concentrate on main ideas first and then details 2.13 I predict the contents of spoken messages by focusing on clients’ queries 2.14 I guess the meanings based on the familiar vocabulary Socio-affective listening strategy 2.15 I ask my colleagues questions I not understand 2.16 I ask my clients to confirm the contents of spoken messages 2.17 I share the difficulties with my colleagues and clients 2.18 I ask my clients to check my understanding of each spoken messages 2.19 I always keep focused while I am sharing difficulties with colleagues and clients 2.20 I try to relax myself while I am listening to my clients THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION 86 APPENDIX B INTERVIEW PROTOCOL Date: _ Location: _ Time to start: _ Time to finish: _ Introduction Thank you for volunteering and for signing the consent form to take part in this interview that is expected to last between twenty-five and thirty minutes You will answer some questions during the interview, and you may wish to stop the interview at any time Questions for discussion A Questions related to difficulties in listening skills What are the difficulties related to the content of the dialogue that you often scope with? What are the difficulties related to the linguistic factors that you often scope with? What are the difficulties related to the listener that you often scope with? What are the difficulties related to the speaker that you often scope with? What are the difficulties related to the physical setting that you often scope with? B Question related to the use of listening strategies By using metacognitive strategies, what you when you not understand the speaker say? By using cognitive strategies, what you when you not understand the speaker say? By using socio-affective strategies, what you when you not understand the speaker say? THANK YOU FOR YOUR COOPERATION 87 APPENDIX C SAMPLE OF INTERVIEW DATA ANALYSIS Questions Responses A Questions related to difficulties in listening skills What are the difficulties O1: I could not understand the unfamiliar words in the related to the content of the dialogue dialogue that you often scope with? O2: I was confused with too many queries of clients in each dialogue O3: Clients kept talking and I did not have time to take notes and respond O4: I could not understand the dialogues because there are too many idioms and slangs in dialogues O5: I could not grasp the main ideas of unfamiliar topics What are the difficulties O1: I did not understand the use of signal words in related to the linguistic spoken messages factors that you often scope with? O2: I always spent three to five minutes to think of the meaning of unfamiliar words O3: I did my best to separate long sentences into smaller ones to understand O4: I could not understand complex sentences in spoken messages O5: I tried to imitate the pronunciation of clients to guess the meaning However, they could not infer the 88 whole meaning of messages What are the difficulties O1: I did not know how to interpret the meaning related to the listener that correctly while listening you often scope with? O2: I found it confused to use listening strategies to guess the meaning O3: I felt exhausted in the middle of long dialogues O4: I did not prepare essential words to use for each dialogue O5: Because of pausing to think about the meaning, I cannot follow the whole dialogue What are the difficulties O1: I felt exhausted and scared to cope with different related to the speaker that accents of clients you often scope with? O2: I tried to imagine the words from clients’ pronunciation However, I could not have any clues O3: I could not guess the meaning when they did not come from native English speaking countries O4: My clients did not split up sentences, so I could not understand them O5: It seemed they spoke too fast and I was left behind As a result, I could not hear anything from them What are the difficulties O1: I was distracted by noises of machines in the room related to the physical setting that you often scope O2: I could not concentrate well while other colleagues answered clients’ questions 89 with? O3: There were too many colleagues in the rooms It was the reason why I could not focus well on my clients when my colleagues were talking O4: The noise of vehicles on street nearby caused me difficult to hear all queries in details O5: Clients did not follow the procedures at the HIO, so they raised many complaints and queries It is the reason why I could listen to what they asked me B Question related to the use of listening strategies By using metacognitive O2: I tried to follow specific steps which are strategies, what you described in this strategy in order that I can when you not understand understand spoken messages the speaker say? O3: I immediately evaluated why I cannot understand and I try to reflect problems for better listening O5: I kept listening to clients and formulate methods to solve difficulties while listening By using cognitive O3: I always paid attention to clients’ gestures to strategies, what you guess the meaning of strange words when you not understand the speaker say? O4: I usually wrote down strange words and transferred into long-term memory for retrieval O5: I sometimes imitated clients’ pronunciation to guess the meanings 90 By using socio-affective O1: I tried to take a deep breath and relax while I strategies, what you listen to my clients when you not understand the speaker say? O2: I always shared problems with my colleagues in order they I can solve clients’ queries effectively O4: I was willing to ask my clients to repeat when I don’t understand O5: I always concentrated on my clients’ messages even though there are noises around 91 APPENDIX D Turnitin Plagiarism Scan 92 93