Investigating difficulties in english listening comprehension encountered by grade 10 students at a high school in thai nguyen province

Trang 1 THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES PHAM THANH HANG INVESTIGATING DIFFICULTIES IN ENGLISH LISTENING COMPREHENSION ENCOUNTERED BY STUDENTS AT A HIGH SCHOOL IN THAI

INTRODUCTION

Rationales

Listening is frequently used as a communication skill in the classroom that can facilitate the emergence of the other skills (Bloomfield, 2011) Krashen (1985) emphasizes that people acquire language by understanding the linguistic information they hear or that they listen to, without understanding the linguistic input, the students cannot acquire any level of language Hence, language acquisition is achieved mostly through receiving understandable input and, listening ability is the vital component in achieving understandable communication input Without understanding inputs at the right level, any kind of learning simply may not occur Based on these perspectives, one can surmise that listening is a basic language skill, and as such it merits a priority among the four areas for all language learners

Rost (1994) shares the same idea that listening plays a vital role in learning language in particular and in communication in general, because it provides input for learners Thus, listening is a fundamental language skill, and as such, it merits the top priority among the four skill areas for language students Listening, therefore, is regarded crucial to not only a receptive skill but also the development of spoken language proficiency Wolvin and Coakley (1988) confirmed that listening consumes more of daily communication time than other forms of human communication It is estimated that listening accounts for 40-50%; speaking takes up 25-30% Reading and writing are allocated for 16% and 9% respectively (Gilakjani & Ahmadi, 2011) These findings were supported by Morley (1999), together with Scarcella and Oxford (1992) who claim that listening is the most frequently used skill in daily life communication Furthermore, effective listening

2 skill is of paramount importance for students to achieve academic success (Ferris, 1998; Coakley & Wolvin, 1997; Ferris & Tagg, 1996)

Studies have confirmed the importance of listening comprehension in communication However, the teaching and learning of the skill received least consideration from teachers and learners It has long been considered as a challenging skill for teachers, students, and researchers working within the ESL (English as a Second Language) and EFL (English as a Foreign Language) contexts The reluctance of the listening skill comes from many reasons

In the first place, it is the teaching and learning mode that creates boring atmosphere In a listening class, the teacher often plays the record and the listeners are engaged in listening passively to a monologue or speech or even conversation over the radio, CDs, TV, films, lectures etc and here listener usually doesn’t have the opportunity to ask for clarification, slower speech or repetition After listening to the materials, learners usually do some written exercises relating to the record The mode makes the teachers are tired of teaching and learners are weary of learning Language teaching facilities have been upgraded recently, but the old fashioned teaching mode of playing the record-listening to the record-doing exercise is still popular in most language classes

Furthermore, the time for listening class is not enough Only one or two hours a week for the skill, leading to the fact that learners have less time to expose to the target language from the angle of hearing

Another explanation for the low status of listening is the inadequacy of basic knowledge for understanding spoken language These include the knowledge of phonetics, vocabulary, grammar and culture, which is the obstacle for listening comprehension

Last but most remarkable reason for the humble status of listening is that listening strategies have been ignored by teachers that students have few tactics of how to extract the meaning of spoken messages effectively Besides, they are not

3 well-prepared in dealing with psychological barriers during listening class Being aware of those difficulties, the researcher came up with inspiration for the current research study with an aim of improving the listening comprehension skill at schools.

Statement of the problem

Having been in the English language teaching profession for years, the researcher has noticed that much of the teaching of listening prioritises comprehension without sufficient emphasis on the skills and strategies that enhance learners' understanding of spoken language Students perform weakly in listening comprehension and get the lowest score in listening section Whenever students have to do a listening test, they get panic and keep complaining before, during and after the test They said that they did not understand the spoken language delivered in the recordings

Like school students nationwide, students in Thai Nguyen are required to take language courses in all four English skills including: reading, writing, speaking and listening However, reading and writing skills get more emphasis as they are directly related to the graduation exam Students from Dong Hy district are even more disadvantaged because they come from different ethnic backgrounds with varieties experience of learning English from previous levels Some students had studied with the old materials of the old curriculum (seven years, three years) Some students even learnt English for only the last year at secondary schools before entering high schools

The low achievement of listening comprehension might be explained by numerous reasons However, within the scope of the current study, the researcher tries to explore the difficulties encountered by grade 10 students at a high school in Thai Nguyen Province Besides, the study would investigate the strategies that students use to deal with those difficulties We strongly believe that a thoroughly understanding of the students’ weaknesses and good strategy instructions might help teachers put more energy and efforts to fill in the blank gaps for the students

Aims of the study

With the ultimate purpose of improving the status of the listening teaching and learning comprehension at schools, the first aim of the current study is to find out areas of difficulty that students encounter when coming up with listening skill The second aim is to explore students’ listening strategies that have been used to foster comprehension Finally, the study aims at investigating the interference of listening strategies toward the achievement of listening ability.

Research questions

In order to address the above mentioned aims, the following three research questions are supposed to answer:

1 What difficulties do grade 10 students encounter in their listening comprehension?

2 What listening strategies are used to deal with those listening difficulties?

3 What is the relationship between the use of listening strategies and the listening proficiency?

Scope of the study

The research focused on tenth grader non-English majored students in the process of learning listening in Dong Hy high school The procedure included surveying 121 tenth-graders in classes non-specialized in English

Specifically, the researcher chose randomly students from 3 classes including Social Science and Natural Science (SS and NS) classes in which their core subjects are: literature, mathematics, physics, chemistry and English These classes share the same timetable which have four English periods per week, but time for listening skills at class is about once per two weeks The students have been acquiring knowledge from similar material: experimental textbooks and also have the assimilated foundation at the beginning of the learning course

Significance of the study

The findings of the study may provide teachers of English at high schools, especially those who work with newly- entered high school students, with reference of possible gaps that need to be filled in listening skill teaching and learning The results also contribute to the spreading of useful strategies in dealing with listening difficulties Finally, teachers may be aware of the weak students so that extra time and energy might be spent on providing effective strategies to enhance the situation.

Organization of the Study

This paper will consist of five chapters

Chapter 1 Introduction: This part will focus on describing rationale, aims and objectives, scope, method, significance and outline of the study Research question is also included in this part

Chapter 2 Literature Review: This part will lay the theoretical foundation for the study with definitions of key terms and review of some related studies worldwide

Chapter 3 Research Methodology: This part will give information about the data collection instrument, data analysis methods, procedures of data collection and analysis, setting of the research

Chapter 4 Research Findings: This part will present, analyze, and give discussion about the findings that were obtained from the questionnaires

Chapter 5 Discussions and Conclusions: This part will end the study with a summary of the main points discussed in this study It will also mention the limitations of the study and include recommendations and suggestions for further studies

Following this chapter will be Reference lists and Appendices

LITERATURE REVIEW

Understanding spoken language

Human communication is mostly fulfilled through two main channels; written scripts and/or verbal communication Listening and speaking are identified as spoken language, while reading and writing are identified as written language

Listening is active, complex, and perceptive processes consisting of many sub-skills: perception, language and pragmatic skills The listeners need to recognize speech sounds, word meanings, structures, stress and intonation patterns, and then decode the sound waves into understandable meanings using linguistic and background knowledge or schema, and finally interpret and construct the meaning of spoken messages heard from the speakers into a meaningful message in order to respond (Underwood, 1989; McDonough & Shaw, 1993; White, 1998; Byram, 2004)

Most spoken text differs in many ways from written text; therefore, the object of listening is different from that of reading Spoken text is fragmented (i.e loosely structured) and involved (i.e interactive with the listener) Written text, on the other hand, is integrated and detached Flowerdew & Miller (2005) have identified spoken language with following features;

• hesitations, false starts, and filled pauses

• sentence fragments rather than complete sentences

• structured according to tone units rather than clauses

• frequent occurrence of discourse markers at beginning or end

• high incidence of questions and imperatives

• first and second person pronouns

• deixis (reference outside the text)

Moreover, spoken language always happens in real time The listeners cannot control the rate of the speakers’ speech and cannot predict what they will hear in advance They need to interpret the meaning of the speech immediately, and so most of them have problems with a fast speech rate which usually results in unclear pronunciation

Listening taught in class is quite different from real life listening (Rixon,

1986 cited in Abedin, Majlish & Akter, 2009) In order to communicate effectively, students should first learn to understand the spoken language they hear That means they should first learn to understand in real language situations to comprehend the main point of what native speakers are telling Therefore, listening is very important to which teachers and learners should pay enough attention to obtain communication aims Listening is very important in language learning because it provides input for learners and it has also an important role in the development of learners’ language knowledge (Rost, 1994).

Listening comprehension

The definition of listening comprehension has been undergoing major changes through time Rost (2002) stated that listening has been defined in various ways by educators in social sciences depending on their area of expertise

In the 1900s, listening was defined “in terms of reliably recording acoustic signals in the brain” In the 1920s and 1930s, with more information obtained about the human brain, listening was defined as an “unconscious process controlled by hidden cultural schemata” Because of the advances in telecommunications in the 1940s, listening was defined as “successful transmission and recreation of messages” In the 1960s, listening included listeners’ own experiences to understand the intention of the speaker In the 1970s “the cultural significance of speech behavior” was accepted In the 1980s and 1990s, listening was defined as

O’Malley, Chamot, and Kupper (1989) defined listening comprehension as

“an active and conscious process in which the listener constructs meaning by using cues from contextual information and from existing knowledge, while relying upon multiple strategic resources to fulfil the task requirements”

Vandergrift (1999) defined listening as “a complex, active process in which the listener must discriminate between sounds, understand vocabulary and grammatical structures, interpret stress and intonation, retain what was gathered in all of the above, and interpret it within the immediate as well as the larger sociocultural context of the utterance”

Mendelsohn (1994) pointed out that, in listening to spoken language, the ability to decipher the speaker‘s intention is required of a competent listener, in addition to other abilities such as processing the linguistic forms like speech speed and fillers, coping with listening in an interaction, understanding the whole message contained in the discourse, comprehending the message without understanding every word, and recognizing different genres Listeners must also know how to process and how to judge what the illocutionary force of an utterance is - that is, what this string of sounds is intended to mean in a particular setting, under a particular set of circumstances as an act of real communication (Mendelsohn, 1994)

Rost (2002) defined listening as a process of receiving what the speaker actually says, constructing and representing meaning, negotiating meaning with the speaker and responding, and creating meaning through involvement, imagination and empathy To listen well, listeners must have the ability to decode the message, the ability to apply a variety of strategies and interactive processes to make meaning, and the ability to respond to what is said in a variety of ways, depending on the purpose of the communication Listening involves listening for thoughts, feelings, and intentions

To sum up, it is widely admitted that listening comprehension is not merely the process of a unidirectional receiving of audible symbols, but an interactive process (Brown, 2001) In the eight processes of comprehension (Clark & Clark,

1977; Brown, 2001) the hearer, after receiving the information, assigns a literal meaning to the utterance first and then assigns an intended meaning to the utterance

A key to human communication is the ability to match perceived meaning with intended meaning.

Listening in line with other language skills

Listening is widely recognized as the first and the fundamental language skill in the first language development Among all of the four skills, listening is considered the most important skill as learners require 45% of language competence from listening (Renukadevi, 2014) It is surprised that foreign language learners usually rate listening as the most difficult of the four main skills (Field, 2008; Renandya & Farrell, 2011) Rost (2014) continues to point out that even after extensive L2 contact and study, learners are often unable to develop high-level L2 listening proficiency

Coakley & Wolvin (1997) shares the same idea that listening is the fundamental language skill which is central to the lives of students throughout all levels of educational development Listening is the medium through which people gain a large portion of their education, their information, their understanding of the world and of human affairs, their ideals, sense of values, and their appreciation In this day of mass communication, it is of vital importance that students are taught to listen effectively and critically

Krashen (1985) argues that people acquire language by understanding the linguistic information they hear In other words, language acquisition is achieved mainly through receiving understandable input and listening ability is the critical component in achieving understandable language input

Oxford (1990) confirms that reading, listening, speaking and writing are four major skills in English study which are closely connected and interact with each other It is impossible to communicate if you do not listen well and people seldom write well without reading Very often a language user involves in using a combination of skills Our ultimate aim is to foster the fulfilment of the other

10 requirements for reading, speaking and writing Therefore, it is important for teachers to help students to improve their listening skill.

The teaching of listening through time

The position of listening in second or foreign language programs has undergone a substantial change in recent years (Richards 2005) The most fundamental change is in understanding of the role of listening in L2 acquisition Listening had been considered a passive skill and that its main purpose was only to extract meaning from texts; however, adding to this role, listening is now also considered a skill that can support the growth of other aspects of language knowledge, such as speaking or reading speed (Chang and Millett 2015)

However, despite its importance, listening skill is the most neglected in the classroom (Hamouda, 2013) Aside from that, listening also is the least researched among all of the four skills (Khuziakhmetov & Porchesku, 2016; Vandergrift,

2007) Studies describe teaching listening as an area that is underdeveloped in terms of teacher education (Oxford, 1993; Goh, 2008; Graham et al., 2011) It seemed that listening instruction was organized in a haphazard manner based solely on textbook chapters, and that listening was not presented as a language skill that could be systematically developed like the skills of speaking, reading, and writing

Language learners received more attention to English grammar, reading and vocabulary Listening and speaking skills are not important parts of many course books or curricula and teachers do not seem to pay attention to these skills while designing their lessons In many English language classes, grammar translation method is used for teaching This method has been found inadequate to the demands for producing efficient English speakers and listeners Oral and aural English skills are often neglected (Rapley, 2010) Instead of prioritizing communicative ability in English, classes usually consist of grammar-oriented work and rote memorization (Rebuck, 2008; Blyth, 2011), which are generally perceived by many EFL educators to be traditional classroom methods The scant listening instruction and practice that is available is simplistic and undemanding to the extent that it is of

11 little help to learners (Rebuck, 2008) Educators claim that second language teachers and learners normally treat the receptive skills - listening and reading- as secondary skills- “means to other ends rather than ends in themselves” (Nunan,

2002, p 238) In modern researches and studies in language studies, there seem to be the unanimous claim and recommendations that the teaching and learning of listening skills must be at the forefront of language teaching, and ESL teachers are also admonished to concentrate their own efforts in listening in order to have their teaching improved (Gilakjani & Sabouri, 2016; Vega, 2016) Townsend (2014) indicated that the input and knowledge obtained from listening could have a significant impact on general language acquisition, and therefore, the design, development and implementation of effective listening strategies is imperative not only for oral communication but equally for the general acquisition of new language and academic success

The teaching and learning of listening skill in Vietnamese classrooms are even more neglected Primarily, listening is not the skill to be tested in the national final examination, that’s why full energy is paid for written skills such as reading and writing Passive students mainly learn to get points for passing English subject, not to use practical skills Thus, teachers do not have motivations to improve their teaching methods or design appropriate activities for skill development, especially listening

The other reasons include teachers’ English proficiency is low, classes are large, the buildings, furnishings, and other facilities are basic, and only low levels of support can be provided in terms of materials, libraries, and advisory services Teachers from disadvantaged areas rarely have access to the input and resources of the target language Not a single secondary and high school in Vietnam has ELT resources and materials available to teachers The only teaching materials that are at their disposal are a textbook, a couple of practical grammar books, some test samples, and a dictionary

In conclusion, the exam-focused teaching and learning styles, poorly equipped facilities and under-motivated learners and teachers have made listening status humble in Vietnamese EFL education.

Factors affecting listening comprehension

Improving students’ listening skills is strongly related to knowing the factors which have an effect on their listening performance Factors affecting listening comprehension have to be investigated to determine which ones serve as interference or contributory to effective communication between and among the communicators If students struggle with listening comprehension they will struggle to learn academically, especially in situations where aurally - presented materials are used for instruction purposes Research on second language listening comprehension strongly supports the role of a number of factors such as the quantity of words in a passage, the organization of ideas, the syntactical complexity of the passage, the reader’s accent or articulation of phonemes, the pace or speed in reading, the listener’s physiological and psychological condition, the physical or environmental mood or condition, the volume or vocal quality of the reader, among others Brown (1992) identified eight factors that may have caused ineffective listening comprehension among second language learners Among these are memory limitations and the listener’s predisposition for “chunking,” or clustering; redundancy (rephrasing, repetition, elaboration, and insertions of “I mean” and “you know.”); reduced forms and sentence fragments; hesitations, false starts, pauses, and corrections; idioms, slang, reduced forms; rate of delivery and length of pauses; stress, rhythm, and intonation of English for interpreting questions, statements, emphasis, sarcasm, endearment, insult, solicitation, or praise; and rules of interaction such as negotiation, clariﬁcation, attending signals, turn-taking, topic nomination, maintenance, and termination Many scholars have similar observations stressing hot words, environmental factor, rehearsing a response, person bias, daydreaming, a short attention use of filtering, clustering, redundancy, reduction, variables, speed, prosodic elements and lack of interaction as greatly affecting listening comprehension

In this study, the hindrances are categorized under five categories, namely (1) speaker- related difficulties, (2) linguistic-related difficulties, (3) learner-related difficulties, (4) material-related difficulties and (5) physical setting- related difficulties

Factors related to speakers include the speed, the pronunciation, accents of the person (people) who delivers the oral messages

Speech rate can affect the ability to catch the meaning of the spoken text because it is very difficult to understand speech within a very short time (Green,

2004) and second language listeners need to focus consciously on listening input in a target language by thinking fast to cope with the fast rate of natural speech in order to interpret the meaning (Buck, 2001) The research conducted by Goh

(2000), on language learners’ listening comprehension problems, found that two- thirds of the subjects quickly forgot what had been said to them, although they tended to catch the meaning of words, so this could make them completely lose the comprehension of listening texts, including the main idea Retrieving knowledge about the topic is a conscious process which can be gradually developed into an automatic one when the texts are interpreted fast enough If the listeners are familiar with the tasks or the listening input, they will take less time to understand it and will respond to the questions or the input faster Thus, the closer the listeners come to the automatic state, the more comprehension can be obtained and the more responses can be elicited Conversely, if the automatic state cannot be reached -if there is failure to get the overall meaning within a certain amount of time, listeners’ responses will be delayed (Buck, 2001) The normal English speech rate is between

150 and 180 words per minute (Buck 2001) Fast speech rates usually result in a significant reduction in comprehension (Griffiths 1990; Renandya and Farrell

2011) Conversely, studies did not support the proposal that slower speech enhanced listening comprehension Griffiths (1990) found that low intermediate level students performed best when the speech rate was delivered at approximately

127 words per minute Therefore, in teaching L2 listening, the teacher may have to consider their students’ language background and start with a speed that most students are comfortable with

Another hindrance related to the speaker’s difficulties is pronunciation and strange accents delivered by the interlocutors In a listening task, students have to not only deal with a variety of British, American and Australian accents, but might also have Indian or French thrown in

Listening is a complex process of many components, such as hearing acuity and auditory perception, so it requires the ability to understand and discriminate similarities and dissimilarities in sounds, intention, attitude, consideration, experience, and training (Giri, 1998) Many similarities or dissimilarities in sounds may occur because of the speaker’s accent, which is related to the speaker’s native language or other distinctive In this sense, today, with its highly practical flexibility, English is ranked as a lingua franca (House, 2002) This function of English language promotes it to present a diverse range of characteristics all around the world Majanen (2008) asserts that “accent is one evident area of this diversity”

As a result, it is quite unlikely to hear the same phonetic sounds from each person speaking English in the world Some words may be pronounced differently By neglecting this matter in EFL classroom settings, listening skill is usually practised with pedagogical tapes recorded in a native British accent, a case which is arguably far away from reflecting the real use of the language outside the classroom In this case, it seems possible for learners to have listening comprehension problems while communicating with foreign people, which may affect the quality of communication negatively or even hinder the process

Linguistic related factors, in the current study refer to difficulties in perceiving the meaning of the spoken texts which include the perceiving of sounds, words, and the intended meaning from speakers such as idiom, figurative languages

15 and different speaking styles In other words, the listener has to adopt an efficient principle for understanding speech

Rost (2002) argued that a source of listening problems was L2 learners' inability to identify L2 phonemes In other words, they did not have knowledge of the prototypical phonemes of L2 So they could not recognize and process everything spoken in front of them Flege & Eefting (1987) had explained that young learners, especially the ones aged less than seven years old, learned L2 prototypical sounds better than adults and older children It was easy for them to create new phonetic categories though they did not match L1 phonetic categories But older learners created categories in terms of their L1 categories; new sounds were categorized within existing and relevant L1 categories If they were different, it was difficult for them to recognize them Accordingly, listeners find it difficult to comprehend what is spoken in front of them because they are not used to L2 pronunciation In fact, they start learning the language at the age of seven

In his research exploring listening comprehension problems faced by English majors, Yen (1987) listed the following as the most salient problems in listening comprehension: sound discrimination, sound stream division, stress and intonation, vocabulary, phrase and syntax It is noticed that most of the problems Yen determined were related to pronunciation Likewise, Rixon (1986) stated that the way words in English were pronounced was a problem encountered by EFL students in listening comprehension When students were not familiar with how L2 words were pronounced, their recognition of these words was affected, and comprehension was affected accordingly

In terms of word perceiving, Berendsen (1986) found out that word recognition was another reason why listening comprehension was complicated for EFL learners Words in continuous speech were reduced and assimilated, not only within words themselves, but also across word boundaries In fact, there are no clear boundary markers; one cannot recognize word beginnings and endings Furthermore, L2 listener failed to recognize a word because of form-meaning

16 mismatch L2 learners could know the form of a word, but they do not know its meaning So they could not recognize spoken words In short, lack of lexical knowledge made listening comprehension difficult for L2 learners

Underwood (1989) argued that unfamiliar words and the inability to repeat these words were other reasons beyond the difficulty EFL learners faced in listening comprehension Students were not free to stop the recording and repeat the words unfamiliar to them Moreover, students knew a limited number of words Accordingly, unfamiliar words hindered their ability to understand what was spoken in front of them Moreover, Goh (2000) reported that there were ten clear problems in listening comprehension Five of them referred to failure in word recognition and inability to concentrate in perceptual processing The other five problems were related to L2 learners' weakness in parsing and using mental representation of parsed input As well, Hasan (2000) pointed out that text factors constrained listening comprehension; for example, unfamiliar words, long, complex texts and difficult grammatical structures led to listening miscomprehension

In addition, Chen (2002) examined 190 college students' problems in listening comprehension He found out that the top five problems were the following First, students focused on figuring out the meaning of part of the spoken text and missed what came next Second, students were unable to chunk streams of speech Third, they did not recognize words they knew Fourth, they were not certain about the key ideas of the text Fifth, they were unable to form a mental representation from the words heard Actually, the previously mentioned reasons are related to word recognition

Besides, Yan (2007) argued that there were ten common problems that hindered listening comprehension She stated that having too many new words, not knowing the meaning of new words, not being able to remember what the speaker had said, not being familiar with the topic of the listening text, and not being able to identify the main ideas of the listening text were the barriers students encountered in listening comprehension

Listening strategies

Research on listening difficulties often goes along with an investigation of approaches to solve the problems - listening strategies Bonet (2001, p.4) stated that, in fact, most people are not good listeners “We listen at about 25% of our potential, which means we ignore, forget, distort, or misunderstand 75% of what we hear.” This phenomenon may partly arise from the mentioned factors that can directly affect listeners’ comprehension and finally lead to listening problems One way to help EFL learners to overcome the listening problems and better understand the meaning of aural texts when they carry out listening comprehension tasks is strategy training

Oxford (1990) defines “strategies” as tools or actions learners employ to make their second language learning easier, enjoyable and transferable to new inputs It can enhance students’ proficiency in learning other languages, and also develop their communicative competence and self-confidence Listening strategies can be classified by the ways the listener processes the input One of the most widely used taxonomies was suggested by Oxford (1990), in which strategies are divided into two main types - direct and indirect strategies, each of which is subdivided into three categories

Direct strategies include memory strategies which are used for storing information: creating mental linkages, applying images and sounds, employing action, etc., cognitive strategies which are used in obtaining, storing, retrieving, and using the language learning or solving problems that require direct analysis, transformation, or synthesis of spoken texts and compensation strategies which help learners to overcome knowledge gaps to continue the communication—guessing from linguistic and context clues

Indirect strategies include metacognitive strategies which are used to oversee, regulate or self-direct language learning: planning, prioritizing, setting goals, and reviewing in advance, social strategies which involve learning by interaction with others in order to seek opportunities to expose to and practice the target language: joining language activities with native speakers or language experts or performing language activities with others, and affective strategies which are concerned with the learner's emotional requirements: lowering of anxiety, encouraging oneself and positive self-talk

Vandergrift (1999) showed “Strategy development is important for listening training because strategies are conscious means by which learners can guide and evaluate their own comprehension and responses” In O'Malley, Chamot, Stewner-Manzanares, Kupper, and Russo‘s (1985) study, high school ESL students were randomly assigned to receive learning strategy training on vocabulary, listening, and speaking tasks and the result indicated strategy training

24 can be effective for integrative language tasks Nakata (1999) studied the influence of listening strategy training on Japanese EFL learners’ listening competence, and it showed that the effect of listening strategy training was more discernible on perception than on comprehension, especially for those students who received low scores on the G-TELP

Native speakers and highly proficient second language learners complete the complex process of speech comprehension smoothly Second language learners at lower levels of language proficiency whether it be due to a lack of auditory experience with varying accents, limited vocabulary, imperfect control of the syntactic and semantic structure of the language, or other limitations with regard to the elements necessary for communicative competency need to rely on listening strategies to assist them in comprehending the aural communication Strategies are specific methods of approaching a problem or task, modes of operation for achieving a particular end, planned designs for controlling and manipulating certain information They are contextualized “battle plans” that might vary from moment to moment, or day to day, or year to year (p 104)

Among all the strategies for listening, O‘Malley and Chamot (1990) claimed three main types of strategies: metacognitive, cognitive and social strategies The meta-cognitive strategy was a kind of self-regulated learning It included the attempt to plan, check, monitor, select, revise, and evaluate, etc For example, for meta-cognitive planning strategies, learners would clarify the objectives of an anticipated listening task, and attend to specific aspects of language input or situational details that assisted in understanding the task (Vandergrift, 1999) Generally, it can be discussed through pre-listening planning strategies, while- listening monitoring strategies, and post-listening evaluation strategies

The cognitive strategies are related to comprehending and storing input in working memory or long-term memory for later retrieval They are investigated from the aspects of bottom-up strategies, top-down strategies For bottom-up processing, it refers to using the incoming input as the basis for understanding the

25 message Comprehension begins with the received data that is analyzed as successive levels of organization-sounds, words, as a process of decoding For bottom up strategies, Henner-Stanchina (1987) engaged in a similar study and pointed out that effective listeners were good at using their previous knowledge and experience to raise hypotheses about a text, integrating new information into their on-going interpretations, making influences to bridge gaps, assessing their interpretations, and modifying their hypotheses, if necessary On the other hand, top-down processing went from meaning to language (Richards, 2008)

Learners can try to predict what will utter by the signal However, Chiu (2006) claimed that listening comprehension was neither only top-down nor bottom-up processing Simultaneously, Lu (2008) summed up that the scholars believed the listeners not only utilized bottom-up but also top-down processing models

In sum, Thompson & Rubin (1996) indicated the effects of meta-cognitive and cognitive strategy instruction on the listening comprehension performance of American university students learning Russian They found that the subjects who received strategy instruction in listening to video-recorded texts improved significantly over those who had received no instruction

For social/ affective strategies, Vandergrift (2003) defined the strategies as the techniques listeners used to collaborate with others, to verify understanding or to lower anxiety Habte-Gabr (2006) stated that socio-affective strategies were those which were non-academic in nature and involve stimulating learning through establishing a level of empathy between the instructor and student They included considering factors such as emotions and attitudes (Oxford, 1990) It was essential for listeners to know how to reduce the anxiety, feel confident in doing listening tasks, and promote personal motivation in improving listening competence (Vandergrift, 1997) According to O‘Malley & Chamot (2001), among the four strategies of management strategies, social strategies, cognitive strategies, affective strategies in listening comprehension, both social and affective strategies influenced the learning situation immediately

A great deal has been written about language strategies These strategies have been categorized as learning strategies and communication strategies Ellis (1985:181) has stated that “Communication strategies are problem-oriented That is they are employed by the learner because he lacks or cannot gain access to the linguistic resources required to express an intended meaning They are short-term answers, while learning strategies Ellis points are long-term solutions”

In general, discussion of and research on these communication strategies have focused on the learner‘s behavior when his production in the second language shuts down Little research has focused specifically on strategies employed when the learner finds he cannot comprehend the auditory message This research specifically intended to address the question of what strategies the listener employed to solve the problem when he/she failed to comprehend the message he/she was listening to The listener‘s level of language competency was considered an important variable in the listener‘s choice of strategy Paterson (2001:90) states that strategy use varies with proficiency and so the relationship between strategy use and proficiency level is an important one.

Listening strategies and good listeners

A number of positive terms have been used to describe listeners, including:

“competent,” “skilled,” “advanced,” “good,” “active,” “strategic,” “high-ability,”

“proficient,” “effective,” [and] “successful”’ (Goh, 2005, p 64) All these labels refer to the ability to make sense of the spoken messages In order to do so a so- called “good listener” has to operate a number of skills simultaneously as they receive a spoken message As far as linguistic knowledge is concerned, listeners need to perceive the incoming sounds and store them in working memory, while beginning some processing of the stored language by separating it into manageable segments They also scan the incoming message in order to sample bits of language which may hold the key to the meaning of the message, and parse words and phrases by matching them with representations already stored in long-term memory

At the same time listeners refer to contextual information in order to construct

27 hypotheses concerning the meaning of what they have sampled and what may come next (Macaro, 2001) Contextual information includes the physical setting in which the message was produced, the participants, and the co-text (what has already been said) Listeners also make use of schematic knowledge to understand meaning, and this includes knowledge of how discourse is organized, as well as how language is used in a particular society, and factual knowledge of the topic which is being talked about It is obvious from this brief description that knowledge of the language system (phonology, stress, intonation, lexis, syntax) is not sufficient in itself to interpret the meaning of a spoken message, and that listening involves combining bottom-up processing of sounds with top-down expectations for messages which draw on much wider schematic and contextual knowledge of language in use

Language learners often think that all their difficulties in listening are due to their inadequate knowledge of the target language In fact, what they need is the strategies to cope with hindrance they encounter while doing listening tasks or real- life communication Among many researchers who investigated the effectiveness of the use of listening strategies, we can mention (O’Malley & Chamot, 1990; Vandergrift,1999,2006; Oxford 1990,1999 and Lynch ,2004) They found that people who are successful in listening to a foreign language tend to combine different strategies These broad general strategies help learners to listen more effectively and improve their listening (Cohen, 1990) Hence, good listeners use a variety of strategies, namely metacognitive, cognitive and socio-affective strategies

Metacognition can be defined simply as thinking about thinking (Anderson,

2002, 2005) It is the ability to reflect on what is known, and does not simply involve thinking back on an event, describing what happened, and the feelings associated with it Strong metacognitive skills empower language learners: when learners reflect upon their learning, they become better prepared to make conscious decisions about what they can do to improve their learning

O’Malley and Chamot (1990, p 8) emphasize the importance of metacognition when they state: “students without metacognitive approaches are essentially learners without direction or opportunity to plan their learning, monitor their progress, or review their accomplishments and future learning directions.” It is a kind of self- regulated learning process Include using mind from which the learners control the listening task via management of techniques to plan, check, monitor, select, revise and evaluate Listeners arrange the complex speech or event to observe the comprehension then interpret the information (Chelli, Rubin, 1990 and Vandergrift, 1997)

Baker and Brown (1984) identified two types of metacognitive ability: knowledge of cognition (i.e., knowing what) and regulation of cognition (i.e., knowing how) The first type is concerned with the learners’ awareness of what is going on, and the second type relates to what learners should do to listen effectively Empirical studies have found that an important distinction between skilled and less skilled L2 listeners lies in their use of metacognitive strategies (e.g., Bacon, 1992; Goh, 1998, 2000; O’Malley & Chamot, 1990; Vandergrift, 1998,

2003) O’Malley et al (1989) found that skilled listeners use more repair strategies to redirect their attention back to the task when there is a comprehension breakdown, whereas less skilled listeners give up and stop listening Vandergrift

(2003) found that skilled listeners used twice as many metacognitive strategies as their less-skilled counterparts Among the metacognitive strategies, two strategies will be analyzed here Focusing on what the speaker is saying is a strategy that enables the listener to focus his/ her attention on the speaker’s message without being distracted by any distractors This strategy is very useful in participating in the classroom, watching TV, listening to the radio, or talking to other people

The second metacognitive strategy is deciding in advance what to pay attention to Listeners employ selective attention as a technique to facilitate the comprehension process For example, some listeners choose to focus on pronunciation and accents as a way to understand the spoken language with

29 different accents However, focusing too much on accents can have a negative impact on comprehension because it can be a distracter, leading to misunderstanding

Therefore, it is a useful strategy which combines Pre-listening; planning strategies; While-listening; monitoring strategies and Post-listening; evaluation strategies The listeners summarise and find out indirectly something they already know So we can see that it is better to associate strategies to achieve a good listening activity

According to Buck (2001), cognitive strategies are skills or actions used to control, reasoning and storing the input in order to understand the language in some direct way It facilitates the new learning task and the processing information It is resided in the working memory or long-term memory, for later retrieval from the bottom-up strategies to the top-down strategies These strategies go through inference the meaning, organizing and mapping words, transfer and repetition, summarization, translation which include, using pictures in the mind, writing down ideas, outlining, using previous linguistic knowledge and elaboration In other words, these strategies depend on the cognitive abilities of the learners that is to say; listeners who are most efficient in processing received information with an attempt to understand more

Previous research has revealed that advanced learners employ more top- down strategies than beginners (Clark, 1980; Conrad, 1985; Tsui & Fullilove, 1998; O’Malley, Chamot, & Kupper, 1989) Among the cognitive strategies, four strategies will be analyzed here

The first cognitive strategy, trying to comprehend without translating, is used when the listener attempts to understand the L2 input without translating to the L1 This strategy is useful because oftentimes, many words do not have equivalents in one of the languages, tendering the comprehension process more difficult This

30 strategy, therefore, directs the listener’s attention to the meaning and structure of the target language

The second cognitive strategy is focusing on the main words to understand the new words The listener creates meaning by applying his/ her knowledge of words from the target language to sentences This strategy is very useful, especially for beginning listeners, who rely on their small vocabulary repertoire to build their comprehension

The third cognitive strategy is relying on the main idea to comprehend the whole text This strategy helps the listeners locate the theme first and details later on One of the techniques that this strategy involves is skimming The learner who uses this strategy locates the main idea quickly and understands the L2 aural input very rapidly

Related studies

Hamouda (2013) conducted a study aiming at investigating listening comprehension problems encountered by Saudi students in the English learning listening classroom The participants of this research were 60 first-year students majoring in English language and translation at Qassim University who, according to the researcher, were offered the same listening course at university and had all

32 passed the placement exam Nevertheless, the research was not quite valid because the participants were not representative enough to generalize an overall conclusion applying to the target population of all Saudi students in the English learning listening classroom The study needs to be conducted with more comprehensive samples including elementary, secondary and preparatory levels in different regions across Saudi Arabia In addition, in this study, researcher Arafat utilized both quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection Regarding the quantitative method, questionnaires were used to get information about the difficulty students faced in English listening when taking the listening course There were 4 main sections in the questionnaires, each of which aimed to find answers to one research question (about students’ perception of listening skills, their previous English learning experience, their practice chance, and their difficulties) The second data gathering instrument was a semi-structured interview, whose purpose was to figure out how listening difficulties affected learners’ listening comprehension and how teachers could help students overcome their listening comprehension problems Generally, the items in the questionnaires and the interview were relevant and helpful for the researcher to make conclusions about the most common problems faced by students including unfamiliar words, the length of the spoken text, speed rate accents, pronunciation and lack of concentration as well as some suggestions to tackle these issues such as adapting materials and improving pedagogical techniques

Abidin (2013) conducted related research which had the context in Malaysia The research used qualitative method to collect data from three Chinese students taking English listening comprehension in University Science Malaysian This study was a research report related to the problems encountered by Chinese students in listening comprehension learning The interview aimed to investigate students’ perspectives through the main question concerning the problems of the Chinese students in their English Listening Comprehension self-learning process, in three steps, which include the pre-listening, during listening and post-listening Findings from this study indicate that the most common problem faced by Chinese students

33 was the lack of prior knowledge regarding English vocabulary, and this inhibited their understanding of the listening process Moreover, the differences in the accent of the native speakers hindered students from the proper understanding of the listening content, the short span of concentration, and the learning habits of Chinese students were discussed as the problems of the English listening learning process

Darti and Andi Asmawati (2017) also conducted research aiming to find out the obstacles encountered by the students from three factors: listening material, listeners’ factor, and physical setting Descriptive method was employed to analyze and to discover the solutions about the problems The research was conducted in the State Islamic University of Alauddin Makassar The population of this study was second-semester students of the English Education Department of Tarbiyah and Teaching Faculty in the academic year of 2016/2017 There were 37 students involved in this study Data were gathered by questionnaires and interviews while observation during listening was used to confirm students’ answers The results of analyzing students’ obstacles toward listening comprehension showed that listening was a very difficult skill for students who studied a foreign language However, there are some weaknesses that the researcher of this study might overlook Although the number of participants was quite adequate to ensure the validity and reliability of the study, it would be better if more participants were involved, especially, teacher participants, as they would be the ones who provide deeper thoughts and viewpoints into the nature of the problems, as well as more useful solutions to the students

Although there are numerous studies conducted on this matter throughout the world, in the context of Vietnam, little research has been done to offer deeper insights into this issue The setting, as well as the population of the related research in foreign countries, may be very different from Vietnam According to the study carried at Thang Long high school in 2013 by Vu Quynh Trang, students encounter listening difficulties whenever they are engaged in listening activities As a result of the research, 25 common issues affecting pupils' listening abilities have been identified It also confirms that the four components that contribute to students'

34 listening difficulties are text qualities, speaker characteristics, listener characteristics, and listening environment Students regard the top three challenges as the most difficult to acquire while learning listening skills: students' failure to identify words due to their pronunciation, students' difficulty to spell words, and the speaker's foreign pronunciation In another study with the same topic, Tran Van Dung (2014) also pointed out the problems experienced by grade-10 students at Thai Nguyen upper secondary school In the research, stress intonation and rhythm were emphasized as main listening comprehension problems faced by the participants Therefore, this research will conduct in order to dig deep into the situations in Vietnam, specifically in the context of Dong Hy high school

The above researches have provided the researcher with tons of useful information which will be used as the platform of the study The pros and cons of each study has been analyzed carefully so that the researcher can seriously take into account Of all mentioned, the study of Hamouda (2013) is the one the researcher finds the most relevant and useful to the tendency as well as the process of doing research The rest studies were chosen because of the common in Asian pedagogical environment, the setting of study and the methodology that the researcher can compare and contrast to make use of

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Justifications for the selected research design

The research design refers to the overall strategy that you choose to integrate the different components of the study in a coherent and logical way It constitutes the blueprint for the collection, measurement, and analysis of data (De Vaus, 2016) The function of a research design is to ensure that the evidence obtained enables you to effectively address the research problem logically and as unambiguously as possible In social sciences research, obtaining information relevant to the research problem generally entails specifying the type of evidence needed to test a theory, to evaluate a program, or to accurately describe and assess meaning related to an observable phenomenon In the current study, the researcher wanted to obtain information concerning the current status of the phenomena (in this case – listening difficulties) and to describe "what exists" with respect to variables or conditions in a situation (the relationship between the use of listening strategies and the listening achievement) From those justifications of the research questions, the descriptive research design would be the best choice Data would be collected through questionnaires and be analyzed quantitatively to answer the research questions.

Research setting

The research carried out at the Dong Hy high school which has long been in service for rural students The research focused on listening comprehension skills which was proved to be essential for students’ future occupations with a view to acquiring a thorough understanding of obstacles faced by grade 10 students in listening comprehension as well as finding plausible remedies to innovate listening pedagogical methods and improve academic outcomes

This research was conducted with the participation of 121 grade-10 students from Dong Hy high school in the academic year 2021-2022 There were two main reasons why the researcher chose grade-10 students non-majoring in English subject to be the main population of the research First of all, it was obvious that they all reached a certain level of English after graduating from lower high school and had already passed the entrance exam to the high school Their proficiency of English language could be proved by the exam results with the criteria ranging from vocabulary items, grammatical aspects, and reading comprehension ability Furthermore, they all experienced at least 4 years of learning English at secondary school; therefore, they had opportunities to study listening skills as a separate part of the lesson While in secondary school they tended to focus more on acquiring grammar knowledge and neglect other skills such as listening and speaking, but now they have to study the same new experimental textbook which designs listening skills separately As a result, students would have to confront certain obstacles in their listening skills Consequently, there exist differences in their learning objectives and strategies as well as teachers’ teaching materials and methods Hence, the research expected to explore their difficulties and discover which one would be the most or least common among these students to promptly solve the problems and boost their learning outcomes

The study took place at the second semester of the school year 2021-2022 In terms of the quantitative method, simple random sampling was utilized Specifically, the questionnaire was sent to students in 3 classes via Google and 121 students who are at the age 16-17 years old replied Simple random sampling was employed because it is easy to carry out, there is no need to divide the population into sub-populations or take complicated steps to categorize members of the population Moreover, because each member of the population has an equal probability of selection, it was highly likely that this sampling method yielded a representative sample to make inferences and generalizations

Instruments

In order to answer the first research question “what listening difficulty do grade 10 students encounter?” the researcher used a questionnaire for the data collection The questionnaire was adopted from two sources; Hamouda (2013) and Lotfi (2012) The researcher reduced some items in the questionnaire because of redundancy The aim of the questionnaire is to elicit students’ self-reported problems and difficulties in listening comprehension The questionnaire is a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 5 (Always true) to 1 (Never true) There are five different responses offered to the students; Always true (AT), Usually True (UT), Sometimes true (ST), Usually not true (UNT), and Never true (NT) The areas of difficulty being investigated include (1) linguistic-related difficulties, (2) learner-related difficulties, (3) speaker-related difficulties, (4) material-related difficulties, and (5) physical setting-related difficulties (see appendix A)

The participants took the listening proficiency test to measure their general L2 listening proficiency The listening test consists of 25 items adapted from Cambridge PET listening test Students who get 1 to 5 correct answers are labelled poor listeners, 6-14: fair listeners, 15-20: good listeners, 21-25: excellent listeners

The ratings of listening proficiency would then be used for further analysis such as the areas of difficulty that these students may encounter, or the types and frequency of listening strategies that are employed by various learners The sample of the listening proficiency test could be found in the appendix C

After the test, another survey was conducted to explore the listening strategies which have been used by students to support for their listening comprehension The questionnaire was adapted from a combination of questions gathered from two previous studies, one of which is “Teaching L2 Learners How to Listen Does Make a Difference: An Empirical Study” by Vandergrift (2006), and

38 the other “L2 Learners’ Strategic Mental Processes during a Listening Test” by Taguchi (2001) It consisted of 20 items written both English and Vietnamese on a five-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 (strongly agree) to 5 (strongly disagree) I have made some adjustments to the wording of a few items to make them fit the language and application of the questionnaire (see appendix B).

Research procedures

From March 10, 2022 to March 13, 2022, data of the Listening difficulty questionnaire was completely collected via Google form On April 2, a Cambridge PET listening test was done by 121 students and then marked by the teacher The results of the test were classified into 4 groups as mentioned above On April 16, listening strategies questionnaire was completed by 121 participants The procedure to gather data and techniques to analyze data are presented below

Step 1: Preparing the data: Upon receiving back the questionnaires, the research sorted out and checked whether (1) that questionnaire was completed; and

(2) the given answers were consistent Only after a questionnaire met two criteria mentioned above could it be chosen for the next step

Step 2: Reporting the statistics: In this step, students’ responses to the questionnaire items were calculated Descriptive statistics analyses were carried out to understand the variables of data, including frequencies and percentages, statistics of central tendency (mean) and dispersion (standard deviation) The researcher used the following: Basic statistical description through means, standard deviations, and percentages

Step 3: Visualizing the collected data: Apart from being reported in written form with detailed numbers and description, the statistics were visualized using a range of pie charts and tables This made it so much easier to show the relationships for comparisons and contrasts

RESEARCH FINDINGS

Listening difficulties encountered by students

A Cronbach alpha coefficient was calculated for the linguistic-related difficulties scale, consisting of linguistic-related difficulties 1, linguistic-related difficulties 2, linguistic-related difficulties 3, linguistic-related difficulties 4, linguistic-related difficulties 5 and linguistic-related difficulties 6 The Cronbach's alpha coefficient was evaluated using the guidelines suggested by George and Mallery (2016) where > 9 excellent, > 8 good, > 7 acceptable, > 6 questionable, > 5 poor, and ≤ 5 unacceptable

The items for linguistic-related difficulties had a Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.79, indicating acceptable reliability Table 4.1 presents the results of the reliability analysis

Table 4.1 Reliability table for linguistic-related difficulties

Scale No of Items Α Lower Bound Upper Bound

Note The lower and upper bounds of Cronbach's α were calculated using a 95% confidence interval

The items for Learner-related difficulties had a Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.72, indicating acceptable reliability Table 4.2 presents the results of the reliability analysis

Table 4.2 Reliability Table for learner-related difficulties

The items for Speaker-related difficulties had a Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.75, indicating acceptable reliability Table 4.3 presents the results of the reliability analysis

Table 4.3 Reliability Table for Speaker-related difficulties

The items for Material-related difficulties had a Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.75, indicating acceptable reliability Table 4.4 presents the results of the reliability analysis

Table 4.4 Reliability Table for Material-related difficulties

The items for Physical-setting-related difficulties had a Cronbach's alpha coefficient of 0.68, indicating questionable reliability Table 4.5 presents the results of the reliability analysis

Table 4.5 Reliability Table for Physical-setting-related difficulties

Upper Bound Physical-setting-related difficulties 4 0.68 0.71 0.79

Frequencies and percentages were calculated for linguistic-related difficulties (table 4.6) shows that 33 students (27.3%) chose first option (always true to me) 50 students (41.3%) reported that linguistic is usually a problem for them That means the majority of the participants find that linguistic issue is problematic for them (68.6%) Only 8 students (6.6%) reported that linguistic is not problematic for them

Table 4.6 The percentage of students encounters linguistic-related difficulties

Usually not true to me 13 10.7 93.4

Figure 4.1: proportion of students encounters linguistic-related difficulties

Not usually true to me

The descriptive analysis (table 4.7) shows that 22 students (18.2%) chose first option (always true to me) 40 students (41.3%) reported that they have problem dealing with controlling themselves while doing listening tasks The total percentage of students who have this problem was 51.3 % (62 students) 20 students (16.5%) reported that they did not have any problem related to listeners

Table 4.7 The percentage of students encounters learner-related difficulties

Figure 4.2 proportion of students encounters learner-related difficulties

Usually not true to me

The figures in table 4.8 show that 39 students (32.2%) reported that they had problem with speaker-related difficulties 28 students (23.1%) reported that they have problem dealing with varieties of oral messages delivered by varied accents or speed of the spoken messages The total percentage of students who have this problem was 55.3 % (67 students) 11 students (9.1%) reported that they did not have any problem related to speakers

Table 4.8 The percentage of students encounters speaker-related difficulties

Figure 4.3 proportion of students encounters speaker-related difficulties

Table 4.9 shows the percentages and frequencies of participants reported difficulties they encountered with materials during their listening A total of 47 participants (38.8%) reported that they had problems with types of tasks as well as the length of listening tasks A large proportion of the participants said that material-related difficulties was not problematic for them; 51 students (42.1%)

Table 4.9 The percentage of students encounters material-related difficulties

Figure 4.4 proportion of students encounters material-related difficulties

In terms of physical-setting-related difficulties, only 14 students (11.6%) reported that they had problems with the quality of the audio and the setting where

45 the listening task took place The total percentage of participants who had problems with this category was only 27.3% The figures in table 4.10 give details for this category

Table 4.10 The percentage of students encounters physical-setting-related difficulties

Figure 4.5 proportion of students encounters physical-setting-related difficulties

4.1.6 A summary of listening difficulties encountered by participants

The difficulties encountered by grade 10 students in listening comprehension under five categories namely (1) linguistic-related difficulties, (2) learner-related difficulties, (3) speaker-related difficulties, (4) material-related difficulties, and (5) physical-setting-related difficulties can be summarized in the table 6 below: From the chart, it can be concluded that linguistics-related difficulties are the most problematic for the students (68.6%) In the second place are problems relate to

46 speakers (55.3%) Learner-related difficulties accounts for 51.3% Material and Physical setting take up 38.8% and 27.3% respectively

Figure 4.6 A summary of listening difficulties encountered by participants

Overall listening strategies used by students

The questionnaire used to measure the utilization of listening strategies consists of 20 Likert scale items, ranging from 1 to 5 The mean ranging from 1 to 2.4 indicates low uses The mean ranging from 2.5 to 3.4 indicates medium uses

The mean ranging from 3.5 to 5 indicates high uses

The descriptive statistics shows that the participants used listening strategies at low level, except for cognitive strategy at high level (M=2.63) The other two strategies, namely metacognitive and socio affective, M= 2.38 and 2.27 respectively Details can be seen in table 4.11 and figure 4.7

Never true for meUsually not true for meSometimes true for meUsually true for meAlways true for me

Table 4.11 Means of listening strategy uses

Figure 4.7 The distribution of overall uses of listening strategies

Listening strategies used by students of different language proficiency

4.3.1 Scores of the listening proficiency test

The listening proficiency test was a PET developed by Cambridge Esol The test consists of 5 parts with 25 items (one point for each correct answer) The candidates were ranked by four levels; excellent learner (21-25), good learner (15-

29, fair learner (6-14) and poor learner (1-5) After scoring the test, the results show that there were 9 excellent learners (7.4%) Good learners were 16 taken up 13.2% The majority were fair learners, 69 which accounted for 57% There were 27

M e an s o f Str ate gi e s u sed b y p ar tici p an ts

The uses of listening strategies

48 students (22.3%) ranked poor learners (table 12) The result obtained from the listening proficiency test would be used to measure the uses of listening strategies for students of different levels

Table 4.12 Frequencies and percentages of listening proficiency

Figure 4.8 The distribution of listening proficiency

Excellent Sts Good Sts Fair Sts Poor Sts

P er ce n tag e of Pr ofi cienc y

4.3.2 The uses of listening strategies by levels of proficiency

An analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted to determine whether there were significant differences in Strategy uses by different proficiency levels

Normality The assumption of normality was assessed by plotting the quantiles of the model residuals against the quantiles of a Chi-square distribution, also called a Q-Q scatterplot (De Carlo, 1997) For the assumption of normality to be met, the quantiles of the residuals must not strongly deviate from the theoretical quantiles Strong deviations could indicate that the parameter estimates are unreliable Figure 15 presents a Q-Q scatterplot of model residuals

Homoscedasticity Homoscedasticity was evaluated by plotting the residuals against the predicted values (Bates et al., 2014; Field, 2013; Osborne & Walters,

2002) The assumption of homoscedasticity is met if the points appear randomly distributed with a mean of zero and no apparent curvature Figure 16 presents a scatterplot of predicted values and model residuals

Outliers To identify influential points, Studentized residuals were calculated and the absolute values were plotted against the observation numbers (Field, 2013; Stevens, 2009) Studentized residuals are calculated by dividing the model residuals by the estimated residual standard deviation An observation with a Studentized residual greater than 3.13 in absolute value, the 0.999 quartile of a t distribution with 219 degrees of freedom, was considered to have significant influence on the results of the model Figure 17 presents the Studentized residuals plot of the observations Observation numbers are specified next to each point with a Studentized residual greater than 3.13

The ANOVA was examined based on an alpha value of 0.05 The results of the ANOVA were significant F (50.561, 36.707, 41.954), p < 001, indicating there

50 were significant differences in the uses of strategies among the levels of language proficiency (Table 4.13)

The excellent and good learners used more strategies than fair and poor learners The excellent students have M= 3.78, 3.89, 4.22 for Social affective, Cognitive and Metacognitive respectively, whereas poor students have M= 1.26, 2.15, 1.00 for the same strategies

Table 4.13 ANOVA analysis of strategy uses

Figure 4.9 The distribution of strategy uses by levels of listening proficiency

Use of strategies uses by language proficiency

DISCUSSIONS AND CONCLUSIONS

Discussions of the research findings

5.1.1 Research question 1: What listening difficulties do grade 10 students encounter?

Among the five categories of difficulty investigated namely; linguistic related problems, learners related problem, speakers related problem, material related problem and physical setting related problem, the most problematic category is linguistic (68%) Speaker related problem comes to the second place with 55.3%

In the third place was learner related problem (51%) Material related problem comes in the fourth place with 48.8% Physical setting does not cause any difficulties for the students when ranks the last with the percentage of only 27.3%

Figure 5.1 A summary of listening problems by categories

The findings suggest that students at grade 10 at Dong Hy high schools need more improvement in terms of pronunciation, recognizing unfamiliar words and grammatical structure to make sense of spoken messages Numerous studies have

53 confirmed the linguistic related problem for learners during listening comprehension Hasan (2000) 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 Muhammad Naeem Butt

(2010) reported that the major problem hindering listening comprehension was that the students’ vocabulary was too limited to understand the message This is also strengthened by Underwood (1989) who said that that lack of vocabulary is a big obstacle to most students in listening comprehension Bloomfield et al (2010) and Walker (2014) expressed that one of the serious problems of listening comprehension is related to the pronunciation of words that is different from the way they appear in print Due to the fact that the spoken language varies to the form of the written language, the recognition of words that make the oral speech can create some difficulties for students According to Vandergrift (2007) and Walker

(2014), in addition to identify the words despite their unfamiliar pronunciation, students should try to decide which linguistic part belongs to which word Prosodic features of spoken language like where the stress falls, weak forms and strong forms of words, and intonation also affect the comprehension of oral text Much attention in second language learning has been devoted to identifying the factors that can influence the listener difficulties (Boyle, 1987; Flowerdew and Miller, 2005) L2 listening research has focused on some factors such as speech rate (Conrad, 1989; Blau, 1990; Griffiths, 1992), phonological features (Henrichsen, 1984), and text cues used by learners (Conrad 1981, 1985; Harley 2000)

The findings also suggest that students encountered serious problems with accents and dialects (55.3%) Munro and Derwing (1999) expressed that too many accented speeches can lead to an important reduction in comprehension According to Goh (1999), 66% of learners mentioned a speaker’s accent as one of the most significant factors that affect listener comprehension Unfamiliar accents both native and non-native can cause serious problems in listening comprehension and familiarity with an accent helps learners’ listening comprehension Buck (2001) indicated that when listeners hear an unfamiliar accent such as Indian English for

54 the first time after studying only American English will encounter critical difficulties in listening This will certainly interrupt the whole listening comprehension process and at the same time an unfamiliar accent makes comprehension impossible for the listeners

Unfamiliar accents can create serious problems in understanding the correct meaning of the listening text for both the native and non-native speakers of English language for example; native speakers of English language study British or American accents On contrary, if they listen to the Indian or Pakistani accents, they will face critical difficulties in listening task In the same vein, when non-native speakers may have difficulties in comprehending American accents or British accents It shows that L2 learners need to learn different accents in order to build up their abilities in language learning process They need to practice both the British and American accents In the same vein, they need to practice with a variety of sources such as, BBC news, CNN news, TED talks, talk shows, Cricket match commentaries etc to learn a variety of accents

5.1.2 Research question 2: What listening strategies are used to deal with listening difficulties?

The findings from the current study indicated that students of grade 10 at Dong Hy high school use listening strategies at low levels; M=2.63 for Cognitive strategies, M=2.38 for Metacognitive strategies and M= 2.27 for Socio-affective strategies The low level of strategy uses greatly affected the listening comprehension The results of the listening proficiency test partly showed the reality of the situation at Dong Hy high school in the present study Cognitive strategies that help learners to listen for gist, to activate background knowledge in pre-listening, and to make predictions and inferences (Hinkel, 2006), and metacognitive strategies, which help learners control their learning through self- monitoring, and self-evaluation

It has been revealed that listening strategies are crucial in listening comprehension, and in order to success in communication conducted in foreign

55 language Learners must be motivated and use these strategies effectively (Goh, 1998; O'Malley,Chamot, & Kupper,1989) Hsiang (2021) conducted a study on the uses of listening strategies found the similar results of student’s uses of strategies

5.1.3 Research question 3: What is the relationship between the use of listening strategies and the listening proficiency levels?

The present study reveals that there is significantly difference in the uses of listening strategies among students of different proficiency level With regard to Cognitive strategies the advanced students used strategies at M= 3.89 while the mean for fair students was M=2.09 In terms of Metacognitive strategies the advanced students used strategies at M= 4.22 while the mean for poor students was M=1.00 For Socio-affective strategies, the mean for advanced students was M 3.78, while that for poor students was M=1.26 The finding reveals that there was a correlation between the uses of strategies and levels of proficiency

Oxford (1990) confirmed that higher level students do, indeed, report significantly more frequent use of language learning strategies than do lower level students Furthermore, the higher level students report using many more (three times as many, in fact) language learning strategies highly frequently than students working at lower levels In other words, the higher level students report using a much larger repertoire of strategies significantly more frequently than the lower level students

Previous research has also revealed that the learner proficiency is one of the main factors that determine the choice of a strategy (Conrad, 1985; O’Malley & Chamot, 1990; Rost & Ross, 1991) Skilled learners were found to use more strategies than their less skilled counterparts Also there were differences in the types of strategies skilled and less-skilled learners used.

Conclusions

Listening comprehension has been ignored in many English language programs Listening comprehension is a complex process In order to lessen difficulties students encounter during the listening, teacher, on the one hand should

56 be aware of learners’ difficulties so that he/she may have extra supplementary activities to overcome those difficulties On the other hand, teachers should make strategies of listening comprehension available to learners

With the aim of answering the research questions raised at the beginning of the study, the data collected from the survey questionnaire was analyzed to draw conclusion The major findings are summarized as follows The paper has explored the frequency that students encounter different types of difficulties caused by different factors as categorized in the literature review Linguistic is the most problematic category to students when most of them agreed that they have difficulties in recognizing pronunciation, unfamiliar words and grammatical structures Regarding the factors pertaining to the speakers, the factors from the fast speed of the delivery was the most frequently faced by the students while most of them did not find it difficult when meeting hesitation and pauses With regards to the factors relating to the learners themselves, most of the participants considered their lack of vocabulary and their psychological issues such as lack of concentration and the nervousness or tiredness to be the major obstacle for them while listening English In addition, the use of unfamiliar words such as jargon and idioms, as well as complex grammatical structures in a recording, was perceived as the most popular problems when it came to the difficulties caused by the listening material itself Lastly, except for the background noises, the listening difficulties caused by the physical-setting did not show as major problems

There are some suggestions that are beneficial to students to overcome some of their listening comprehension problems They are as follows:

- Listening activities should be provided based on the students’ needs and teachers should provide authentic listening materials for students that help them understand better the natural speech uttered by native speakers

- Teachers should design listening tasks that arouse students’ interest and help them learn listening skills and strategies These tasks not only test the students’

57 listening comprehension but also motivate them to use various types of listening strategies in order to gain the maximum benefits in doing their activities

- Teachers should provide students with different types of input like lectures, radio news, films, TV plays, announcements, everyday conversation, and interviews

- Teachers should familiarize their 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

- Teachers should help their students to be familiar with the accents of different native speakers Because native speakers have specific accents it is necessary for students to recognize the differences between American and British accents

- Listening activities should be presented according to their level of complexities; that is, listening activities should be provided from the very simple texts to the lower level students and moved to the very complicated authentic materials to the advanced students

- Teachers should provide background knowledge and linguistic knowledge to their students while listening to different listening materials

- Teachers should give their students the necessary feedback on their performance because it can promote their error correction and increase their motivation, and help them to develop their confidence in listening exercises

- Teachers should help their students to develop the necessary skills of listening comprehension like listening for understanding particular information, listening for the main ideas, explanation and inference, listening for intended meaning through providing different tasks and activities at different levels

- Teachers should use body language such as pointing and facial expressions to reinforce oral messages in their students.

Limitations of the study

The study was carried out with great passion from the researcher that the teaching and learning of listening comprehension should be in the correct position

58 as it has been discussed by scholars that the initial point of communication It is a fact that listening has been neglected at schools where all efforts have been poured in to written skills The study was fulfilled by a novice researcher (a master student) who for the first time did a research paper, so mistakes in academic writing as well as scientific related regulations are unavoidable

The findings of the study which was completed in a small mountainous school with only 121 participants may not be well generalized in a large scale so there should be many more researches in the future to fill in the gap of teaching and learning listening at school level

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1 I find the pronunciation familiar but cannot recognize the word     

2 I find it difficult to understand when the speakers use reduced forms of words such as gotcha, kinda

3 I find it difficult to recognize the signals which indicate that the speaker is moving from one point to another     

4 When encountering an unknown word, I stop listening and think about the meaning of the word

5 Slang and idiomatic expressions interfere with my listening comprehension

6 I find it difficult to follow the sequence of the spoken text if the sentences are too long and complex

1 I find it difficult to get a general understanding of the spoken text from the first time of listening     

2 I find it difficult to predict what will come next     

3 I find it difficult to quickly remember words or phrases I have just heard

4 I find it difficult when listening to English without transcripts     

5 Lack of listening strategies and listening skill training interferes with my listening comprehension     

6 I find it difficult to answer questions which require other than short answers     

7 I find it difficult to understand the spoken text which is of no interest to me     

8 I feel nervous and worried understanding the spoken text     

9 I stop listening when I have problems in understanding a listening text     

10 I lose concentration when I think of another question     

11 I lose concentration when the text is too long     

12 I lose concentration when I think about the meaning of new words     

13 I am unable to concentrate because I search for the answers and listen to the listening text at the same time

1 I find it difficult to understand the meaning of the words which are not pronounced clearly     

2 I find it difficult to understand the natural speech which is full of hesitation and pauses     

3 I find it difficult to understand well when speakers speak too fast     

4 I find it difficult to understand when speakers use various accents     

5 I find it difficult to understand the listening text when the speaker does not pause long enough     

6 I find it difficult to understand the recorded material if I am unable to get things repeated     

1 I find it difficult to understand listening texts which have too many unfamiliar words     

2 Difficult grammar structures interfere with my listening comprehension     

3 I find it difficult to understand listening texts when the topic is unfamiliar     

4 I find it difficult to interpret the meaning of a long listening text     

5 I use my experience and background knowledge of the topic to understand the spoken text     

6 I find the listening passage difficult to understand     

1 The equipment and facilities have poor quality     

2 The classroom is too large     

Thank you for your cooperation!

1 I focus on the meaning of every word to understand the whole text     

2 I try to picture the setting of the conversation to understand what the speakers are talking about

3 I use the words I understand to help me guess the meaning of the words I don’t understand     

4 I use the main idea of the text to help me guess the meaning of the words that I don’t know     

5 I use my knowledge and personal experience to help me understand the topic     

6 As I listen, I compare what I understand with what I already know about the topic     

7 Before I start to listen, I have a plan in my head for how I am going to listen     

8 As I listen, I adjust my interpretation if I realize that it is not correct     

9 Before listening, I think of similar texts that I may have listened to     

10 Before I start to listen, I have a plan in my head for how I am going to listen     

11 As I listen, I occasionally ask myself if I am satisfied with my level of comprehension     

12 As I listen, I have a goal in my head     

13 When I guess the meaning of a word, I think back to everything else that I have heard, to see if my guess makes sense

14 After listening, I think back to how I listened, and about what I might do differently next time

15 I focus harder on the text when I have trouble understanding     

16 I feel that listening in English is a challenge for me     

17 While listening, I try to relax     

18 I try not to feel nervous as I listen to English     

19 When I don’t understand something, I try not to worry so much about it     

20 I always try to enjoy listening     

APPENDIX C: A SAMPLE OF PET LISTENING TEST

Tiêu đề	Investigating Difficulties in English Listening Comprehension Encountered by Grade 10 Students at a High School in Thai Nguyen Province
Tác giả	Pham Thanh Hang
Người hướng dẫn	Dang Thi Thanh Huong, Ph.D
Trường học	Thai Nguyen University, School of Foreign Languages
Chuyên ngành	English Linguistics
Thể loại	M.A Thesis
Năm xuất bản	2022
Thành phố	Thai Nguyen

Định dạng
Số trang	86
Dung lượng	1,25 MB