OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY
Reason of the study
Nowadays, explosive science and technology and globalization, proficient English is extremely necessary No one denies the importance of English language in the present time as global language It is clear that English has become more and more dominant around the world Actually, in some countries it is used as the mother tongue and others countries learn it as second language in their school. There is no doubt that English is language of communication between the people from different cultures Therefore, learning English plays an important role in education and the development of the country
The four language skills are listening, speaking, reading and writing that all language learners are supposed to acquire If learning English is like building a house, English listening is building a foundation for the house Listening is believed to be the most challenging due to the complex and subtle nature of listening comprehension in a second or foreign language In fact, there are a variety of learners who cannot communicate English fluently after many years of foreign language studying To speak English fluently, you must listen to English well We just can exchange information each other when understanding what are partner saying Consequently, bad listening will affect to the conversation
All these reason, offered the researchers a chance to conduct a study on “How to improve English listening skill of K52 English faculty students at TMU”.
The researcher hopes that the research will provide learners a relatively view about how to improve listening skill.
Research questions
The goal of the study is to find out actual situation of English listening for K52 students in English faculty, detect factors affecting the listening and give some possible in order to help student improve listening skill.
To reach the target, the researcher set up the following questions:
1 What difficulties do K52 students face when listening to English?
2 What are some possible solutions to improve their English listening skill?
The study is about learning listening skill for K52 students of English department at TMU The research shows the current situation of English Listening skill of K52 students and dealt with the problems that students usually met in Listening Besides, the study also suggested some possible solutions to improve their listening skill Because of the limitation of time and knowledge; the shortage of reference materials, this study cannot cover the whole issues of listening skill. Moreover, the study cannot touch upon all students at English Department, it is confused to the K52 students in the faculty at TMU.
Nowadays, both quantitative and qualitative methods are commonly used for the researchers to report the study Consequently, this study was implemented in both quantitative and qualitative Documents and scientific research of scholars and domestic and foreign researchers help the researcher build theoretical framework for the study The data was collected by means of questionnaires and interviews at TMU
The main method is quantitative survey questionnaire In addition, so as to fulfill the set goals, some information is collected by the researcher based on her informal interviews qualitative method to assume the value and accuracy of the study.
This study attempts to explore of how students overcome listening difficulties English This study aims the following.
Firstly, this research is to identify the students’ perception to the significance of the English listening
Secondly, finding out kinds of listening problems encountered by English major students at TMU is one of the aims These challenges make students feel uninterested in learning English in class as well as at home
Finally, we provide the potential suggestions, to help students overcome difficulties Meanwhile, these solutions will help student be excited in English listening lesson Listening level is better and better.
The research is divided into 5 following chapter:
Chapter 1 (Overview): some main information about the research
Chapter 2 (Literature review): comprising relevant definitions, difficulties and methods to improve that skill
Chapter 3(Research method): give reasons for choosing and describing research methods
Chapter 4 (Research findings): collecting, analyzing, processing the data and presenting the results
Chapter 5(Recommendations and suggestions): summarizing the study, making suggestions, presenting the limitations and research future.
“References” of the study which listed all the materials and sources of the information used in the study and the “Appendix” in which the questionnaires and interview questions designed for students were mentioned.
Method
Nowadays, both quantitative and qualitative methods are commonly used for the researchers to report the study Consequently, this study was implemented in both quantitative and qualitative Documents and scientific research of scholars and domestic and foreign researchers help the researcher build theoretical framework for the study The data was collected by means of questionnaires and interviews at TMU
The main method is quantitative survey questionnaire In addition, so as to fulfill the set goals, some information is collected by the researcher based on her informal interviews qualitative method to assume the value and accuracy of the study.
Aims of the study
This study attempts to explore of how students overcome listening difficulties English This study aims the following.
Firstly, this research is to identify the students’ perception to the significance of the English listening
Secondly, finding out kinds of listening problems encountered by English major students at TMU is one of the aims These challenges make students feel uninterested in learning English in class as well as at home
Finally, we provide the potential suggestions, to help students overcome difficulties Meanwhile, these solutions will help student be excited in English listening lesson Listening level is better and better.
Organization of the study
The research is divided into 5 following chapter:
Chapter 1 (Overview): some main information about the research
Chapter 2 (Literature review): comprising relevant definitions, difficulties and methods to improve that skill
Chapter 3(Research method): give reasons for choosing and describing research methods
Chapter 4 (Research findings): collecting, analyzing, processing the data and presenting the results
Chapter 5(Recommendations and suggestions): summarizing the study, making suggestions, presenting the limitations and research future.
“References” of the study which listed all the materials and sources of the information used in the study and the “Appendix” in which the questionnaires and interview questions designed for students were mentioned.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Overview of listening
2.1.1 Definition of listening and listening comprehension
Listening is considered as one of the most important skill and in acquiring both a native language and a second on foreign language It is being paid more and more attention to So far, there have been a number of definitions of listening by different linguists such as Howatt and Dalkin (1974), Wolvin and Coakley (1982), Pearson (1983), Hirsch (1986), Scarcella and Oxford (1992), Bentley and Bacon
(1996), Brown (2001), Gary Buck (2001), Scott Shelton (2008) and among other. Howatt and Dalkin (1974) defined listening as the ability to identify and understand what others are saying This involves understanding a speaker’s accent or pronunciation, his grammar, his vocabulary, his grasping and his meaning.
Wolvin and Coakley (1982) regarded listening “the process of receiving, attending to and assigning meaning to aural stimuli.
Pearson (1983) stated that “listening involves the simultaneous organization and combination of skills in phonology, syntax, semantics and knowledge of the textual structure, all of which seem to be controlled by cognitive process Thus, it can be said that thought not fully realized the listening skill is essential in acquiring language proficiency”.
Hirsch (1986) gave another definition: “listening as an aspect of skill involving neurological response and interpretations of sounds to understand and to give meaning by reacting, selecting meaning, remembering, attending, analyzing and including previous experience”.
Bentley and Bacon (1996) stated that listening , an important part of the second language learning process, has also been defined as an active process during which the listeners constructs meaning from oral input.
According to Brown (2001), listening is “not merely the process of unidirectional receiving of audible symbols He supposed that one aspect s of listening comprehension transmitting nerve impulses to the brain” Hence, listening comprises of three elements: the sender, the message, and the listener.
Gary Buck (2001), for example, points out that “listening comprehension is an active process of constructing meaning and this is done by applying knowledge to the incomings sound” in which a number of different types of knowledge are involved both linguistic knowledge and non-linguistic knowledge.”
Scott Shelton (2008) thinks that listening effectively is a demanding and involving process One must be able to deal with different accents or pronunciation, unfamiliar lexical items and syntactic structures, competing background noise and also make a conscious effort to not switch off or become distracted while listening. All of this must be achieved and dealt with more or less simultaneously in order to identify and understand the meaning in any given message
According to Hasan, “listening” is one process that listeners receive information This process takes place one way which completely doesn’t require any explanation or interaction with text listening
According to Richard (1983), O’Malley and Chamot (1990), listening is an activity and a complex process in which listeners focus on aspects selected for listening From the listened sound, they find the meaning of information and combine what they hear with their knowledge.
In conclusion, listening is a process of identifying and understanding what the speakers say, which includes understanding a speaker’s pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary All of definitions are given with a view to clarifying the nature of the listening skill which is necessary in the process of acquire a native language or a foreign one.
There are different definitions of the term “listening comprehension.” Listening comprehension is the different processes of understanding the spoken language These include knowing speech sounds, comprehending the meaning of individual words, and understanding the syntax of sentences (Nadig, 2013 as cited in Pourhosein Gilakjani &Sabouri, 2016) According to Hamouda (2013), listening comprehension refers to the understanding of what the listener has heard and it is his/her ability to repeat the text despite the fact that the listener may repeat the sounds without real comprehension.
According to Richard and Schmidt (2002), described listening comprehension as the speech understanding process in the first language or second, listening in the second language includes both up and down process( top-down and bottom-up).Brown also shared that the “top-down” process occurs when the learners availably use background knowledge and vocabulary to understand to the content The
“bottom-up” process is to use the context of the listening to predict the meaning of new words.
According to Helgesen, listening is a practive and purposeful skill In the listening process, listeners not only understand the content they are listening but also can communicate the content with the information they previously have known to understand Besides, listeners both listening the words and understand the implications.
2.1.2 The importance of listening skill
Listening is one of the necessary skills on life which are defined as “skill which can provide you with a better perspective on life, skills which can allow you to maintain a higher awareness of both yourself and the world around you” It is one of the most vital ways that human beings feel the life and live Everyone in the real life, often listens more than speaks, reads or writes For instance, at home, we listen to the news, watch films, or talk each other At school, students listen to the lectures teaching At meeting, the staffs listen to the new plan from the directors, etc Of this, research show that an average of 45% is spent listening compared to 30% speaking, 16% reading and 9% writing (Adler, R etal 2001) That is, by any towards, a lot of time listening It is worthwhile, therefore, taking a bit of extra time to ensure that you listen effectively.
Without listening, the man becomes backward in each minute of their lives It is quoted by Dr Rachel Naomi Remen that “the most basis and powerful connect to another person is to listen Just listen Perhaps, the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention
Difficulties in learning the English listening skill
2.2.1 Problems students face when listening
According to Underwood, English learners often face the following potential difficulties:
Uncontrollable speed of the speaker
Limited vocabulary of the listener
Do not have a habit of studying
According to Hasan, learners aren’t sometimes aware of their mistakes in identifying the causes of problems they encounter They usually use inefficient listening strategies and try to listen and understand every word That activity is wrong because even native speaker do not listen this way Good listeners often listen only to the key words to understand the main idea of the message and always try to guess the meaning of the new word in the context of the listening He also indicated that unfamiliar words, difficult grammatical structures, and the length of the spoken passages are the most important factors that cause problems for learners’ listening comprehension He continued that clarity, lack of interest, and the demand for complete answers to listening comprehension questions are the serious difficulties of students’ listening comprehension.
Nguyen Bang and Nguyen Ba Ngoc present a number of difficulties such asEnglish sounds, English vocabulary and speed of speaking Hoang Van Van,
Nguyen Thi Chi and Hoang Thi Xuan Hoa pointed out the difficultied of the learners:
Difficulty in listening to English sounds
Trying to understand all the words to grasp the idea said
Do not understand native speaker when they speak naturally quicly
Need to listen again and again
Difficulty in catching all the information
Do not concentrate when listening
Teng (2002) identified four listening factors, which were similar toBoyle’s (1984) classification; they were listener factors, speaker factors, stimulus factors, and context factors She indicated that “EFL proficiency” was the most important listener factor for EFL listening problems It implies that students’ difficulties may directly result from their deficient linguistic knowledge However,Goh (2000) indicated that the most common problem was “quickly forget what is heard (parsing).” Similarly, in Sun’s study (2002), the most difficulty in listening for Taiwan’s students was “forget the meaning of the word(perception).” Theoretical explanations of listening comprehension provide us with clues about the problems which learners face when they listen to a spoken text These insights cannot, however, account for exhaustive explanation ofthese problems As Vogely (1995: 41) states, ‘We still need research that documents empirically the relationship between what theory says and what learners actually know and more importantly do’ To locate the sources of listening comprehension, we need to consider the discourse itself in the context of the classroom.
It plays an important role, not only in the perception of learner in general, but also in learning foreign languages in particular It can be said that students who do not have knowledge of the British and American culture of other countries may not fully understand the ways of thinking of native speakers expressed through English. Learners should be familiar with the cultural knowledge of language that has a significant effect on the learners’ understanding If the listening task involves completely different cultural materials then the learners may have critical problems in their comprehension It is the responsibility of teachers to give background knowledge about the listening activities in advance (Azmi, Celik, Yidliz, & Tugrul, 2014).
Identify structure, verb when listening
What influences your listening skills is the ability to identify sentence structures and verbs in sentences The structure is very important in sentence, the verb is an extremely important factor If you recognize the sentence structure and the verb of the sentence in just a few seconds, you can fully understand the sentence You should remember that when a sentence is spoken it includes one or more sentence structures The characteristics of learning English are sentence structure and verbs.
If you cannot recognize the structure of the sentence or at least the verb in the sentence, listening comprehension is almost zero If so, you're just guessing what the paragraph means when you've heard the whole paragraph For example: The sentence structure "have been doing something" means how long it has been doing it until now.
For example: I have been studying English for 10 years (I have been learning English for 10 years already) (Currently I am still learning English)
When listening, you just need to pay attention to the verb and then the sentence and the structure of the sentence So you can fully understand the content of the transmission
Word is the basic in learning a language If students have a good command of large numbers of vocabularies, could they achieve to break through in their listening Small knowledge of vocabulary directly weakens their listening ability In their daily learning, students pay less attention to words recitations which definitely has a negative effect on their listening (John and Shane, 2004, p4), (Rivers 1983, p125) and (Nunan, 1999, p117).
It refers to the negative mentality while listening In general, while doing listening exercise, student would keep intensive concentration Once they cannot catch up with the speed, they would be nervous and thus cannot concentrate as much as they could have Because they have been thinking about the words they have failed to recognize According to an empirical research, tension and anxiety are very common in listening class However, they are negatively correlated with the understanding effect of listening content (Sun J, 2011).
Student quit often ignore the purpose of listening For some materials, intensive listening is a must while for some others extensive listening can be accepted According to research a percentages of 31.2% students would choose to understand every word and every sentence while listening (Sun H, 2015) What kind of method they should use depending on what relevant listening questions they are required to answer But the truth is students seldom pay attention to the connection between sentences and their logical relationship, so it hard for them to grasp the whole topic and content of listening materials In addition, while listening, some students would firstly translate what they hear to Vietnamese and then try to understand the content This habit would greatly waste time and badly influence listening
2.2.2 Characteristics of spoken language making listening so difficult
There are some characteristics of spoken language which makes listening difficult (Brown 2001):
In spoken language, due to memory limitations we break down speech into smaller group of words They are clustering such as “a lot of”, “a number of” and among other Therefore, when listening, learners have to learn to pick out manageable clusters of words, avoiding try to listen to every word of the speech It is not necessary and makes learners become distracted.
Moreover, spoken language has a great number of redundancies They are result of rephrasing, repetitions, elaborations, and some insertions such as “as I have said” and so on
On the other hand, spoken language has many reduced forms It may be phonological, morphological, syntactic, or pragmatic like “you’re” instead of “you are”, won’t-will not, etc these reductions are really significant difficulties to the learners.
The next characteristic is performance variables As a result of unplanned action, spoken language consists of a lot of hesitions (er, uhm), false starts, pauses and corrections They make listeners confused.
Colloquial language is another problem that can be interfere listeners in real life because they are familiar with written language In monologues and dialogues, the appearance of idioms, slang, reduced forms and shared cultural language are common.
English is a stress-timed language so it is very important for learners to understand its prosodic features By stress, rhythm and intonation, listeners can interpret more subtle messages like sarcasm, endearment, insult, solicitation, pause, etc.
The last but not least, interaction is also an element that plays a large role in listening Language learners should be taught the instruction in the two-way nature of listening They have to learn to continute the process of comprehending. Some rules of interaction are negotiations, maintenance and termination.
2.2.3 Factors affecting to the English listening
If teachers want to help learners overcome their difficulties in learning speaking skill, they should identify some factors that influence their listening performance.Learners’ speaking performance is influenced by factors like accent, the class atmosphere, quality of recorded material, student’s motivation and among other
RESEACH METHODOLOGY
Participants
The participants of this study will be 200 third-year students from English faculty at TMU They are 21 years old and include both male and female All of them are volunteers as they are asked to do all parts comprising questionnaire and interview Some of them had learnt English for 7 years and the others for 3 years or fewer.
Instruments
To fulfill the above aims, the study was carried out with quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection According to Kyta Darhohomei (as quoted in www.answerlog.com 2010:1) quaitative approach means number evaluation, information measurement In quantitative measurement, researching or analysing raw data such as number, value, statistic, fact, and picture Quantitative approach is used to analyze the value of data Based on Creswel (as quoted in www.Penelitian studi kasus.blogspot.com.2003:18), qualitative approach is one unity where researcher often makes knowledge claim based on construtive view (like more than one meaning in individual experience social and historical construction, the purpose is to develop theory or pattern) Qualitative approach is used to describe characteristics of data.
The instruments used in this study were: (1) a questionnaire, (2) a semi- structured interview with the subjects The first instrument was questionnaire It was the main instrument used to gather specific information’s for this study The questions were formulated based on the research questions and hypothesis of this study Besides, a questionnaire is a research instrument consisting of a series of questions (or other types of prompts) for the purpose of gathering information from respondents.
Survey questionnaire is one of the most effective instruments for collecting data in social science Advantages of using questionnaires that Gillham (2000) highlights are; less pressure on respondents, not under pressure of bias, and analysis of answers is straight forward Like questionnaire, interviews can allow researchers to investigate cognitive processes such as awareness or constructs such as perceptions or attitudes that are not directly observable.
The second data gathering instrument which was employed in this study was interview The purpose of the interview was to triangulate the information that was obtained through the questionnaire; to obtain data on how the listening difficulties which had been identified through the questionnaire affected the learners’ listening comprehension; to obtain information about the reasons behind the learners’ difficulties of listening comprehension; and to find out if there are any other listening difficulties that affect the learners’ listening skill and look for solutions to improve their listening skill Moreover, by providing opportunities for learners to report in their own words, we might gain some insights into their understanding of and attitude towards some of these difficulties.
Data collections
There were two kinds of instrument used to collect the data;questionnaire and interview The questionnaire consisted of three Section one contained 3 questions to evaluate the importance of English skill Section two consists of 14 questions about difficulties in listening to English devided into four categories: listening material (6items), linguistic aspects (5 items), speaker (4 items), psychological category (3 items).
Data analysis
The data obtained through the questionnaire and the interview were organized and analyzed While the data obtained from the questionnaire were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively, the data obtained from the interview were analyzed qualitatively And the results of the instruments identified the listening problems that affected the EFL learners of TMU and solutions to improve listening skillAccording to Sudaryanto (1993), data analysis can be presented through formal and informal method In formal method, analysis is based on special problem and theoretical framework that are presented using symbol, table, or a graph that has a purpose to describe data easily In informal method, vice versa analysis is presented descriptively in a word or sentence form This research applied qualitative and quantitive method so data analyisis is presented informaly using narative descriptive sentences and symbols.
RESEARCH FINDINGS
Result and discussion
4.1.1 Current situation of practising listening English to third - year English major students at TMU
Years of learning English before entering TMU
1 year1-3 years3-5 years over 5 years
4.1.2 The attitude of students at TMU towards the position of listening skill
There are 200 chosen students who include both male and female All of them are the third-year English department students and they are 21 years old.
The pie chart illustrate the students’ years of learning English before entering TMU At first glance it is clear that most of students have learnt English for over 5 years with 72% Twenty – three percent have spent from 3 to 5 years studying this language Students have studied from 1-3 years that just account for 5 % While 0 % student have learnt English less than 1 year and 1 year Most of them also come to the countryside and provinces around Hanoi While only 15 students come from Hanoi city Their different places of domicile led to a greatly various experience in their English language learning Students from the countryside and provinces round have no opportunities to practice speaking English
Chart 4.1.2: Attitudes of students towards the position of listening skill
As you can see from the chart that in spite of some differences, almost of English major students at TMU perceive the importance of listening Remarkably, sixty –seven percent and twenty – five percent of the students agree that the English listening is very important and important, respectively Meanwhile, only 8% subjects suppose that it is neutral to listen to English 0% claims that it is almost unimportant or important On the other hand, nobody is not highly evaluated the role of listening skill It is clear from the chart that students pay attention to listening skill and they are aware of the importance of it.
4.1.3 Students Self-assessment in English listening skills
Students Self-assessment in English listening skills
Chart 4.1.3: Students’ self-assessment in English listening skill
The above chart gives information on the student self-assessment in English listening ability Overall, the highest percentage of the listening ability is average level with 75% Good level is the least common in the pie chart and only makes up
8 % Finally, a small number of students evaluate themselves in poor level This might be a reflection of their frustration caused by their previous failures or unhappy experiences in dealing with English because they had not received sufficient training in the first place In the interview, since the students identified listening as their area of least success, they were asked to explain their answers.Almost all of them told that their high school education focused on the preparation for the University Entrance Exam, which tested reading and writing directly.Language skills like listening and speaking were never tested and therefore less attention was paid to them.
4.1.4 The emphasized skill in the previous
Chart 4.1.4 The highlighted skill in the previous
As you can see the chart above, reading skill is the most emphasized skill in the total skill and accounted for 55% A quarter of students agree that writing skill is paid attention to Speaking skill is slightly less than writing skill and make up 15% Obviously, listening skill is considered as the least common skill by 5% of students Hence, we can see that listening skill is not focus during the previous. Some interviewed students show that “When I was in high school, we had only one purpose: preparing for the final exam So, our teachers preferred to read the passages aloud I think they didn’t want to spend much time on listening Because the skill was seen as unimportantly at all in the final exam”.
4.1.5 Students’ emotion in learning English listening
1 I find that listening is difficult 50% 30% 15% 5%
2 I find that listening is 55% 14% 10% 15% 6% boring and not interesting.
3 There is far exciting in listening lesson 5% 15% 73% 2%
Table 4.1.1: Students’ feeling about the English listening lesson
The table shows percentages of students’ feeling about listening Firstly, about the difficulty of listening, almost all of the students highly speak the difficulty of listening However, not many of them show their strong agreement and disagree with this idea A significant proportion of learners strongly and agree that listening is boring and not interesting Three quarters subjects claim that there is no far exciting in listening lesson.
Causes make students feel difficult in listening to English
4.2.1 Problems students meet in listening to English
4.2.1.1 Problems related to the listeners (subjective causes)
Sh or ta ge o f v oc ab ul ar y
Po or gr am m ar
Ba d pr on un cia tio n
La ck o f b ac kg ro un d kn ow led ge
Ne ed to lis te n ag ain an d ag ain
Ps yc ho lo gic al ch ar ac te ris tic s
Chart 4.2.1: Problems related to the listeners
According to the chart, the difficulties above offered by the researcher constrain the students at Thuongmai University These problems are the objective obstacle in listening comprehension This is clear in the comment of the interviewed students: “My vocabulary is poor; it is very difficult for me to understand what the conversation is, especially when the word that I don’t know is a key word Though I have tried to look it up in the dictionary, it’s sometimes useless I guess it’s because my pronunciation is not good enough, too.” “I am weak in listening because if there is a vocabulary I don’t understand then I miss many main points” Many students share that they want to teacher or someone who can teach them methods to learn vocabulary more than That is reason why they can’t catch the all information in listening text Consequently, their mark weren’t high in listening test
As the chart show, bad pronunciation is the second challenge which more than a third students meet Their ability is not good enough to recognize the vocabulary in the oral text They just learn pronunciation themselves to improve it Support for this finding is also found in the researcher’s interviews that “Sometimes consonants and syllables get lost or become almost inaudible, especially the auxiliaries can’t be noticed”.“ When I listen to native speakers, I feel that sounds change or blend with each other.” “In class, we pronounce the words one by one The pronunciation is strong but, within a sentence, the words change and it becomes impossible to hear them.”
Another difficulty that one in ten percent students are poor knowledge of grammar In fact, most of the students learnt English at high school but they can’t listen well Their grammar is not great enough In the interview, interviewee said that: "I don't think ‘knowing a lot of vocabulary’ only is useful ability for me My ability to listen for complex sentences is too bad, and also I know my English grammar is as terrible as my ability to English conversation." Similarly, another Interviewee states: "My grammar is poor so my English isn't good They (listening, reading, and writing) all need grammar, vocabulary, and so on In the listening class, I feel this way, too."
Also, 10% of the students’ responses show that they need listen to more than three times to get the key information If listening only one time, most of them can’t listen anything in listening text They usually watch the subtitles in the final page of book Besides, the semester tests are usually grammar, so they feel that Listening is not important.
In addition these problems, psychology (4%) affect quite much to listeners It is indicated that a person feels nervous or anxious he or she may not be concentrated Some students also said that whenever their attention was diverted from the input, they would miss a lot of information Some interviewee answered that “I am fear that I can’t understand what I will hear” “I always feel nervous and worried in listening lessons” Therefore, boredom and frustration are other barriers to listening comprehension.
A very small number of students evaluate that lack of background knowledge affect to their listening ability as well as trying to listen to every word Some students answered that “they often try to listen every words in to understand the meaning of words in the audio but stopping listening or losing the concentration when meeting the unknown words” For instance, “they have no enough culture knowledge of American or others countries, mostly they didn’t understand what is the main content” Via the interviews, students said they were always passive in expanding knowledge especially in economy, politic, socialization, etc
4.2.1.2 Objective problems cause difficulties students
Factors causing students listening comprehension problems are categorized into different sources including problems related to the listening material, basic linguistic and psychological characteristics which will be discussed in detail below.
Problems related to the listening materials
Fa st sp ea kin g s pe ed
Lo ng sp ok en te xt w ith m an y j ar go n an d id io m s
Th e u se o f c om pl ex gr am m ati ca l s tru ctu re s
Un fa m ilia r t op ics
Chart 4.2.2: Problems related to the listening materials
The listening material may deal with almost any area of life It might include street gossip, proverbs, everyday conversation, new products, and situations unfamiliar to the student Also, in a spontaneous conversation speakers frequently change topics According to the students’ responses, more than two fifth point out that when the speaker speaks at a rapid speed, it is difficult for them to comprehend what is being said, even if the words spoken are the ones they are familiar with Via the interview, some students answered that “native speakers speak too fast. Sometimes I hear all the words as a single unit.”
In addition to the fast speed and the difficulty of grammatical structures, the length of the listening text (10%) was one of the reasons why the students can’t understand most of the talk Learners often feel tired trying to understand the unfamiliar sounds, lexis and syntax for long stretches of time Sometimes, this problem causes the loose concentration The students may be weak at paying attention to the sequence of words in long sentence.
From the above result, it seems reasonable to generalize that unfamiliar topic hinders the listening of the majority of the students Interviewed students complained “The speaker use long sentences, so it is so difficult to listen to long talk in English” The chart indicates that 20% students find it difficult to understand the listening text when the topic is unfamiliar
In general, the above results indicate that the listening text itself can be the main source of listening comprehension problems In particular, unfamiliar words, complex grammatical structures, long spoken text, a topic that cannot generate interest to listeners, complexity of sentences and unfamiliar topic pose listening difficulties to EFL learners.
Basic linguistic problems perceived by learners
Linguistic challenges are those that result from the English language itself.Several linguistic sources which make listening difficult such as the use of colloquial language and slang, the use of reduced forms, signal words and so on.
Th e u se o f c ol lo qu ial an d sla ng ex pr es sio ns
Di fic ul ty in u nd er sta nd in g r ed uc ed fo rm s
Di ffi cu lty in re co gn izi ng si gn al wo rd s
Chart 4.2.3: Listening problems related to Linguistic feature
Obviously, as you can see the chart There are 45% students revealed that colloquial and slang is a special challenge in English language In fact, what they study being the formal sentences These are not the same the reality life of native speaker Some students shared that “it is a big challenges for us to familiar and understand clearly”.
The second big problem related to reduced forms Students agree that they are less attention to this aspect Meanwhile, several students didn’t know what reduced form is Another difficulty comes from the fact that in spoken English, as in all languages, people use signal words Signal words help them to grasp the thread of thought in the material Twelfth percent of student claim that they may fail to recognize the signals which indicate that the speaker is moving from one point to another, giving an example, or repeating a point.
As shown in the chart, there is about 17% students confirmed that the use of
“prosodic features” related their incomprehension Stress, rhythm and intonation are
“prosodic features” Some students complained that “there are words the speaker only speak its stress, rhythm and intonation fluctuate in always, up-down I can’t hear what the meaning word is It is really uneasy”
4.2.2 Factors affecting to students in listening to English
Noise, Awkward seating po- sitions and temperature
Quality of the recorded ma- terial
Chart 4.2.4: Factors affecting to the listening process
Suggestions for student to improve English listening skill
Following the survey questionnaires, the data of suggested solutions to improve English listening skill for third- year English major students at ThuongmaiUniversity were illustrated in the chart below:
Chart 4.3.1: Solutions for overcoming to improve English listening skill for 3 rd year students
Information obtained from the survey reveals that the largest proportions of the participants spent much time to practice on the Internet, practicing listening more conversation/ video on the Internet or on BBC, VOA, etc, accounted for 100% of third- year English major students “When listening, I cannot know the meaning of the new words, clearly listen pronunciation So, I think that I can learn more new words to expand my vocabulary and practice to the pronunciation at the same time”. They practice due to the fact that it was very necessary and useful for their further study and future jobs, create the basic student background to developed four English skills Besides, paying attention to listening skill made up to 48% which included predictive ability, associative words perception and combining intensive listening with extensive listening.
In addition, thirty-two percent students agree that teacher should use visual or draw pictures and diagrams related to the listening topics to aid students to guess and imagine actively Visual aids draw our attentions, increase our motivation on the topic and help us relate to content of the spoken text, thus we overcome difficulties such as unknown words, minimal pairs of words After all, it's almost effortless and it feels like entertainment, rather than a "lesson".
Besides, thanks to make use of the internet, 27% students improve English listening by watching foreign films, reality shows TV and listening to English music “This method helps us both entertainment and learning foreign language”, students said.
“All suggestions require students to practice regularly as well as practises long-term to get the goals Therefore, persistence factor is very important This factor is lacking in many students, so this is problems which prevents students from practicing it”.
English, also as all different languages, there are many fields such as life,economy, politics, society, etc, so vocabulary is very various In the listening process, you should listen and take note unknown words English uses stress heavily When you use the wrong stress, it's hard for English listeners to understand what words are It can even change the meaning You should definitely spend some time focusing on it Using an audios or videos player, trying pushing "play" and then stopping it again really quickly, so that you only hear parts of words instead of the whole word Try to repeat the specific sound that you heard When you listen to full words and sentences, your brain changes the sounds to match what you expect to hear By playing just part of a word, you can hear the actual sounds more clearly.
"Active" listening is a lot more effective than "passive" listening When you try to imagine part of the conversation, your mind is more active.
4.3.2 Solution 2: Listen and repeat stories or anything you like in English and practice.
By listening stories or any topics you love in English and practice, you're preparing yourself to listen for differences It's a good way to notice if you're pronouncing a word wrong, or if your intonation is strange Listen to a short clip of someone speaking Play it again and again After listening a few times, try to repeat what the speaker is saying immediately after they say it Keep practicing until you're saying the same thing at the same time The key factor is the perseverance. You ought to practice to listen every day.
4.3.3 Solution 3: Always creating an talk environment by English anytime anywhere
There is no better than speaking with native speaker You ought to go to Hoan Kiem Lake or anywhere foreigners live in free time so as to have an opportunity to enhance your listening ability At classroom, you speak English with your friends completely Joining English club at university also can make the environment. Mostly important, you must work hard and always give yourself a strong motivation to practice your English listening skills.
RECOMMENDATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS
Summary of the study
This research was presented with the aims to investigate current situation, difficulties in learning English listening and recommend suggestions for improve English listening skill The research was based on the survey questionnaires and interviews The results of the research have made it possible to come to the following conclusion.
It is found that all the students frequently spend much time on practising and the others because suggestions help them clearly listen English conversation and their listening level is improved better.
However, students at TMU also have to cope with many problems when using possible solutions Regarding the difficulties, the four biggest challenges to all students are lack of vocabulary, bad pronunciation, lack of persevere and fast speaking speed in recorded material Based on the findings of the study, suggestions to each problem were given by teachers and students at TMU All things considered, these methods are reasonable for third year English major students at TMU in learning Most of the students are more interested in and more attentive to learning English because they perceive the significance of listening skill and know how to improve their listening skill.
It is hoped that the study may be useful for students in learning English to third year English major students at TMU in particular and to any groups of students of English in general.
Research implications
With all the findings and discussions presented in the previous sections, the study presents the contribution in theories and reality In theories, the research will provide the documents related to the difficulties in English listening and suggest some potential solutions to improve the skill Whereby, students can identify what difficult they meet and choose suitable methods with them In reality, this study can help English learners in general and English major students at TMU in particular enhance listening skill in a higher level The final result can speak with foreigner fluently with good rhythm, pronunciation and intonation.
Recommendation
The writer would like to present some recommendations related to the students’ problems in listening comprehension The recommendations are follows:
The students need to improve their listening skill by practicing more listening exercise and listening to English talks as many as possible an expanding their knowledge on register in various field of study
The students also should motivate themselves to enrich their listening skill
Besides, the students also should learn more about the strategies that can be useful in listening comprehension especially in facing comprehension problems.
The teachers should have a better understanding of their students’ listening difficulties and evaluate their own teaching methods to improve students’ listening comprehension.
Limitations of the study
In general, the study has certain strong points such as collection methods, namely interviews, survey questionnaires for students, etc however, due to lack of source, limited time, the researcher’s ability and other unexpected factors, the data was only collected through one main instrument, with questionnaire, the data was only collected through one main instrument, with questionnaire Therefore the result of this study may only reflect a part of situation of using this method on improving speaking English There are many things that need considering and investigating thoroughly It is obvious that mistakes and shortcomings are unavoidable so any comments or extra contributions are welcome.
Suggestions for future research
Other researchers can also focus on how to overcome the difficulties or problems of listening comprehension faced by the students Researcher ought to pay attention to the combination between practice more and using listening strategies so as to bring the most highest result Moreover, to get a better result, the researcher should invite more participants and data collection methods Together with questionnaire and interview, observation is also necessary to get more persuasive conclusions.
Further research needs to be conducted with more comprehensive samples including the primary, secondary, and preparatory levels in order to get a complete picture of the problem.
Listening is vital not only in language learning but also in daily communication As also a student in English major, I can clearly see the situation of teaching and learning English Listening comprehension seems to be the weakest skill and students encounter various kinds of listening problems This study is done in the hope of finding out the factors causing their listening comprehension problems and contributing some recommended strategies for teachers and students employ in improving the effectiveness of teaching and learning listening comprehension.
It is found that the first- year English major students needed to spend much time on listening to English on a daily life
Based on the findings of the study, solutions to each problem were given by third- year English major students at TMU All of them strongly agreed with three main solutions: consolidate vocabulary, pronunciation, background knowledge and finding effective method.
It is hoped that the results of this study will contribute to improving the teaching and learning in the field of English listening of third-year English department students at TMU
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Dear third-year students English Department at Thuongmai University, the following questionnaire is designed for my research on “How to improve English Listening skill for third- year English major students (K52) at Thuong Mai university by using Listening and repeat method” All information you provided is only used in this study and not to be used for any personal purposes
Thank you so much for fulfilling this questionnaire and assisting me to complete my research.
Please answer the questions below:
1 How long have you learned English?
2 How do you perceive to the importance of listening skill?
A Very important B Important C Normal D Unimportant
3 Which level is your listening skill?
4 Which skill was emphasized in the previous?
5 How do you feel when learning English listening lessons at class? a I find that listening is difficult b I find that listening is boring and not interesting c There is far exciting in listening lessons
6 What are difficulties do you have? a Shortage of vocabulary b Poor grammar c Bad pronunciation d Lack of background knowledge e Need to listen again and again f Psychological characteristics
7 Which problems related to the listening material do you meet? a Fast speaking speed b Long spoken text with many jargon and idioms c The use of complex grammatical structures d Unfamiliar topics
8 Which problems related to basic linguistic do you have in the following? a The use of colloquial and slang expressions b Difficulty in understanding reduced forms c Difficulty in recognizing signal words d The use of "prosodic features" in English language such as stress, rhythm and intonation, etc.
9 Which factors do you meet in listening to English in the following? a Students’ motivation b Noise, Awkward seating positions and temperature c Quality of the recorded material d The class atmosphere
10 What do you suggest possible solutions to improve English listening skill for third-year students? a Improve vocabulary and grammar and practice the pronunciation b Spend more time on practice c Pay attention to the listening skill d Using visual aids listening lesson at classroom e Watching foreign films and reality shows TV f Others
Thank a lot for your help!
1 Which level is your listening skill?
2 What difficulties do you meet when listening to English?
3 How to improve your English listening skill?