Efl 11th grade students listening comprehension difficulties and their strategies a study at a high school in binh dinh province

Trang 1 LE THI THU THAO EFL 11TH GRADE STUDENTS'''' LISTENING Trang 3 STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP The thesis entitled "EFL 11th grade Students'''' Listening Comprehension Difficulties and their

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING QUY NHON UNIVERSITY LE THI THU THAO EFL 11TH GRADE STUDENTS' LISTENING COMPREHENSION DIFFICULTIES AND THEIR STRATEGIES- A STUDY AT A HIGH SCHOOL IN BINH DINH PROVINCE Major: Theory and Methodology of English Language Teaching Code: 8140111 SUPERVISOR: DR VO DUY DUC BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO TRƢỜNG ĐẠI HỌC QUY NHƠN LÊ THỊ THU THẢO NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN VÀ CÁC CHIẾN LƢỢC HỌC KỸ NĂNG NGHE CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP 11- MỘT NGHIÊN CỨU TẠI MỘT TRƢỜNG THPT Ở TỈNH BÌNH ĐỊNH Ngành: Lý luận và phƣơng pháp dạy học bộ môn tiếng Anh Mã số: 8140111 Ngƣời hƣớng dẫn: TS VÕ DUY ĐỨC i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP The thesis entitled "EFL 11th grade Students' Listening Comprehension Difficulties and their Strategies" is conducted under Dr Vo Duy Duc, a lecturer at Quy Nhon University I declare that the information this study reports results from my work and effort The thesis has not been accepted for any degree and has not concurrently submitted to any candidature for any degree or diploma Quy Nhon, 2023 LE THI THU THAO ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Without the support, encouragement, and contributions from my teacher, colleagues, friends, students, and family, this thesis work would not have been successful I sincerely thank and respect everyone who gave me advice and helped me with this research First, I would like to sincerely thank Dr Vo Duy Duc, my supervisor, for his fantastic supervision His outstanding knowledge and professional teaching-related expertise inspired me greatly during my academic life at Quy Nhon University, and he opened new horizons for me in the field I appreciate his helpful guidelines and suggestions, extraordinary patience, and strong management skills in assisting me in resolving the obstacles while I carried out my thesis Without his valuable advice and support, this study could not have been completed on schedule I feel fortunate to have had his support for my work Secondly, I would also like to express my full appreciation to all teachers and students at Nguyen Dinh Chieu high school who participated in my study for their support in completing the survey questionnaire Last but not least, I am grateful for all the support and encouragement from my beloved parents and husband throughout my thesis Their love and encouragement helped me overcome the difficult times during my studies I could not have completed this project without their intense devotion iii ABSTRACT This study aims to discover students‟ listening comprehension difficulties and the strategies that 11th-grade students at Nguyen Dinh Chieu high school encounter when they learn listening skills The study was conducted with a survey, interview, and classroom observation for data collection Specifically, this study involved 80 grade 11 students in a high school in Binh Dinh The findings show that fourteen problems cause difficulties for 11th-grade students The problems have been classified into four categories, namely (1) problems related to bottom-up processing, (2) problems related to top-down processing, (3) problems related to materials and listening tasks, and (4) other problems, besides the research exposed strategies that 11th- grade students applied to solve these difficulties These included participating in extracurricular activities for students, getting support and feedback from the teachers, learning listening by using modern technology, learning vocabulary more at home, etc It could be said that this study provided insights into EFL 11th-grade students' challenges when learning listening skills A clear understanding of these difficulties and strategies could help students create effective learning environments for their language learning, especially the listening skills for EFL 11th-grade students iv TABLE OF CONTENT STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii ABSTRACT iii TABLE OF CONTENT iv LIST OF TABLE vii LIST OF CHART viii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 Research rationale 1 1.2 Aim and objectives of the study 3 1.2.1 Aim of the study 3 1.2.2 Objectives of the study 3 1.3 Research questions 3 1.4 Scope of the study 3 1.5 Significance of the study 3 1.6 The organization of the thesis 4 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 5 2.1 Theoretical background 5 2.1.1 Definition of Listening Skills 5 2.1.2 Definition of listening strategies 7 2.1.3 Importance of listening skills 9 2.1.4 Types of Listening 11 2.1.5 Listening strategies 11 2.1.6 Strategies for learning to listen 14 2.2 Procedures of a Listening Lesson in a Language Classroom 17 2.2.1 Pre-listening 17 2.2.2 While- listening 17 2.2.3 Post-listening 18 2.3 Major problems students face in learning to listen to English 18 v 2.3.1 Problem-related to bottom-up processing 18 2.3.2 Problems related to top-down processing 24 2.4 Factors affecting the effectiveness of learning listening skills 29 2.5 Strategies to help students overcome difficulties in learning listening 30 2.6 Related studies 31 2.7 Summary 32 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 33 3.1 Research design, learning materials, and procedure 33 3.1.1 Research design 33 3.1.2 Learning materials 33 3.1.3 Procedure 35 3.2 Data collection 35 3.2.1 Participants 35 3.2.2 Data-collecting instruments 36 3.2.3 Data collection procedure 38 3.3 Reliability and validity 38 3.4 Summary 39 CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 40 4 1 Results for research question 1 40 4.1.1 Students‟ background information 40 4.1.2 Students‟ interest in learning listening skills 41 4.1.3 Students' opinions concerning difficulties and strategies they have in studying listening skills 41 4.1.4 Students‟ responses to the questions about problems related to the bottom-up process 43 4.1.5 Students‟ responses to questions about the factors related to top- down processing 46 4.1.6 Students‟ responses to questions about other factors 48 4.1.7 Strategies influencing the student's listening skills 53 4.2 Results for research question 2 53 vi 4.2.1 Students‟ strategies to overcome difficulties (Results from the questionnaire) 53 4.2.2 Results from the interview 56 4.2.3 Results from observation 57 Summary 58 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS 59 5.1 Conclusion 59 5.2 Implications 60 5.3 Limitations 61 5.4 Suggestions for further studies 61 REFERENCES 62 APPENDICES vii LIST OF TABLE Table 1 Student‟s background information 40 Table 2: Students‟ responses related to problems of hearing sounds 43 Table 3: Students‟ responses related to problems of understanding stress and intonation 44 Table 4: Students‟ responses related to the problem of understanding different accents 44 Table 5: Questions related to the problem of the mismatch between learners‟ vocabulary range and vocabulary used in listening texts 45 Table 6: Students‟ responses related to problems of mismatch between learners‟ syntactic knowledge and syntax used in listening texts 46 Table 7: Students‟ responses related to problems of cultural differences and unfamiliar topics 46 Table 8: Students‟ responses related to the problem of the complexity of the task 47 Table 9: Students‟ responses related to the problem of failing to apply effective learning styles and strategies 48 Table 10: Students‟ responses related to problems of fatigue and lack of concentration 49 Table 11: Students‟ responses related to the problem of physical settings 50 Table 12: Students‟ responses related to the problem concerning the lack of invisibility of the speaker 50 Table 13: Students‟ time for learning listening 51 Table 14: Data from a survey of strategies to overcome bottom-up processing for students 53 Table 15: Data from a survey of strategies for students to improve listening learning 55 viii LIST OF CHART Chart 1: Students‟ perception of learning listening skills 41 Chart 2: Students‟ perception of the difficulty of listening skills 42 Chart 3: Students‟ assessment of tasks in the “Tieng Anh 11 textbook 52 Chart 4: Strategies to overcome bottom-up processing (for students) 54 Chart 5: Strategies to overcome top-down processing (for students) 54