OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY
Rationale of the study
Today, the influence of English on the world is extremely important English is an important and necessary language in all areas of life such as: Economy, Education, Technology, Diplomacy, Defense, etc Therefore, the universalization of English for Vietnamese people is extremely necessary However, the proficiency of using a foreign languag e is extremely difficult and time consuming Vietnamese people need an appropriate and advanced training program, and with an effort to reach the world, they can quickly use the world's common language in the period of 4.0 Technology.
Listening is crucial in language acquisition, mirroring the natural process of infant language development Initially, infants comprehend emotional tone and later discern words and communication patterns This foundational listening ability carries into foreign language learning, laying the groundwork for reading and writing proficiency Therefore, listening practice is paramount for mastering English and other foreign languages effectively.
Listening is an extremely important and difficult skill to practice Therefore, there are many research papers on the factors affecting this skill or the difficulties of learners when listening to English However, my study focuses on studying the listening skill of first-year English major students at Thuong Mai University There are many reasons for me to do research on this topic.
The first reason comes from the reality of English listening skill of first-year major students who are quite weak at this skill Most freshmens were so familiar with the high school curriculum They only focus on learning grammar and vocabulary, but are less interested in practicing language skills like practicing listening English The scores in the listening skill tests at the university are extremely low Most freshmens are afraid to learn to listen or listen to tests Besides, according to Lewis (1993), listening is also the most crucial medium for input in learning a foreign language and by increasing students’ ability to perceive speech and thus aiding language learning. Indeed, listening is an important and difficult skill When learning a foreign language, listening is a skill not to be missed Listening skill plays a critical role in the remaining other skills such as speaking, reading and writing All skills are interrelated and used in conjunction with each other in everyday life Most learners will find their listening skill difficult and choose to avoid having to listen to English However, when being a student in English department, first-year students need to raise awareness of the importance of listening skills and try to overcome difficulties Unlike students of other faculties, students in the English Faculty need to be aware of the relationship of listening skill with others, learners should not focus on a certain skill that you find it easy for yourself and ignore other skills Therefore, I want to thoroughly understand the difficulties that new students are having then find the right solutions to help freshmens to improve their listening skill.
The second reason that the researcher decided to study this topic was that when being a freshman, the reseacher also had many difficulties in practicing English listening It was the fact that my first year listening test scores were not as expected I used to feel frustrated when I heard it because even though I tried, the results did not improve Like other students, I want to improve my listening skill to use specialized English fluently after graduation Ofcouse, learners need a lot of effort The first year is a good time for learners to improve their limitations, especially in listening skill. Freshmen have a lot of time and opportunities to research and improve their skills. Therefore, the researcher wants to through this study, can find out the difficulties that freshmen are facing, and offer practical solutions for themselves The researcher hopes the results of this study bring benefits not only for the researcher but also the first-year students who are weak in English listening skill.
Moreover, there have been many researches on listening skill of TMU students, but very few people have studied specifically about difficulties in listening skill that first-year English students have experienced Therefore, I have more motivation to be addicted to the research on this topic to help students in English Department.
These are the main rationales that promt the researcher to carry out the study of topic “Difficulties in English listening skill expperienced by first-year English major students at Thuong Mai University and suggested solutions”.
Previous studies
Before carrying out this topic, the researcher consulted and explored many documents related to the topic of difficulties in English listening skill There is a lot of information and materials related to this issue on the internet, books, newspapers, magazines, scientific papers, etc In the references, the researcher found that the research results and information in the following three authors’ language studies are relevant and useful for the research, they are: The Role of Listening in Language Acquisition; the Challenges & Strategies in Teaching Listening (D Renukadevi, 2014); Factors Affecting Listening Comprehension and Strategies for Improvement (Naci Yildiz and Mustafa Albay, 2015) and Learners’ Listening Comprehension Difficulties in English Language Learning (Abbas Pourhosein Gilakjani and Narjes Banou Sabour, 2016).
The first previous study that the researcher refers to is “The Role of Listening inLanguage Acquisition; the Challenges & Strategies in Teaching Listening” (D.Renukadevi, 2014) D Renukadevi was an Assistant Professor of Department ofEnglish in Erode Sengunthar Engineering College His study deals with the prime importance of listening in language acquisition and the challenges in attaining listening competence and suggests some strategies to overcome it D Renukadevi declared that
“without listening skills, language learning is impossible” The reason was “there is no communication where there is no human interaction” According to him, listening was crucial not only in language learning but also for learning other subjects Today, learners have problems with listening with all the technological advancements in the field of education The study showed main reasons such as: learners spend too little time to improve their listening skills; the inappropriate strategies tested on them in a learning setting may be an important reason for their poor listening comprehension. Other causes may from the listening material and physical settings D Renukadevi also suggested some solutions to help langguage learners acquire high level listening skill, such as:
Reduce the burden of comprehension by knowing the context of a listening text and the purpose for listening greatly.
Both bottom-up processers (linguistic knowledge) and top-down processes (prior knowledge) can be used by listeners to comprehend.
Teachers should play an important role in teaching learners strategies and how to apply them into the listening task.
Students should be helped to develop sound strategies for comprehension through a process approach to teach listening.
The second study that was referrd by the researcher is “Factors Affecting Listening Comprehension and Strategies for Improvement” (Naci Yildiz and Mustafa Albay, 2015) Their study showed three main factors from: listeners, speakers, material and medium The first factor was the intelligence of the learners which decided on how much language input they receive Background knowledge about the topic, another factor, enables the learners to comprehend the listening text better; in other words prior knowledge facilitates comprehension and allows learners to make predictions The second factor was speaker factors They showed clearly factors from the speakers:
Speakers’ ability plays an important role in comprehension Learners may prefer listening activities of native speakers because it can help learners understand better.
The pronunciation and accent of the speaker influences comprehension.
Delivery speed of the speaker is a major factor in listening comprehension.
Listening to well-known and prestigious speakers can motivate learners.
The other fators came from material and medium, such as:
The choice of listening materials holds a big role in comprehension If message is not conveyed, the materials will not be useful Vocabulary, grammar level and phonological of the material influences comprehension largely.
Stress and intonation in the material.
The content of the material
In the study, they suggested many solutions to help learners improve listening skill They affirmed that all grammatical structures and vocabulary in listening texts must be ensured to be taught beforehand The difficulty of listening texts must be at learners’ level of understanding and listening texts must absorb attention of learners. Interesting listening topics motivated learners which finally lead to achievement Speed of delivery must be slightly slower than normal speech The accent of speakers in listening texts influence comprehension so native accents should be preferred And finally a silent and motivating listening environment should be created.
The third study that the researcher would like to review is “Learners’ ListeningComprehension Difficulties in English Language Learning” (Abbas Pourhosein
Gilakjani and Narjes Banou Sabour, 2016) In this study, the researchers reviewed the terms of listening, listening comprehension, listening comprehension strategies, and listening difficulties The researchers showed 3 listening comprehension strategies. They are cognitive, metacognitive, and socio-affective They also showed main problems that learners faced with listening comprehension: The quality of listening material, cultural differences, accents, unfamiliar vocabulary, length and listening speed The highlight of this study is that the author pointed out a lot of measures to help students improve their listening skill However, most of measures were applied to teachers, such as: design listening tasks that arouse students’ interest and help them learn listening skills and strategies; provide students with different types of input like lectures, radio news, films, announcements, everyday conversation, and interviews; familiarize students with the rules of pronunciation in order to help them hear the different forms of rapid natural speech and ask them to imitate native speakers’ pronunciation; provide background knowledge and linguistic knowledge to students while listening to different listening materials, etc.
From these two studies together with the graduation thesis on listening skill of students at the Thuong Mai University’s library, I found that previous studies have also clearly and specifically shown the reallity and limited points in students' listening skill.But few studies focus on freshmen in English Faculty Also study of English listening skill, I would like to consult previous studies to clarify my topic more and gain the experience from the previous researchers I want to clarify the problem of listening skill that students have to face In this study, the object the researcher aimed at is the freshman of English Faculty.
Aims of the study
This study focuses on understanding the difficulties faced by first-year English major students at TMU and thereby proposing suggested solutions More specifically, this study is considered a process to explore the answers to the following questionares:
What are the attitudes of first-year English major students at Thuongmai University toward English listenning skills?
What are difficulties in English listening skill experienced by first-year English major students at Thuong Mai University?
What are some suggested solutions to help freshman at ThuongmaiUniversity improve their listening skill?
Research subjects
Research subjects are freshmen, currently studying at the Faculty of English of TMU Most freshmen are students with the lowest English listening test scores in the Faculty They are almost familiar with the way they studied in high school Before going to college, high school students only focus on learning grammar and vocabulary without taking time to practice language skills, especially listening practice in particular The goal of high school students is to achieve a high score on the university exam However, when they are in college, they must use the language they learn, namely speaking and listening to English Due to unfamiliarity with the environment and the method of studying at the university, freshman students may face many difficulties when listening to English.
Within the innovation program, freshmen acquire essential skills in listening, speaking, reading, and writing as independent subjects Enhanced listening instruction includes dedicated listening classes and ample interaction with teachers and peers Additionally, exposure to native English speakers provides valuable practice However, the emphasis on listening as a grading component presents a challenge for freshmen, particularly those from rural areas These students often encounter socioeconomic and educational disparities, limiting their opportunities for language immersion and guidance from native speakers, potentially impacting their overall academic performance.
Therefore, listening to English and achieving high scores in university subjects is really a big challenge for them.
Scope of the study
Firstly, the scope of the study is the difficulties in English listening skill experienced by first-year English major students at TMU The study focuses on understanding and investigating the difficulties students face The study does not intend to explore other aspects of learning English, such as: factors affecting English listening or students' English learning habits, etc In addition, this research focuses on studying a unique skill of learning English that is listening skill The researcher did not study about other skills such as speaking, reading and writing.
Due to time and resource constraints, the researcher focused their study solely on first-year students enrolled in the English Department of TMU This decision was made to ensure the homogeneity of the sample and to minimize potential confounding variables that could arise from including students from different departments or academic levels.
Accounting, etc The research objects are limited and zoned The scope of the study is
To investigate the research question, 100 students were randomly selected from four classes: K54N1, K54N2, K54N3, and K54N4 Participants from these classes were invited to complete a survey questionnaire The study focused solely on student responses and did not include interviews or data collection from teachers or parents.
Research methodology
The research methodology used is quantitative method The researcher designed a questionnaire consisting of smaller and more specific questions These questions include closed questions (questions are available with answers) These closed questions will be divided into 3 major parts (from part II to part IV) Part II contains 05 questions, understanding the attitude of students with learning to listen; Part III includes 03 questions, find out about difficulties encountered by students, Part IV includes 06 questions about the method of application to improve listening skill The researcher included questionnaires for 100 students who were selected in the scope of the study, then retrieved the questionnaires for results Results are transferred to specific number data and the data are clearly analyzed.
Organization of the study
The rest of this paper has four more chapters:
In chapter two (Literature review): the researcher discusses the literature and theory related to the research topic.
In chapter three (Research findings): the researcher has justified and described the research method in full detail From the results obtained after the actual survey, the researcher has drawn new findings and made comments and evaluations on the survey results.
In chapter four (Recommendations and suggestion): From the actual results obtained, the researcher offers practical and specific solutions to the topic.
Final part is the conclusion for the whole study.
LITERATURE REVIEW
The second chapter presents relevant theories ralated to listening and difficulties in English listening skill The definition or explaination of key terms in the topic is presented along with the same previous research topics.
Listening is one of the most difficult skills when beginning to learn a language, it was claimed as “the most difficult of the four skills the beginner of a foreign language has to develop” (Eastman, 1991) Listening is an extremely difficult and necessary skill, but in Vietnam, since the beginning of English training, listening skill has not been focused in training programs at primary and secondary schools Until recent years, the importance of listening skill has been pushed higher In order to use a second language fluently and smoothly, listening skill need to be combined with other skills. There have been many authors and experts when studying the listening learning that have taken different definitions of listening In general, the concepts given by experts have similarities, and help readers differentiate between “listening” and
“hearing” It is remarkable that there is a clear distinction between hearing something and listening to it Hearing is simply a sound or word recognition while listening implies some conscious attention to the message conveying the meaning of what is said According to Emmert (1994), “listening is more than merely hearing words. Listening is an active process by which students receive, construct meaning from, and respond to spoken and or nonverbal message” As mentioned in Nunan (2003, p.24)
Listening is an active process where individuals derive meaning from spoken information As defined by Chastain (1971), listening encompasses the ability to comprehend native speech at its typical pace Morley (1972) further elaborates that it involves auditory discernment, grammatical understanding, filtering essential information, retaining it, and correlating it with the connection between sound and meaning Notably, listening extends beyond mere sound discrimination to encompass aural comprehension, as emphasized by Postovsky (1975).
(1982) defined listening as a process of understanding what is heard and organizing it into lexical elements to which meaning can be allocated Bowen, Madsen, and Hilferty
(1985) demonstrated that “Listening is understanding the oral language Students hear oral speech, divide sounds, classify them into lexical and syntactic units, and comprehend the message Listening is a process of receiving what the speaker says,making and showing meaning, negotiating meaning with the speaker and answering,and creating meaning by participation, creativity, and empathy” According to Purdy
(1997), listening is the process of receiving, making meaning from, and answering to spoken and/or nonverbal messages Rost (2002) defined listening as a complex process of interpretation in which listeners match what they hear with what they already know. Jafari and Hashim (2015) emphasized that listening is a channel for comprehensible input and more than 50 percent of the time learners spend in learning a foreign language is devoted to listening.
Listening is not a separated skill compared to other skills, because in the process of listening, people use knowledge from other skills flexibly to comprehend the context According to Rivers in Hasyuni (2006, p.8), “Listening is a creative skill It means we comprehend the sound falling on our ears, and take the raw material of words, arrangements of words, and the rise and fall the voice, and from this material we creative a significance Listeners must cope with the sender’s choice of vocabulary,structure, and rate of delivery” According to Oxford (1993, p.206) “Listening is a complex problem solving skill and it is more than just perception of the sounds.Listening includes comprehension of fundamental language skills It is a medium through which children, young people and adults gain a large portion of their information, their understanding of the world and of human affairs, their ideals, sense of values, and their appreciation”.
Listening is a complex cognitive process involving multiple steps The listener must skillfully distinguish between various sounds, comprehend vocabulary and grammatical structures, and interpret intonation and stress patterns Moreover, they must retain the information gathered through these subprocesses and interpret it within its immediate and broader sociocultural context (Vandergrift, 1999).
Therefore, the researcher can conclude that listening is the ability to identify and understand what others are saying This is also a complex activity that helps students understand what they hear by activating previous knowledge Listening is a positive process because listening is not just about hearing Listening includes complex processes to determine the meaning and message of the sound.
2.1.2 The importance of listening skill in language learning
Listening skill is an indispensable skill when learning any language The use of the second language will become impossible if the learner does not have the skill of listening comprehension According to Seyedeh Masoumeh Ahmadi (2016), “the ability to understand the spoken language has an important role in second language learning and use It is a necessary skill for classroom real communication activities It is a skill for oral communication between native and nonnative speakers” According to Rost (2009), listening helps us to understand the world around us and is one of the necessary elements in creating successful communication.
The importance of listening skill has been enhanced over time In 1970s, listening, with more importance it has gained as a skill, started to take place in language teaching programs besides speaking, reading and writing With the rise of Communicative Language Teaching in the late 1970s, teaching English for communication began to play a significant role all over the world, and the importance of teaching listening increased In the 1990s, with the increased attention to listening, aural comprehension had a significant place in second and foreign language learning (Morley, 2001; Rivers, 1981; Richards & Rodgers, 2001) Recognizing the importance of listening skill, many researchers have studied about this skill such as: Field (1998), Rost (2002), Vandergrift (1999), Vandergrift (2007), etc.
In D Renukadevi’s study (2014, p.60), he affirmed that “listening is the most significant part of communication as it is pivotal in providing a substantial and meaningful response” He also pointed that, listening played a vital role in learning a language for communicative purpose, as it helped the language learner to acquire pronunciation, word stress, vocabulary, and syntax and the comprehension of messages conveyed could be based solely on tone of voice, pitch and accent; and it was only possible when we listened D Renukadevi also cited that “without understanding input appropriately, learning simply cannot get any improvement In addition, without listening skill, no communication can be achieved”.
There has also existed a large body of research studies on models of information processing in listening based on the way listeners process and comprehend what is heard One such was the study of Helgesen & Brown (1994) in which listening is said to be composed of two opposite processes, namely top-down and bottom-up processes.
Top- down process has been proved to have a certain role in assisting listening.According to Flowerdew & Miller (2005), this model was employed when researchers discovered that “experimental subjects are unable to identify truncated sounds in isolation from the words they form a part of, whereas they are quite able to identify truncated sounds so long as that they are presented with the surrounding context”.According to Rubin (1994) “top-down processing is when listeners use their knowledge of the world, real situations, and roles of human interaction to interpret or predict the information” Simply put, in the top- down process, listeners understand the meaning of a message basing on their use of background knowledge to anticipate what will come next instead of relying upon individual sounds and words Therefore, the role of listener in this process is indispensible.
As background knowledge is dominant feature of top-down process, “it is crucial to provide listeners with abundant contextual cues, such as familiar topic or situations, predictable content or cultural background” (Richards, 1990) If the listeners failed to make use of top-down processing or use of his/her background knowledge, an utterance would be incomprehensible.
RESEARCH FINDINGS
This chapter presents the results obtained from the survey questionnaire, with raw data converted into percentages The researcher utilizes tables and figures to illustrate the numerical data An analysis of these numbers leads to the identification of findings and brief conclusions.
Firstly, after completing the survey questions in the questionnaire, the researcher went directly to the selected class to distribute the questionnaire to the students There was a difference in the number of students participating in the survey The reason is that the listening level of students in each class was not the same and students with weak listening skill were more enthusiastic to participate in the survey The number of students who have completed the survey questions in each class is shown in the following table:
Table 3.1: Number of students participated in the survey
Secondly, the distribution of participants by numbers of years they have been learning English is different The following chart shows the percentage rate of numbers of years freshmen have been learning English:
Figure 3.1: The distribution of participants by numbers of years they have been learning English
According to the numbers shown in the chart above, it can be seen that the percentage of students who have been studying English for 7 years is the highest The majority of students come from rural areas where economic conditions are difficult. These students learn English as a universal subject from grade 6 to grade 12 There are
76 students out of 100 students who have studied English for 7 years The second highest rate shows the number of students who have studied English for more than 7 years (accounting for 16%) The explanation for this, may be that these students come from cities and have the opportunity to learn English before going to middle school. Finally, the percentage of students who have studied English for 3 years accounted for 8% These students may come from ethnic minority areas They have no conditions to be exposed to a second language until high school It is extremely rare for students in remote areas to achieve a passing score At TMU’s English Department, the number of freshmen from ethnic minorities is very small.
Thirdly, the distribution of participants by the level of the listening test scores is shown in the following figure:
Level A Level B Level C Level D Level F 0
Figure 3.2: The distribution of participants by the level of the listening test scores
According to the results, the highest rate indicates the number of students achieving level B in listening tests (48%) Score in level B from 7.0 to 8.4 Students who score at this level have good listening skill but still need to further improve their limitations The second highest rate indicates the number of students reaching C (26%).These students score between 5.5 and 6.9 Listening skill of this group of students are still poor, they have many difficulties in learning to listen to English The percentage of students achieving level A accounted for 19% Students with scores above 8.5 are very low Although it is an English department, the rate of students with excellent English listening skill is still low The rest is the percentage of students who achieve level D(7%) This is a group of extremely weak students in listening skill No student has achieved an F level and must re-study the listening subjects.
3.2 First-year English major students’ attitudes toward English listening skill
3.2.1 Students’ attitudes toward the level of importance of English listening skill
E xt rem ely im po rta nt
N ot im po rta nt
Figure 3.3: Students’ attitudes toward the level of impotance of English listening skill
For the question: "Please evaluate the level of importance of listening skill" compared to other English skills (Reading, writing, speaking)", the answer is available with 4 choices of decreasing importance As a result, 74% of students evaluated that extremely important Nineteen percents of students chose the "normal" answer Perhaps they thought that listening skill is as important as the rest of the skills The percentage of students who rated that listening skill was not important made up 7% From the above data, the researcher can draw that most freshmen are well aware of the importance of listening and their evaluation of this skill compared to other skills is indispensable.
3.2.2 Students’ attitudes toward the level of difficulty of English listening skill
To clarify students' attitudes toward the difficulty of English listening skill, the researcher offerred different levels of descending order: Difficult, quite difficult, normal and easy About 48% of students reported that listening skill was difficult; 29% of students rated the skill as being quite difficult; 16% of students rated listening skill as normal and the remaining 7% ranked listening skill as easy In general, the majority of freshman students still evaluated that listening was a difficult skill Only a few students who had excellent listening ability assessed this skill at an easy level The numbers are presented clearly in the following chart:
Difficult Quite dif- ficult Normal Easy
Figure 3.4: Students’ attitudes toward the level of difficulty of English listening skill
3.2.3 Students’ attitudes toward listening self-study
Firstly, the researcher gave a survey question about the time students spend on self-learning for a day The results are arranged in descending order as follows: 41% of students learn to listen less than 30 minutes a day; 29% of students regularly spend 30 minutes practicing listening a day; 18% of students affirmed to spend 1 hour to self- study listening per day and the remaining 12% to students who had a habit of spending more than 1 hour on English listening From the data collected, it is possible that the time most students use to practice English listening is 30 minutes or less Very few students spend hours to improve listening skill The following figure shows the numbers accurately:
Figure 3.5: The time students spend on self-studying English listening in a day
Secondly, the researcher asked questions to clarify how many days of the week students have been spending on listening to English The collected numbers are presented in the table below:
Days/week 1 day/week 2-3 days/week 3-5 days/week Everyday
Table 3.2: The day students spent on self-studying English listening in a week
From this table, it can be seen that students rarely practice English listening for hours at home Most first-year students spend one day practicing listening per week. For English language students, it is too little time to practice English listening skill
3.2.4 The way students listen for the first time
To clarify the listening method of freshmen, the researcher asked a question about how students often listen for the first time Based on the students' answers, it can be seen that most students chose to listen word by word The percentage of this group of students accounts for 53% Next, 32% chose the method of listening with focus on key points; 11% of students chose to listen to new words The remaining 4% chose the other ways of listening The following chart shows the disparities in how students listen for the firrst time:
Figure 3.6: The disparities in how students listen for the first time
In general, the majority of freshman students in English faculty have an attitude of appreciating the importance of listening skill Currently, this is still a difficult skill for many students However, most freshmen have not spent much time to improve or self-study English listening The results show that most of them are not really diligent and hardworking to practice listening every day.
3.3 First-year English major students’ difficulties in English listening learning
Difficulty Numbers of students’ answers
Table 3.3: Students’ difficulties in self-study English listening
The above is a table showing data about students' difficulties in self-study listening English These are subjective difficulties that students encountered due to their own limited ability Each student would choose more than one difficulty they may arrange difficulties of students in self-learning English in descending order as follow:
76 students had difficulties in limited cultural and social knowledge (accounting for 28.04%); 74 students had difficulties due to limited vocabulary accounting for 27.31%; Difficulties due to incorrect pronunciation had 63 students, accounting for 23.25%; In addition, 58 students had problems with the inability to concentrate (accounting for 21.4%) Although students encountered many different difficulties in the process of listening English by themselves, the majority of students encountered these four difficulties.
RECOMMENDATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
Recommendations
First of all, learners need to be aware of the difficulty of listening skill If students still have many difficulties in listening to English, they must spend more time practicing It can be inferred from the research results that very few students take time to practice listening every day In order to have good and proficient listening skill,listeners must persevere to practice more Diligence, hard work and perseverance will help listeners quickly improve their listening skill According to A J Hoge - The father of the famous method of English learning (Effortless English), to be fluent in only 2-3 months, learners must create massive intensity In other words, they have to listen and read 8-14 hours a day, every day.
Secondly, students need to prepare to read listening materials before listening For students who are still weak in listening skill, this is an extremely important preparation step For listening materials with long documents, new content or many specialized vocabulary, the reading of the listening material will help students easily remember the main content.
To enhance comprehension in English listening, vocabulary acquisition is crucial, particularly for English Department freshmen who must master specialized terminology Business English vocabulary, characterized by its economic specificity and abundance, demands dedicated study Students are advised to engage in extensive reading of books, newspapers, and magazines to expand their vocabulary within this specialized context This immersion will facilitate the development of a solid lexical foundation for successful listening comprehension.
The ability to pronounce is also a factor affecting English listening Students need to pay attention to different pronunciation of native speakers (for example,pronunciation differences between American and British) The standard pronunciation helps listeners recognize words faster and the content is heard more fully.
In addition, knowledge of pragmatics also helps listeners to listen to the content more easily Based on the grammatical structures, idioms, accents, etc used in the content, listeners can capture the implications and messages conveyed In addition, knowledge of pragmatics also helps listeners to listen to content more easily Based on grammatical structures, idioms, accents, etc used in the content, listeners can capture the implications and messages conveyed.
Firstly, the listeners need to concentrate highly and pay attention to the content being heard Listeners should not be distracted by external influences like phones, messages, people nearby, etc Pay attention to the content and note the main ideas heard on paper Make a quick, brief note and use the symbols or abbreviations to save time.
Secondly, if the speed of the tape is too fast, the listener should listen once to grasp the main idea Then listen to each small piece, but the part that has not been heard before it can be played back several times.
Thirdly, it is not always possible for the listener to hear all the words or a complete sentence In case students cannot hear all the sentences, they should write down the key points and link them together to guess the meaning of the content. Listeners should avoid the case of trying to listen to the incomplete parts and miss the content of the behind segments.
During the listening practice with foreigners, students need to actively communicate with them and are not afraid to ask them to help improve English skills. Students should remember the intonation of English-speaking foreigners to avoid being surprised when listening to them Example: Chinese speaks English differently from Thailand.
There are many students who forget the work they need to do after listening. Firstly, students should read and memorize new words, new idioms, or new structures in the listening contents In addition to the practice time in class, students should spend themselves some time to replay the heard recordings at home This step helps students memorize lessons longer and achieve higher listening results.
After hours of listening in class, students should actively take the time to practice listening with many other methods For example: watching English movies, watchingEnglish news, listening to English music, etc This enables students to improve their
English listening skill in a variety of subjects and areas such as music, society, science, etc, not just the knowledge of business English.
Teachers play a crucial role in fostering effective listening comprehension among students During classroom interactions, teachers' pedagogical strategies and interactions significantly influence students' learning outcomes Consequently, teachers must prioritize improving the quality of their instruction to provide comprehensive support and facilitate students' acquisition of listening skills.
Firstly, teachers need to prepare the listening lesson carefully and consider the content of the listening materials in accordance with the student's ability Listening materials need to be diverse and various in contents in order to attract learners' attention Documents should not be too long or too short If the listening material is too long, it can be boring for students So teachers can split the paragraph and divide the listening content to help students understand the content more easily.
Secondly, teachers should check the quality of the tape, the quality of the speaker and laptop battery They should avoid not obstructing students’ listening process because of unclear tapes or low battery The teacher should manage the class and ensure that the student is seated and not making noise.
In addition, teachers should actively create many unique activities during listening hours so that students have more motivation to study For examples: listening activities in teaching can involve dividing the class into different groups to answer the questions related to listening contents In other ways, teachers can give high scores to encourage students to enounce during lessons.
Suggestions for further studies .35 CONCLUSION
From this research, the researcher would like to make suggestions for further research studies This thesis still has many limitations and shortcomings Hopefully, future researchers can gain experience and do better on the research areas related to this topic.
Firstly, due to the limitation time and ability, the researcher conducted a survey with a small number of participants compared to the total number of students ofEnglish Department Therefore, the research results may not be comprehensive and persuasive The results of this study cannot show the whole situation and difficulties that first-year students have experienced The researcher hopes that the following studies can clarify the problem more clearly In addition, the study cannot take all measures to help first-year English major students improve their listening skill The researcher wishes future researchers will add more effective solutions.
Secondly, this paper is based on quantitative methods so the researcher has given survey questionnaire for students to answer This approach has many drawbacks, such as: students may choose the answers inattentively; students do not want to answer too many questions, etc Therefore, the researcher hopes that later studies will conduct more direct interviews with participants This makes the reseach results more realistic and accurate The researcher can also triangulate the data gained from the questionnaire.
The above are suggestions that the researcher pointed out to help future researchers avoid similar shortcomings and limitations The researcher hopes that the following research papers will be more excellent and more applicable.
Through this study, the researcher draws many conclusions about the students' attitudes about English listening learning Although most students thought that listening was a difficult skill, the data showed that only a few students spent a lot of time practicing listening Learners need more effort and hard work to improve listening skill Besides, the research results showed that most students encounterred two main groups of difficulties: subjective difficulties (retricted vocabulary, poor gammar, lack of contextual knowledge, the inability to concentrate) and objective difficulties (about listening material, tape quality, listening environment, etc) From these results, the researcher offers solutions to help students solve difficulties and improve their English listening skill The researcher expects that the results and recommendations of the thesis will be useful for both students and teachers in the process of teaching and learning English listening skill Due to the limitation of time and capacity, this thesis has many shortcomings Hopefully, the further studties will be more experienced and improved.
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(For the graduation paper’s topic “Difficulties in English listening skill experienced by first-year English major students at Thuong Mai University and suggestion solutions”) Dear First-year English major students,
Nguyen Thi Thu Thuong, a student from class K51N6, is conducting a research project on a specific topic for her graduation thesis Thu Thuong requests assistance from individuals to complete a survey questionnaire that will aid in her study The responses gathered will be digitized and utilized solely for the purposes of the thesis, maintaining confidentiality and anonymity throughout the process.
PART I: PERSONAL INFORMATION (Please tick the best answer)
2 How long have you been learning English?
3 Which is usually your result level of English listening tests?
PART II: WHAT ARE THE ATTITUDES OF FIRST-YEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS TOWARD ENGLSH LISTENING LEARNING?
(Please tick the best answer)
1 Please evaluate the level of importance of English listening skill compared to other English skills (Reading, writing, speaking):
2 In your own opinion, how difficult is the listening skill?
3 How often do you practice English listening skill at home? 3.1 How much time do you listen to English a day?
3.2 How many days/week do you listen to English?
4 What is the way you listen for the first time?
Focus on the new words
PART III: WHAT ARE SOME DIFFICULTIES EXPERIENCED BY FIRST- YEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS IN ENGLISH LISTENING LEARNING?
(Please tick all the suitable answers)
1 What are some difficulties that you have in self-study listening English?
Poor tape quality and poor equipments
3 What are some difficulties in English obstruct you during listening learning?
Business English vocabulary is too much and hard to remember
Speed of speech of native speakers
If you have other difficulties in listening English, please write clearly in the blank:
PART IV: WHAT ARE SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS TO IMPROVE
(Please circle the best level: 1 (Strongly agree); 2 (Agree); 3 (Neutral) and 4 (Disagree)
3 Watch movies with English subcriptions for the first time and try to listen dialogues without subcriptions for the next time
4 Practice listening to news in English 1 2 3 4
6 Regularly practice listening to tape or disks of the syllabus 1 2 3 4
If you have other methods, please contribute in here: