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Tiêu đề Tran Hung Dao High School Students’ Perceptions of Learning English Listening Skills
Tác giả Nguyen Trang Bich Thuy
Người hướng dẫn Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nguyen Thi Thu Hien
Trường học Quy Nhon University
Chuyên ngành Theory and Methodology of English Language Teaching
Thể loại thesis
Năm xuất bản 2023
Thành phố Binh Dinh
Định dạng
Số trang 125
Dung lượng 1,09 MB

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Trang 1 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING QUY NHON UNIVERSITY NGUYEN TRANG BICH THUY TRAN HUNG DAO HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF LEARNING ENGLISH LISTENING SKILLS Field: Theory a

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MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

QUY NHON UNIVERSITY

NGUYEN TRANG BICH THUY

TRAN HUNG DAO HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF LEARNING

ENGLISH LISTENING SKILLS

Field: Theory and Methodology of English Language Teaching

Code: 8140111

Supervisor: Assoc Prof Dr Nguyen Thi Thu Hien

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BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO

TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC QUY NHƠN

NGUYỄN TRANG BÍCH THỦY

NHẬN THỨC VỀ VIỆC HỌC

KĨ NĂNG NGHE TIẾNG ANH CỦA HỌC SINH

TRƯỜNG THPT TRẦN HƯNG ĐẠO

Ngành: Lý luận và phương pháp dạy học bộ môn tiếng Anh

Mã số: 8140111

Người hướng dẫn: PGS TS Nguyễn Thị Thu Hiền

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STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

I certify that the information reported in the thesis “Tran Hung Dao

High School Students’ Perceptions of Learning English Listening Skills” is

the result of my own work and attempt No references are used in the study without acknowledgment Also, no parts of the thesis have been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma

Binh Dinh, 2023

Nguyen Trang Bich Thuy

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I could not have accomplished this thesis without the considerable assistance, encouragement, and contributions from my supervisor, colleagues, friends and family I take this chance to express my heartfelt gratitude toward those who offered me valuable advice and wholehearted support for my research

Firstly, I am deeply grateful to my thesis supervisor, Assoc Prof Dr Nguyen Thi Thu Hien I sincerely appreciate her step-by-step directions, excellent suggestions, valuable advice, great encouragement, endless patience, and critical comments so that I can complete my study on time

Secondly, I would like to express my gratitude to all the lectures that taught me throughout my MA course and gave me sensible advice

Thirdly, my thanks are due to Tran Hung Dao High School for facilitating my attending the MA course at Quy Nhon University

Fourthly, I also express my warmest thanks to Quy Nhon University, Post-graduate Department, Department of Education, and Foreign Languages Department for the administrative assistance

Next, I would like to thank the students at Tran Hung Dao High School, who dedicated their time to participating in my research They enthusiastically completed the survey questionnaires and attended the interviews

Special thanks also go to my dear friend Ms Nguyen Thi Thuy Kieu, who always encouraged me when I met obstacles during my study and gave

me some helpful advice on my thesis I feel lucky to have her support

Last but not least, I owe my family a great debt of gratitude for their greatest encouragement and support throughout my MA course

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ABSTRACT

Listening is one of the important language skills; however, many learners have trouble learning this skill This study aimed to investigate students’ perceptions of learning English listening skills To achieve the aim, quantitative and qualitative approaches were employed to collect and to analyze the data The data were gathered from 200 Tran Hung Dao high school students via the questionnaire and semi-structured interviews The findings showed that most students were aware of the importance of English listening skills as well as teachers’ listening teaching methods They also find listening comprehension interesting but challenging Many students encountered listening problems related to listening materials, teachers’ teaching methods and themselves as listeners As for means of practicing listening skills, listening to teachers and classmates in class and listening to English news and English songs were the ones employed by most of them, whereas a smaller number of students watched YouTube English talk shows

or short videos, British or American television channels and used mobile applications Moreover, there were just a few using voice chat on the Internet

to talk with foreigners The study had significant contributions to teaching and learning listening skills

Keywords: learning listening skills, students’ perception, the importance of listening, listening problems, practice listening skills

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS iv

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vii

LIST OF TABLES viii

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale 1

1.2 Aim and Objectives 4

1.2.1 Aim 4

1.2.2 Objectives 4

1.3 Research Questions 4

1.4 Scope of the Study 4

1.5 Significance of the Study 5

1.6 Organization of the Study 6

CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW 7

2.1 Perception and its Importance in Teaching and Learning 7

2.1.1 Definition of Perception 7

2.1.2 Importance of Perception in Teaching and Learning 8

2.2 Overview of Listening 9

2.2.1 Definition of Listening 9

2.2.2 Definition of Listening Comprehension 11

2.2.3 Importance of Listening Skills in Language Learning 12

2.3 Teachers’ Roles in Listening Activities 13

2.4 Principles for Teaching Listening Skills 14

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2.5 Factors Affecting EFL Students’ Learning English Listening

Skills 16

2.5.1 Listeners 16

2.5.2 Listening Texts 18

2.5.3 Teachers’ Teaching Method 20

2.5.4 Physical Setting 21

2.6 Related Studies on Students’ Perceptions of Learning English Listening Skills 22

CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY 28

3.1 Research Design 28

3.2 Research Setting and Participants 28

3.2.1 Research Setting 28

3.2.2 Research Participants 30

3.3 Research Instruments 31

3.3.1 Questionnaire 31

3.3.2 Semi-structured Interview 32

3.4 Data Collection 32

3.5 Data Analysis 33

3.6 Reliability and Validity 34

3.6.1 Scale Reliability Analysis 34

3.6.2 Validity 34

CHAPTER 4 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 35

4.1 Students’ Perceptions of The importance of Listening Skills 35

4.2 Problems Students Face When Learning Listening Skills 42

4.2.1 Students’ Problems Related to the Listening Materials 43

4.2.2 Students’ Problems Related to Teachers’ Teaching Methods 49

4.2.3 Students’ Problems Related to The Listener 53

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4.3 Means Students Use to Practice Listening Skills 58

CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS 66

5.1 Summary of the Study 67

5.2 Implications 68

5.3 Limitations 69

5.4 Suggestions for Further Research 70

REFERENCES 71 APPENDICES

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 3.1 Summary of Participants’ Background Characteristics 30

Table 3.2 Reliability Statistics of the Questionnaire 34

Table 4.1 Students’ Perceptions of Importance of Listening Skills 36

Table 4.2 Detailed Description of Importance of Listening Skills 37

Table 4.3 Detailed Description of Difficulty of Listening Skills 38

Table 4.4 Detailed Description of Appeal of Listening Skills 39

Table 4.5 Detailed Description of Sufficient Training in Listening Comprehension 40

Table 4.6 Detailed Description of Listening Strategies 41

Table 4.7 Students’ Problems Related to Listening Materials 43

Table 4.8 Detailed Description of Unfamiliarity of the Topic 44

Table 4.9 Detailed Description of Unfamiliar Vocabulary 45

Table 4.10 Detailed Description of Difficult Grammatical Structures 45

Table 4.11 Detailed Description of Speech of Spoken Texts 46

Table 4.12 Detailed Description of Stress, Pronunciation, Intonation and Accent 46

Table 4.13 Detailed Description of Length of Spoken Texts 47

Table 4.14 Detailed Description of Poor-quality Recordings 48

Table 4.15 Students’ Problems Related to Teachers’ Teaching Methods 49

Table 4.16 Detailed Description of Pre-teaching Important Vocabulary 50

Table 4.17 Detailed Description of Warming-up Activities 51

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Table 4.18 Detailed Description of Clear Explanation of Tasks’ Instructions 51 Table 4.19 Students’ Problems Related to the Listener 53 Table 4.20 Detailed Description of Listeners’ Anxiety 54 Table 4.21 Detailed Description of Slow Recall of Familiar Words’ Meaning 55 Table 4.22 Detailed Description of Slow Recollection of Heard Words or Phrases 55 Table 4.23 Detailed Description of Concentration Lapses due to New Words 56 Table 4.24 Detailed Description of Concentration Lapses due to Strong Focus

on Every Word or Phrase 56 Table 4.25 Means Students Use to Practice Listening Skills 59 Table 4.26 Detailed Description of Means of Listening to Teachers and

Classmates 60 Table 4.27 Detailed Description of Listening to English News and Songs 60 Table 4.28 Detailed Description of Means of Watching YouTube English Talk Shows 61 Table 4.29 Detailed Description of Means of Using Mobile Applications 62 Table 4.30 Detailed Description of Watching British or American Television Channels 62 Table 4.31 Detailed Description of Using Voice Chat to Communicate with Foreigners 63

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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

The introduction chapter helps lay background information essential for understanding the issue discussed in this study The chapter includes 6 main parts: rationale, aim and objectives, research questions, scope of the study, significance of the study, and organization of the study

1.1 Rationale

In Viet Nam, English has been becoming a compulsory subject in schools No one can deny that due to being one of the four major skills in language learning, listening has become an indispensable part of learning English as a foreign language It is a very crucial skill because it is the most frequently utilized in everyday life According to Croom Helm Cross (1998), listening is the most essential part of communication because it has an important role in supplying a meaningful reply Thanks to listening, the language learner can obtain pronunciation, word stress, lexicon, and syntax and the gasp of messages communicated can be dependent solely on voice tone, pitch and accent Similarly, Harmer (2007) stated that listening helps our students pronounce words correctly because it helps them take in the appropriate “pitch and intonation, stress, and sounds” of both single words and ones which join together in connected speech when they hear and comprehend the spoken English texts Gilakjani and Ahmadi (2011) concluded that listening plays an integral role in people’s lives Learning listening will permit us to considerably enhance our communication ability If people wish to communicate accurately and meaningfully, it is necessary for them to frequently and consistently hear various English forms It means that

it is impossible for people to learn a language without hearing, for listening supply language input

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Not only does listening have a crucial role in daily life but it has great potential for learning activities in the classroom Rost (1994) stated that in the language classroom, listening is significant as it provides the learner with input Learning cannot start without the precise comprehension of input Likewise, according to Wallace et al (2004), listening skills have a significant impact on learning purposes because students can get information and obtain insights This

is in line with Harmer’s (2007) statement that listening could be useful for students to have successful communication The students are required to improve basic language knowledge on their own, such as “vocabulary, structure, pronunciation, phonology, and other language items” in order to gain good listening comprehension in English However, according to Lu (2008) (cited in Dang et al., 2021), most students perceived that the listening skill is probably the most important but the most difficult one to study He also stated that listening comprehension is hampered by many factors

It can be concluded that listening is an integral part of learning English, but it is a difficult skill for students Therefore, a number of research papers related to students’ perceptions of listening difficulties in learning English listening skills have been conducted in many countries (Anadapong, 2011; Juan & Abidin, 2013; Duong and Chau, 2019; Diora & Rosa, 2020; Tran & Duong, 2020; Nadhira & Warn, 2020; Hardiyanto et al., 2021) Nevertheless, the studies concerning students’ perceptions of learning English listening skills have been limited Nguyen and Thai (2018) concluded that the majority

of students have a positive awareness of listening skill development Listening comprehension issues faced by the first year English-major students include speakers’ various accents, pronunciation, speed of speech, inadequate vocabulary, dearth of concentration, worry, and poor quality of the recording

Similarly, according to Lestari et al (2019), the importance of English

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listening skill is realized by most of the students, but they assume that they are the weakest at the listening skill The authors also add that there are many problems students face in learning English listening skills These problems include accent, pronunciation, fast rate of speech, restricted vocabulary, sophisticated grammatical structures, prior knowledge, poor concentration, low recording quality, noise and length of oral texts In addition, in Rullu's study (2022), most of the students think that listening is more challenging than other skills They also emphasize that their major problems are repetitious activities, long material, anxiety, lack of concentration, bad quality

of recording tapes, unknown words, noisy surrounding, texts with fast speed, unclear pronunciation, and dearth of vocabulary

In Vietnam, the 2022-2023 school year is the first time of implementing MoET’s 2018 General Curriculum for the tenth graders It is required that the new course books’ level of English proficiency for high school students be level B1 (level 3 in Common European Framework of Reference) It is obvious that there is a lack of investigation into perceptions of learning English listening skills of tenth graders who have just finished the grade ten

2018 General Curriculum Besides, being one of the English teachers at Tran Hung Dao high school, I recognize that the majority of students are weak at listening and learning listening skills is often ignored and not focused on I desire to help students at my school pay much attention to and improve their English listening skills

For those reasons, with a view to investigating how grade 10 students perceive learning English listening skills at Tran Hung Dao high school, I am so

inspired to choose the topic “Tran Hung Dao High School students’ perceptions of learning English listening skills” for my MA thesis

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1.2 Aim and Objectives

1.2.1 Aim

This study aims to identify Tran Hung Dao high school grade 10 students’ perceptions of learning English listening skills

1.2.2 Objectives

To achieve the aim, three specific objectives are identified:

(1) To identify what grade 10 students think about the importance of listening skills

(2) To explore what problems grade 10 students have when they learn listening skills

(3) To find out what means grade 10 students use to practice listening skills

(3) What means do grade 10 students use to practice listening skills?

1.4 Scope of the Study

As stated above, the study was restricted to the area of exploring students’ perceptions of learning English listening skills through the

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descriptive study with two main instruments including a closed-ended questionnaire and a semi-structured interview Specifically, the researcher identified students’ perceptions of listening skills’ importance, some listening difficulties they might face and the means they might use to practise their listening skills Due to the constraints of resources and time, the study limited its scope to the participation of 200 grade 10 students at Tran Hung Dao high school Therefore, the study limits itself to the teaching and learning of English listening, not for all students of Tran Hung Dao high school The justification for choosing participants is that they finished the grade ten 2018 General Curriculum Therefore, they well perceived some requirements of new course books’ level of English proficiency for high school students as well as listening challenges

1.5 Significance of the Study

Students' perceptions of learning English listening skills are the focus

of this study From an educational perspective, the study is significant for both theoretical and practical reasons

In terms of theory, the study contributes to the methods, techniques and activities of teaching listening

In terms of practice, the findings of this study may benefit English teachers, students, and researchers As for the teachers, the findings of the study can raise teachers’ awareness of how their students perceive learning English listening skills As a consequence, they will endeavor to implement listening lessons in an effective way in order that their students can improve their listening performance This study can also be used as a reference, not only by English teachers at Tran Hung Dao high school but also

by teachers who want to know how students perceive learning listening skills and improve students’ listening skills For students, this study hopes to help

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them realize the importance of listening skills, some listening problems and methods of practising listening skills Finally, with regard to the researchers, the findings could be used as a database for further study

1.6 Organization of the Study

The research is presented in five chapters: Introduction, Literature Review, Research Methodology, Findings and Discussion and Conclusion and Implications

Chapter 1, Introduction, presents the rationale, the aim and objectives,

the scope, the research questions, the scope, the significance and the structure

of the study

Chapter 2, Literature Review, defines major related concepts and

briefly reviews the related studies It provides a theoretical background for the study

Chapter 3, Research Methodology, introduces the research design,

research setting, participants, research instruments, data collection, data analysis and data’s reliability and validity

Chapter 4, Findings and Discussion, describes the analysis of data in

detail and presents the findings as well as a thorough discussion

of the findings of the study

Chapter 5, Conclusion and Implications, summarizes the main findings,

draws some implications, indicates the limitations of the study as well as offers suggestions for further research

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CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW

The purpose of Chapter 2 is to review the theoretical background of the study This chapter will be divided into 5 main sections It begins with presenting perception and its importance in teaching and learning The following section deals with an overview of listening, in which the definition

of listening and listening comprehension as well as the importance of listening skills in language learning are briefly discussed The next parts are teachers’ roles in listening activities and principles for teaching listening skills Factors affecting EFL students’ learning English listening skills are then presented In this chapter, the researcher also reviews the previous studies related to students' perceptions of learning English listening skills

2.1 Perception and its Importance in Teaching and Learning

2.1.1 Definition of Perception

In recent years, a variety of studies on students’ perceptions of the teaching and learning process have been carried out because thanks to the understanding of students' perceptions, teachers can evaluate teaching and learning approaches Therefore, perception has been defined in various ways Perception is defined as “the way you notice things, especially with the senses” Following, it is “the ability to understand the true nature of something” and it is “an idea, a belief or an image you have as a result of how you see or understand something” (Oxford Students’ Dictionary of English, 2010) According to Glinow and McShane (2010), perception is defined as the process of gaining information about and understanding the real world As our senses receive environmental stimuli, perception starts In the same vein, Ward et al (2015, p 74) stated that “perception is the process by which we interpret the world around us, forming a mental representation of the

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environment.” The authors also show that this concept handles the five human senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste)

Besides, according to Irwanto (2002) (cited in Fadillah, 2019), there are two types of perceptions: positive and negative perceptions Positive perception is one that describes all information and reactions that go on trying

to be used This will be repeated by actuating, accepting, and backing the object of perception Negative perception is one that describes all information and reactions opposed to the perceived object McDowell and Newell (1996) (cited in Putri & Tanau, 2018) concluded that there are two perception aspects: cognition aspects and affective aspects Aspects of cognition are aspects involving ways of thinking, recognizing, and interpreting a stimulus received by the five senses, experience or that has been seen in daily life The affective aspects are aspects creating cognitive aspects This affective aspect consists of the way a person feels and shows emotions towards a stimulus based on the values in them which then have an influence on their perception According to Sidhu (2003), students' perceptions are students' opinions about things that happen during the learning process and give ideas or disagreements to teachers or classmates to improve their learning process

From the above definitions, it can be concluded that in order to grasp one’s behavior, one needs to comprehend their perceptions

2.1.2 Importance of Perception in Teaching and Learning

According to Danim (2010) (cited in Hrahap & Suryaman, 2022), the major and most useful resource in teaching and learning activities is the student He also concludes that “students can learn from teachers, while teachers cannot teach without students” and every learning process always starts with perception which the whole learning process is always centered on

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The process by which students treat information they learn from an object with preference is known as “students’ perception” Students can form an opinion on an object by observing it with their senses Besides, according to Mitchell and Myles (1998), learners are viewed as “active constructors” of their own learning environment according to a sociocultural perspective on language learning, so they are reliable and take responsibility for their own learning environment

In addition, Williams and Burden (1997) stated that teachers must be conscious of what they think about learning and teaching so that they can make wise decisions in their daily teaching There is no doubt that even if students are the target of the teaching activities, teachers' perceptions have an impact on how they set up their classrooms Therefore, students and teachers can support one another and join hands to create the learning and teaching environment

It can be concluded that perception data show how people perceive the learning environment, so they are crucial for planning continual improvement

in teaching and learning

2.2 Overview of Listening

2.2.1 Definition of Listening

There are a wide range of definitions for the term “listening” Listening

is described as a process of receiving what is heard and analysing in into verbal units where meaning is then applied (Gross, 1982) According to Bowen et al (1985), listening is understanding the oral language Students hear spoken speech, categorize sounds into lexical and syntactic items, and grasp the information Listening is defined as a complicated process of clarification in which listeners connect what they hear with what they already

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know (Rost, 2002) Rost (2009) (cited in Saraswaty, 2018) also concluded that thanks to listening, we can grasp the world and listening is one of the vital factors in establishing successful communication In the same vein, Hamouda (2013) stated that listening is the ability to recognize and comprehend what other people are saying This process involves understanding a speaker's accent or pronunciation, the speaker’s grammar and lexicon, and grasp of meaning Besides, Steinberg (2007) (cited in Darti & Asmawati, 2017, p 214) stated listening process as one person’s ability to understand another through senses, aural organs, to interpret a meaning of the message and to grasp it Some important features of listening consist of imitating the sounds, understanding intonation and stress, duplicating verbosity and noise, forecasting, knowing informal vocabulary, tiredness, recognizing various accents, using “visual and environmental clues”

As for listening in EFL, according to Spratt et al (2011, pp 43-44), listening is “a receptive skill as it involves responding to language rather than producing it” Understanding “the meaning sounds of spoken language” is a key component of listening and there are a variety of text types in spoken language such as dialogues, narratives, announcements, songs, guidelines, lectures and advertisements Therefore, listening requires much more than just comprehending the “grammar, vocabulary, and functions of what we hear” They conclude that handling spoken language characteristics, making use of context and world knowledge, grasping different text types, recognizing various speech rates and accents, understanding connected speech (sentence stress, linking sounds and words, and the use of contracted forms), and employing the proper listening subskills (listen for gist/global understanding, specific information, detail, or to infer attitude) are entailed in listening

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2.2.2 Definition of Listening Comprehension

Listening comprehension has been defined by a number of researchers Rost (2002) (cited in Tran & Duong, 2020) and Hamouda (2013) stated that listening comprehension is a sophisticated interactive process in which listeners get involved in assigning meaning Listeners grasp the spoken input via sound recognition, previous lexical knowledge, grammatical structures, stress and intonation, and the other linguistic or non-linguistic cues Similarly, Vandergrift (1999) (cited in Tran & Duong, 2020) viewed listening comprehension as an intricate interactive process in which all components such as sounds, intonation, linguistic structures, and social structural contexts must be concentrated on by listeners In addition, according to Holden (2004) (cited in Tran & Duong, 2020), listening comprehension is defined as a sophisticated activity that needs mental effort to make sure of grasp Moreover, the author argued that listeners create what they have understood after listening passively On the other hand, according to Thomson (2003), and Helgesen and Brown (2007), the listeners are actively concentrating in the process of listening comprehension, not passively

On this point, Nadig (2013) defined listening comprehension as the various processes of grasp of oral languages These processes include recognizing speech sounds, understanding the meaning of single words, and knowing the syntax of sentences Jinhong (2011) (cited in Tran & Duong,

2020, p 79) indicated that listening comprehension is both “a oriented activity” in which listeners have to handle “the input actively” gradually and “a creative activity” that thanks to the given message or their experience and prior knowledge, listeners assign meanings

process-From the above definitions, it can be concluded that listening

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comprehension is a complicated process in which in order to grasp what others are saying, students have to use not only their linguistic knowledge (i.e., lexical items, sounds, and grammar) but also background knowledge

2.2.3 Importance of Listening Skills in Language Learning

Listening is important to language learning Scarcella and Oxford (1992) (cited in Dang et al., 2021) concluded that learners often use listening the most during language learning

According to Nunan (1998, p.1), most people think that knowing a second language means that you can write and speak in that language; however, it is impossible for them to have efficient communication without effective listening skills Therefore, “listening is the fundamental skill in language learning and over 50% of the time spent functioning in a foreign language by students will be dedicated to listening” Besides, Peterson (2001, p.87) stated that spoken language, received via listening, is the easiest type of language “Through listening, learners can build an awareness of the interworkings of language systems at various levels and thus establish a base for more fluent productive skills” The significance of listening and speaking skills is the same as if two skills are not developed together, people cannot communicate directly (Anderson & Lynch, 2003)

The significance of listening in the language classroom is clarified by Rost (1994, pp 141-142) Firstly, listening gives the student input, so it is essential in language classes No learning simply can start without the appropriate input Secondly, spoken language offers students “a means of interaction”, which helps them gain understanding Therefore, access to language speakers is crucial In addition, interaction and learning are facilitated, not hindered, by students' failure to comprehend the spoken

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language The next importance of listening is that authentic spoken language poses a challenge for the learner to understand language as it is truly used by native speakers Last but not least, the teacher may use listening exercises to help students focus on new language features such as vocabulary, grammar, and interaction patterns

Spoken language provides students with a means of communication because comprehension requires interaction between students Having access

to language speakers is very important

In summary, listening skills play an integral part in the language learning process It provides the students with information from which they can acquire the essential knowledge for using the language As a result, listening is a fundamental language skill that helps students develop the other language skills

2.3 Teachers’ Roles in Listening Activities

Gilakjani and Sabouri (2016, p 1673) stated that “teachers have a major responsibility in their classes and they can have a great effect on their students to create friendly atmosphere” Harmer (2007, p 307) reported that there are four main roles of teachers in extensive listening

First, the teacher is an organizer It is essential for the teacher to give students listening objectives and provide them with guidance on how to accomplish goals Besides, increasing students’ confidence by giving them achievable tasks and understandable texts will be one of the teacher’s main responsibilities

Second, the teacher is a “machine operator” Before bringing the recording into class, the teacher should try it out in order to avoid losing time

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in attempting to make the appropriate decisions or get things to function For specific exercises and questions, the teacher should decide where to pause the recording However, in class, he/she should be ready to adjust to the demands

of the students If the teacher asks students to participate in live listening, he/she must carefully monitor their comprehension of what he/she is saying After that, the teacher can adapt to speak in a more appropriate manner

Third, the teacher is a “feedback organiser” To ensure that students have succeeded in doing the task, a feedback period needs to be given by the teacher To begin with, the teacher may ask students to exchange their answers in pairs, which is often preferred by students because by “sharing their knowledge”, they also take “responsibility for the answers” Then, the teacher may get answers from the class as a whole or specific pairs In addition, if the teacher wants to prevent any bad expectations of students and keep them motivated, he/she should be encouraging while giving feedback following listening

Lastly, the teacher is a “prompter” After having listened to a text for understanding, students can be required to listen again so that they pay attention to a range of language and spoken characteristics Moreover, in order to encourage their awareness of particular linguistic elements, the teacher may occasionally provide them with script dictations in which some words in a transcript are missing

2.4 Principles for Teaching Listening Skills

There are seven general principles for teaching listening skills stated by Forseth et al (1996) and Harmer (1998)

First, it is critical for using real texts such as texts from radio broadcasts or interviews and presenting them as naturally and realistically as

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possible because authentic texts accommodate background noise and interruptions, which are common, use a variety of voice types and accents, and eliminate words not relevant to the context

Second, it is essential that teachers include different types of texts including conversations, humor, lectures, news broadcasts, songs or stories

Third, meaning-based tasks should be often employed by teachers In addition to hearing sounds, listeners also need to comprehend meaning

Fourth, teachers ought to specify a goal of listening tasks The task should be designed to practice one or more different subskills If students are skimming to find the key point, they may overlook some specific information

If they are scanning to find specific pieces of information, they may fail to hear the main idea Teachers need to inform the students of the task’s purpose before it is started

The next principle is that before giving a listening task, it is important for teachers to introduce it by asking questions, introducing one or two key words, having a short discussion about the topic, or prompting the students to share their personal experiences Teachers should give the listeners the topic

or the setting of the text whenever presenting a listening text All of these will aid students to concentrate

Another principle is that pre-teaching vocabulary should be avoided, which will let students guess the meaning from context In actual life, vocabulary word lists are not previewed It is important for students to practice comprehending texts without fully understanding all the words Only vocabulary words that are essential for comprehending the main idea ought to

be taught in advance

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Finally, it is recommended that teachers allow students to listen to the text more than once Normally, when hearing something for the first time, the listeners will not fully understand it However, students will fully comprehend the text if it is repeated, each time with a different focus

2.5 Factors Affecting EFL Students’ Learning English Listening Skills

Listening is of great importance to language learning Indeed, it will not

be possible to have effective communication unless you can listen well According to Kurita (2012), although listening comprehension is regarded as the heart of language learning, it is the most challenging skill to learn Consequently, it is vital to explore factors that create difficulties for students’ learning English listening skills

2.5.1 Listeners

Boyle (1984) (cited in Yildiz, 2015) concluded the listener is among the factors that affect listening comprehension Listeners’ good background knowledge such as grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation makes a positive contribution to their understanding of the input Moreover, learners’ motivation and memory have an influence on their listening skills

Underwood (1989) (cited in Dang et al., 2021) stated that listeners’ lack

of the lexicon is one of the difficulties in learning English listening skills Due

to the dearth of vocabulary, learners have an intention of thinking about the meaning of words instead of paying attention to the content of the speech Limited contextual knowledge is a hindrance to learners’ grasping the meaning of the listening input Besides, listeners’ attempt to understand all the words leads to neglecting the next part of the listening text

According to Yagang (1994) (cited in Dang et al., 2021, p 166), the listener is one of the causes of students’ difficulties in learning English

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listening skills He also shared Underwood’s (1989) idea that because language is used as a tool to show its culture, “lack of social cultural, factual, and contextual knowledge of the target language” can become an impediment

to grasp of the text In the same vein, Walker (2014) their low listening achievement students' limited cultural background knowledge of the foreign language may cause their low listening achievement

Rubin (1994) (cited in Nguyen, 2018, p 291) concluded that “some listener characteristics such as language proficiency level, memory, attention, affect, age, gender, learning disability in L1, and background knowledge” are one of the reasons for learners’ inability to learn L2 listening skills, whereas Teng (2002) suggested that learners’ insufficient linguistics knowledge is the major problem of leaning English listening skills, which resembles Boyle’s (1984) description Moreover, Elkhafaifi (2005) (cited in Brunfaut & Révész, 2015) and Golchi (2012) stressed the effect of listeners’ anxiety on listening comprehension They investigated the relationship between listening worry and listening comprehension and concluded that listening nervousness has a negative impact on students’ listening performance

Like Underwood’s (1989) report, Abbas and Mohammad (2011), and Trinh (2020) stated that the common problem of learning English listening skills is learners’ inadequate vocabularies It is sure that students are not able

to identify a word unless they do not know that word Furthermore, that learners pronounce words incorrectly leads to not being able to identify the sounds and misunderstanding the content as they listen to The author reported that the habit of trying to listen to every word and comprehend all unknown words results in the failure of listening comprehension This habit also prevents learners from focusing on the clues that help them forecast the

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topic of the text However, Trinh (2020) added that students’ listening comprehension failure may come from their limited short-term memory Indeed, the limitation of short-term memory enables students not to note down information as fast as possible; therefore, the next ideas will be missed This description is similar to Goh’s (2000) (cited in Nguyen, 2018, p 291) idea that the most prevalent issue is “quickly forget what is heard” With reference to the listener factor, a study done by Diora and Rosa (2020) revealed that it is listeners’ anxiety, inference of the meaning of strange words, lack of concentration, understanding of “every single word of incoming speech” and low remembering ability that prevent students from achieving listening success

In Vietnam, students’ listening comprehension problems related to

listeners have been identified by some researchers For instance, Nguyen and Thai (2018) confirmed that listeners’ psychology, dearth of concentration and practice are among the principal factors in listening failure In addition, the finding of the study conducted by Bui (2019) (cited in Nguyen & Luu, 2021) revealed that it is students’ lack of practicing listening skills and dearth of exposure to various types of listening texts that hinder them from listening success, which is the same as Anadapong’s (2011) investigation

2.5.2 Listening Texts

Boyle (1984) (cited in Yildiz, 2015) concluded that lexis and grammar level of the listening texts have a huge impact on listening comprehension They also stated that the familiarity of listening topics is important to learners’ learning listening skills and if listening topics are familiar to learners, they will show a lot of interest and have better performance

Underwood (1989) (cited in Dang et al., 2021, p 167), and Brunfaut

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and Révész (2015) came to the same conclusion that fast speed of texts influences listening comprehension negatively Underwood (1989) concluded that “the greatest difficulty with listening comprehension for many English language learners is they cannot control how quickly a speaker speaks”

According to Yagang (1994) (cited in Dang et al., 2021, p 166), strange topics may lead to failure of listening comprehension, which is similar to Boyle’s (1984) depiction of listening text factor He also suggested that

“liaison, elision, clichés, collocation, colloquial words, slang and idiomatic expressions in English” affect learning listening skills largely It is the mentioned features that make students feel difficult to comprehend the content Moreover, Rubin (1994) (cited in Nguyen, 2018, p 291) concluded that “text characteristics such as speech rate, pause phenomena and hesitation, level of perception, stress and rhythmic patterning perception, L1/L2 difference, syntactic modifications, redundancy, morphological complexity, word order, discourse markers, and visual support for texts” contributes significantly to students’ listening success

Like Boyle’s (1984) idea, Rupp et al (2001) (cited in Brunfaut & Révész, 2015) showed that there is a relationship between lexical variety and second language listening achievement It means that the more varied vocabulary the text has, the more listening difficulties students encounter Joseph (2008) reported that long, complex and badly organized listening texts may make students difficult to understand The study conducted by Hamouda (2013) revealed that there are a variety of types of listening difficulties related

to listening materials, such as various accents, pronunciation, strange words, the speed and the length of the oral texts Diora and Rosa’s (2020) findings covered Boyle’s (1984) and Hamouda’ (2013) when they stated that all aspects such as complicated grammatical structures, unusual topics, a variety

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of accents, speed of delivery and strange vocabularies influence listening comprehension profoundly

In Vietnam, listening material characteristics have also been considered

as one of the major obstacles to learning English listening skills by a lot of authors While Nguyen and Thai (2018) had the same investigation as Hamouda (2013), Trinh (2020) stated that apart from features such as accents, pronunciation, unfamiliar words, the rate and the length, spoken texts’ strange topics and colloquial English exert a powerful effect on students’ listening ability In the same vein, Duong and Chau (2019) found out that “unfamiliar words, slangs, idioms, colloquial words, and complex sentence structures” of listening texts are the causes of English majors’ low listening comprehension

2.5.3 Teachers’ Teaching Methods

In reference to teaching methods, Mendelsohn (1994) (cited in Nunan, 1998) showed that giving students explicit goals is one of the characteristics

of effective listening Therefore, Nunan (1998) suggested that the teachers should establish goals for every listening lesson, which helps students have a better grasp of the content of the text Besides, Facella et al (2005) concluded that teaching strategy is one of the factors that influences learners’ listening comprehension ability greatly He suggested that suitable methods of teaching listening should be given to students so that they can accomplish the objective

of learning listening skills

In the same vein, Trinh (2020, p 71) stated that traditional methods of teaching listening skills are one of the objective factors causing listening problems She explained that in these models “the responsibility of learning is not upon the shoulders of the students” Choosing the materials, defining the objectives, and managing the equipment are teachers’ jobs Students’

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preferences are not given much weight Learners are viewed as “passive hearers” instead of “active listeners” throughout the listening process They often have to listen to audio or video tape without pause or interruption It is crucial that listeners interact with the speakers to clarify unclear information

or address misunderstandings Besides, listeners may express interest in the dialogue, raise more questions or make the speakers repeat, and even ask the speakers to change some of what they say Trinh (2020) also suggested that students’ listening skills should be improved when listening is taught together with various sub-skills such as note-taking, guessing meaning, and summarizing

Regarding teaching techniques, Lestari et al (2019) suggested that to assist learners in overcoming difficulties of strange words, complication of grammatical structures and long texts, teachers should pre-teach new and odd lexis, conduct warming-up activities and find listening texts that have suitable length for learners’ level and ability

Last but not least, according to Ramadhani and Selina (2021) (cited in Herlina et al (2021, p 51), it is necessary for teachers to use listening strategies in teaching However, there are many strategies, so teachers should choose strategies that are appropriate for students’ level as well as problems teachers encounter in listening teaching process In addition, Herlina et al (2021, p 51) concluded that there are some strategies such as “taking note, summarizing and paying attention” utilized in English teachers’ teaching listening skills

2.5.4 Physical Setting

According to Boyle (1984) (cited in Naci Yildiz, 2015), the listening environment is among barriers to listening comprehension He stated that the

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quiet listening environment will not interfere with students’ concentration Similarly, Nguyen and Luu (2021, p 21) revealed that environmental characteristics “such as noise and temperature” enable learners to lose their concentration on listening They explained that the noise outside may stop learners from success in listening to the text well Listening process is hampered

by “noise such as a whirring of fan, a whisper of nearby friends Besides, listening comprehension may be hindered by “the too warm or cool room”

In respect of the physical setting factor, Yagang (1994) (cited in Dang

et al., 2021, p 166), Diora and Rosa (2020), and Trinh (2020, p 71) shared the same idea that students’ inability to listening comprehension is derived from “physical setting such as background noise on the recordings, the noise from the surroundings, the low quality of the tapes or disks and the poor equipment’s”

On this point, Hedge (2005) also confirmed that one of the important extrinsic impediments to listening achievement might be the low quality of the recordings, which resembles the findings of the studies carried out by Hamouda (2013) and Nguyen and Thai (2018)

To summarize, different authors have identified various factors influencing listening comprehension have been discovered by many researchers; however, it can be concluded that there are four major factors including listeners, listening texts, teachers’ teaching method and physical setting

2.6 Related Studies on Students’ Perceptions of Learning English Listening Skills

Knowing learners’ perceptions is very important to teachers Thanks to learners’ perceptions, teachers explore strengths and limitations of teaching methods, teaching material or teaching strategies so that they have appropriate

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adjustments As a result, the quality of teaching and learning will be enhanced As a matter of fact, some studies related to students’ perceptions of learning English listening skills have been investigated in recent years Surprisingly, the following research papers took place in different contexts; however, their results were nearly the same

A study on identifying students’ listening comprehension problems was conducted by Hamouda (2013) The participants were 60 first year English major students Data collected from a questionnaire and interviews revealed that most of the learners have strong awareness of the crucial role of listening skill and listening is considered as the weakest skill He also stated that the participants encounter the main listening comprehension problems such as accent, pronunciation, speed of speech, unfamiliar vocabulary, complex grammar, strange topic, long spoken texts, dearth of concentration, worry, bad memory, and low recording quality In respect of means of improving listening comprehension, many students enhance their listening ability by listening to teachers and classmates speaking English in class, watching British or American television channels and using voice chat on the internet communicating with their friends

Similarly, Maulidyah (2015) also conducted a study to investigate the fifth semester students’ problems in listening comprehension Data collected from the questionnaire revealed that most students are conscious of the value

of English listening skills Besides, he concluded that the fifth semester students encounter a variety of problems related to listening comprehension The ten most prevalent problems are concentration lapse with noises around and the poor recording, unclear sounds from the classrooms’ inadequate acoustics, poor-quality CD player or poor equipment, inability to comprehend

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spoken texts with fast speed and many strange words, difficulty grasping the meaning of words without clear pronunciation, difficulty comprehending the listening text if key words are not taught beforehand

In investigating students’ perceptions toward listening comprehension, Rahayu and Apriyanti (2017) implemented descriptive quantitative research design The first graders of English Education Program were asked to fill out

a Likert Scale questionnaire and answer the interview questions In terms of self-evaluation of listening ability, the study showed that most of the students have the average listening performance and of all the language skills, they are the worst at listening Besides, students find it hard and boring to learn this skill They also think that their boredom and listening inability are derived from “listening materials, linguistics features, failure to concentrate, psychological factors, listener, speaker, physical setting, and repetitious techniques in teaching listening” Related to the importance of listening, many students have a deep awareness that listening plays a crucial role in language learning Lastly, the results showed that the majority of the respondents were told about listening strategies, but lacked training in doing listening tasks before going to college

Lestari et al (2019) undertook a cross-sectional survey to explore students’ perceptions of listening comprehension difficulties and the use of Top-down listening strategy in listening class The study involved 168 ninth-grade students in the year 2018-2019, who completed a Likert-scale questionnaire The results of the study revealed that the importance of English listening skills is realized by most of the students, but they assert that among the language skills, they have the lowest level of listening The authors also added that accent, pronunciation, fast rate of speech, restricted vocabulary,

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sophisticated grammatical structures, prior knowledge, poor concentration, low recording quality, noise and length of oral texts are main problems students confront in English listening learning procedure The data from the questionnaire also demonstrated that “Top-down listening strategy” is only applied by a few ninth-grade students Lastly, the researchers suggested that teaching techniques such as pre-teaching new and odd lexis, designing warming-up activities and choosing suitable listening texts ought to be deployed so that teachers can help students improve their listening skills

Alzamil (2021) conducted a study to find out whether they have difficulties in learning English listening skills The research was conducted with 87 female university students To collect data, an online five-point Likert scale questionnaire and closed-ended questions were used From collected data, he concluded that speaking and listening are recognized as the most critical skills by the majority of the respondents, but they rank listening as the most demanding one The results also disclosed that some problems exerting considerable influences on students’ English listening ability are pronunciation, speed, unfamiliar topics, nervousness, and insufficient vocabulary Nonetheless, participants assert that it is indispensable for further practice after school to better their listening skills

A descriptive qualitative study undertaken by Rullu (2022) examined Senior High School students’ perceptions towards learning English listening Interviews, which the author used a cell phone to record, were used to collect data Based on the data, he reached the conclusion that most of the students at Senior High School suppose that listening is harder than speaking, reading, and writing They also confirm that they encounter major problems of listening comprehension such as repetitious activities, long material, anxiety,

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lack of concentration, bad quality of recording tapes, and unknown words, noisy surrounding, high speed of text delivery, unclear pronunciation, and dearth of vocabulary

In Vietnam, Doan (2018) carried out a study on investigating erceptions of learning English listening comprehension The study involved

193 non-English majors who responded to the reasearch questionnaire The survey findings showed that most of the students attend English classes for the following two reasons The first one is that English is a mandatory subject and the second one is that it is vital for their future job Besides, they are much aware of the significance of listening comprehension and recognize that

of all the language skills, listening is the most difficult one However, in terms

of listening practice, they admit that the frequency of their English listening practice outside the classroom is very low Lastly, the study revealed that the principal factors such as natural speed of spoken texts, deficient vocabulary knowledge and dearth of efficient listening strategies hinder the participants’ listening success

Another study on exploring students’ perceptions toward listening comprehension and listening problems was done by Nguyen and Thai (2018) The participants of the study were 115 first year English-major students at some universities Data collection instruments consisted of questionnaires, interviews, and observations They concluded that the majority of students are highly conscious of the significance of listening skill development The study showed that listening comprehension problems experienced by the first year English-major students include speakers’ various accents, pronunciation, speed of speech, strange vocabulary, difficult grammatical structures, the text length, dearth of concentration, worry, and poor quality of the recording

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Likewise, in order to investigate listening comprehension problems perceived by first year English major students, Nguyen (2018) carried out a study with the paricipation of 150 English major students To collect data, the author used questionnaires and focus-group interviews The findings of the study showed that large number of the respondents percieve the powerful role

of listening in learning English She also reported that listening obstables students encounter came from listening material, linguistic features, the speaker, the listener, concentration failure and physical setting

To sum up, regarding previous related studies and available literature in the field of learning and teaching English listening skills, students’ perceptions of learning English listening skills are taken into adequate consideration However, so far there has been no study on investigation into perceptions of learning English listening skills of tenth graders at high schools

in Gia Lai province who have just finished the grade ten 2018 General Curriculum Filling in this gap is vital because it can make a positive contribution to enhancing teaching and learning listening skills Hence, the requirements of the 2018 General Curriculum will be fulfilled

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CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY

The purpose of this chapter is to provide the justifications for the research method of the study Firstly, the research design is presented Secondly, the description of setting and the participants of the study follows Thirdly, the research instruments used to collect data for the study are described in detail Next, the procedure of the data collection is shown Then, the process of data analysis is reviewed Finally, the chapter is finished by the reliability and validity of the data

3.1 Research Design

In this research, a mixed-method approach was used Quantitative and qualitative approaches were employed to answer the research questions Fraenkel et al (2012, p 415) stated that qualitative research favors “detailed information, often in narrative form, frequently obtained through the analysis

of written communications and “qualitative data are collected in the form of words or pictures rather than numbers” On the other hand, they confirmed that quantitative research prefers “numerical data and statistical analysis” Therefore, Thus, combining quantitative research and qualitative research in this study is useful to have a thorough understanding of Tran Hung Dao high school students’ perceptions of learning English listening skills In this study, the quantitative data were collected by using a closed-ended questionnaire, while the qualitative data were gathered by using semi-structured interviews

3.2 Research Setting and Participants

3.2.1 Research Setting

This study was conducted at Tran Hung Dao high school in Gia Lai, a province in Central Highland of Vietnam The total number of tenth graders

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in the school year 2022 – 2023 is 426 students Its student population is composed of Kinh and some ethnic minorities such as Bahnar, Nung, Tay and Muong The proportion of ethnic minorities (mainly Bahnar) accounts for about 18% of the number of students Because the school is located in a mountainous area, the conditions for learning foreign languages, especially English are limited The number of students keen on learning English is low

The teachers of English in this school use the new course book assigned

by the 2018 General Curriculum Students at grade 10 receive three 45-minute classes of English every week The curriculum for grade 10 takes 105 forty-five-minute periods Eighty-one 45-minute periods are allotted to teaching and twenty-four 45-minute periods are allotted to reviews, tests and test corrections Besides, the coursebook for grade 10 consists of 10 units and 4 reviews Each unit comprises 8 lessons: Getting Started, Language (Vocabulary, Pronunciation, Grammar), Reading, Speaking, Listening, Writing, Communication & Culture/CLIL, and Looking Back & Project Each lesson is instructed in one 45-minute period Three 45-minute periods are allocated for each review It can be seen that each unit has a 45-minute listening lesson, so students will totally study 10 listening lessons during a school year

About the teachers, there are six female English teachers at Tran Hung Dao High School All the teachers have a Bachelor’s degree The number of years they have spent teaching English ranges from 6 to over 17 years All the teachers have extensive expertise in teaching English to high school students and they also claim that high school students are facing with many problems when they learn listening skills

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