Rationale Nobody can deny the importance of listening abilities in foreign language acquisition, because acquiring verbal information is an essential component of language learning.. Thi
INTRODUCTION
Background
Vietnam's utilization of the English language, though not yet as advanced as in more developed nations, is gradually increasing in importance and prevalence The rate of interaction between European countries and the Philippines, despite initial differences, is experiencing a rise The impact of the media and the internet is significantly greater than in previous times France, which is the closest neighboring country to the United Kingdom, holds a notable position in geographical proximity to the British Isles
The Vietnamese government has comprehended the significance of the English language for an extended period Language is widely regarded as a fundamental academic subject within schools, and as such, its inclusion in the curriculum is often obligatory The subject matter has been systematically studied across multiple levels for numerous decades During the instructional session, numerous concepts were presented to the students The global educational landscape comprises a variety of English-language based international curricula
Listening skill pertains to the capacity to recollect and comprehend information that is communicated Delivered verbally in an oral presentation There are various compelling justifications for the significance of the matter at hand In the preliminary stage, listening is considered to be one of the fundamental avenues through which individuals acquire information Academic version: to gain knowledge and understanding about a particular subject matter, it is imperative to engage in a systematic process of education In the realm of global affairs, individuals often seek information through the mediums of radio or television programming People, too, are an integral component of this phenomenon
One can acquire novel proficiencies by attentively listening to supervisors or instructors Active listening has been shown to have a positive impact on various interactions, leading to increased understanding and better outcomes Individuals are stimulated to construct concepts and discern resolutions effectively Consequently, through attentive listening, an individual can better understand the sentiments and
2 intentions of others, leading to improved communication and enhanced interpersonal relationships
It is necessary to precisely rephrase this text into an academic style of writing In the context of human emotions, divergent affective states can be observed, notably including affable and hostile moods, as well as attentive and apprehensive sentiments Lastly, listening carefully helps people interpret people's responses more accurately Contrasting emotions such as friendliness and anger or concern and sarcasm are all revealed by tone of voice and rate of speaking Slow speech often indicates confidence, whereas raising the voice and talking loudly or rapidly may show defensiveness.
Rationale
Nobody can deny the importance of listening abilities in foreign language acquisition, because acquiring verbal information is an essential component of language learning Krashen, Terrell, Ehrman, & Herzog (1984) claim that acquisition takes place only when students absorb enough comprehensible input
The same assertion was backed up by Rost (1994) who confirmed that listening is vital in language classrooms because it provides input for learners As an input skill, listening plays a crucial role in students’ language development Krashen (1985), argues that people acquire language by understanding the linguistic information they hear Therefore, language learning is mostly performed through the reception of understandable input, and listening ability is a key factor in getting comprehending language input
The communicating process will break down when the listeners fail to understand what the speakers say (Underwood, 1989) In addition, students who can listen to English well have a higher chance of attaining broad knowledge in the outside world
Futhermore, listening is a vital language talent that ought to be prioritized among the four skill areas for language students
As Hasan (2000), pointed out “listening comprehension provides the right conditions for language acquisition and development of other language skills”
Listening, therefore, is essential not only as a receptive skill but also to the development of spoken language proficiency
In addition, non-native English speaking nations have widely adopted English as a key language in daily life and at various educational levels across the world Hearing and understanding is becoming more essential in learning a new language, as is knowledge exhibited in lectures and on television It is especially important for the majority of English as a second language students
Despite the important role of listening skills in learning English, the situation of teaching and developing listening skills has long been overlooked and given little concern Furthermore, the Vietnamese school system concentrates on coaching tests with a strong emphasis on grammar, reading, and vocabulary
As a result, many Vietnamese students, even those who perform well on grammar examinations, are unable to interact effectively with foreigners in everyday situations According to Nguyen (2008), the most serious factor is the inability to understand what native speakers say due to a lack of listening comprehension Also, outside of what they learn in class, rural pupils in Vietnam have little exposure to the English language The teacher's voice is the primary mechanism through which students listen to English Additionally, the low quality of cassettes has a discernible influence on the process of practicing and evaluating listening, particularly in remote areas.
Aims and objectives of the study
Finding out the problems in listening comprehension encountered by English major freshmen's at HDU.
Research question
The objective of this study is to find out student problems in studying listening with the following specific research question:
What are the listening problems in listening comprehension of fresh-men English Linguistics from the Faculty of Foreign Languages at Hong Duc University?
Scope of the study
The participants are 100 fresh-men of the Faculty of Foreign Languages They consist of 80 females and 20 males, of K25B, K25C, K25D - English Linguistics at Hong Duc University
After that, 15 students would be randomly chosen to take part in direct interview for a deeper analysis.
Methods of the study
The study will investigate of what the problems in listening comprehension encountered by first year English Linguistics at Hong Duc University To find answers to the above research questions, the researcher use the research method:
- Quantitative method was used as the research requires quite many participants to collect data and the result had been analyzed using descriptive quantitative method Data collected from questionnaires were analyzed quantitatively via Excel software for calculating averages and sums
Questionnaire included closed and open-ended questions The purpose for mixing of both closed and open-ended responses is that the former is easier to collate and analyze and the responses to the later will provide more flexibility so that the respondent can give more accurate answer
The data is surveyed online through face-to-face interviews, which will be asked in English If the respondent does not understand clearly, ask in Vietnamese to ensure that the information provider understands the entire content of the question Data from interviews were qualitatively analyzed to complement the information gained by means of the questionnaires
DEVELOPMENT
LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter introduces a review of the interconnected studies following the rationale and research questions presented in the previous part This part focuses on how to define listening skills, the significance of this particular skill in becoming proficient in a foreign language, and the struggles in obtaining said skills, which can be perceived as the research’s theoretical background
Theoretical background for the research is taken from the works of Howatt and Dakin (1974), Ronald and Roskelly (1985), Underwood (1989), Yagang (1994), Vandergriff (1997), Lucas (1998), Hasan (2000), Goh (2000) etc
Listening is the first and basic skill for learning a new language that a beginner must learn It means to give attention to someone or something in order to listen Your ability to receive affects your ability to produce If they are good listeners As a result, they will understand and even have sufficient proficiency in the productive skills of speaking and writing There are some definitions given by linguists and the following: According to Brown (2004), listening is a spoken or written response from the student that indicates correct (or incorrect) auditory processing In order to become better listeners, the learners must think actively when they are listening Listening is involved in many language-learning activities, both inside and outside the language classroom Improving listening comprehension forms the basis for developing other language skills
According to Howatt and Dakin (1974), listening is the ability to identify and understand what others are saying This involves understanding a speaker's accent or pronunciation, the speaker's grammar and vocabulary and comprehension of meaning
An able listener is capable of doing these four things simultaneously Ronald and Roskelly (1985), define listening as an active process requiring the same skills of prediction, hypothesizing, checking, revising, and generalizing that writing and reading demand
Nation and Jonathan (2009), “Listening is the natural precursor to speaking; the early stages of language development in a person’s first language (and in naturalistic acquisition of other languages) are dependent on listening.”
Brown (2006), defines listening is a complex activity, and we can help students comprehend what they hear by activating their prior knowledge
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
Eatough (2013), built a particular framework for classifying various forms of auditory perception has been established and referred to as the categorization of listening
There are 6 kinds of listening, let's examine of these listening styles, their importance, and potential manifestations:
Discriminative listening Pica and Doughty (1987), referred as the most basic type of listening, whereby the difference between different sounds is identified If you cannot hear differences, then you cannot make sense of the meaning that is expressed by such differences We learn to discriminate between sounds within our own language early, and later are unable to discriminate between the phonemes of other languages This is one reason why a person from one country finds it difficult to speak
7 another language perfectly, as they are unable to distinguish the subtle sounds that are required in that language Likewise, a person who cannot hear the subtleties of emotional variation in another person's voice will be less likely to be able to discern the emotions the other person is experiencing Listening is a visual as well as auditory act, as we communicate much through body language
Lucas (1998), says that this type of listening is used to evaluate a message for purposes of accepting or rejecting it, as when we listen to the sales pitch of a used –car dealer, the campaign speech of a political candidate, or the closing arguments of an attorney in a jury trial As we know, in evaluative listening, or critical listening, we make judgments about what the other person is saying We seek to assess the truth of what is being said We also judge what they say against our values, assessing them as good or bad, worthy or unworthy Evaluative listening is particularly pertinent when the other person is trying to persuade us, perhaps to change our behavior and maybe even to change our beliefs Within this, we also discriminate between subtleties of language and comprehend the inner meaning of what is said Typically, also we weigh up the pros and cons of an argument, determining whether it makes sense logically as well as whether it is helpful to us Evaluative listening is also called critical, judgmental or interpretive listening
According to Lucas (1998), appreciative listening is when we listen for pleasure or enjoyment, as when we listen to music, to a comedy, or to an entertaining speech or when we listen to a radio or watch TV Appreciative listening drives us to seek certain information which will enjoy us with things which help meet our needs and goals It is in here where the listener gains pleasure, satisfaction from listening to a certain type of music for example Appreciative sources might also include particular charismatic speakers or entertainers These are personal preferences and may have been shaped through our experiences and expectations We use appreciative listening when we are listening to good music, poetry or maybe even the stirring words of a great leader
According to Lucas (1998), empathic listening provides emotional support for the speaker, as when a psychiatrist listens to a patient or when we lend a sympathetic ear to a friend in distress In fact, when we listen empathetically, we go beyond sympathy to seek a truer understand how others are feeling This requires excellent discrimination and close attention to the nuances of emotional signals When we are being truly empathetic, we actually feel what they are feeling In this sort of listening, the listener tends to listen rather than talk Their non-verbal behavior indicates that the listener is attending to what is being said The emphasis is on understanding the speaker’s feelings and being supportive and patient; we also need to demonstrate our empathy in our demeanor towards them, asking sensitively and in a way that encourages self-disclosure
Rost (1990), argues that false listening occurs where a person is pretending to listen but is not hearing anything that is being said They may nod, smile and grunt in all the right places, but do not actually take in anything that is said This is a skill that may be finely honed by people who do a lot of inconsequential listening, such as politicians and royalty Although, their goal with their audience is to make a good impression in very short space of time before they move on, but they never wish to talk to that person again It is also something practiced by couples, particularly where one side does most of the talking
Lynch (1995), encapsulates that selective or partial listening involves listening for particular things and ignoring others Partial listening is what most of us do most of the time, we listen to the other person with the best of intent and then become distracted, either by stray thoughts or by something that the other person has said We consequently dip inside our own heads for a short while as we figure out what they really mean or formulate a question for them, before coming back into the room and starting to listen again This can be problematic when the other person has moved on and we are unable to pick up the threads of what is being said We thus easily can fall into false listening, at least for a short while This can be embarrassing, of course, if
9 they suddenly ask our opinion In a situation like that, we should admit that we had lost the thread of the conversation and asking them to repeat what was said
Listening skill is the key to effective communication Without the ability to listen effectively, the message is easily misunderstood As a result, communication breaks down and the sender of the message is likely to become frustrated and annoyed
There are some definitions given by linguists and the following:
METHODOLOGY
The HDU’s Faculty of foreign languages carried out this study to explore the struggles of learning listening skill This research’s focus is freshmen that have learnt listening as a main subject at university There’re several reasons why the research has its limit set to the first-year mainstream students at HDU First, these students have reached a defined proficiency in English after getting out of high school In a certain degree, they have passed the university’s entrance exam and gone through at least one school term studying the English major Moreover, contrary to what they are used to in high school, listening was approached as a separate subject at the university To be more exact, they are provided with a different method of learning English Back in high school, other skills were ignored so the majority of time and resources could be funneled into learning grammar Consequentially, it will be a tremendous difficulty in the new way of learning Not only that, they have got to practice in ways of doing exercises and assignments To sum up, it is immensely urgent for those students to diagnose and extinguish these problems in their first steps of acquiring English
There were 100 first-year students from 3 classes including: K25B, K25C, and K25D- English Linguistics at HDU participating in the study to answer both of the questions in the research They come from different areas around Thanh Hoa province with various levels of listening skills Then, the survey findings are demonstrated by quantitively analyzing the collected data
The tools used in this study including a questionnaire The questionnaire is designed according 2 parts:
- The respondents' basic background information
- The difficulties of Listening skill faced by students
The questionnaire consists of two parts with 27 questions designed to investigate the listening difficulties encountered by freshmen
Part 1: The general background information of the respondents concerning their frequency of self-study listening English at home, what they want the teacher to help them with to improve their skills, For instance:
- How much time do you spend on learning English listening?
- How you like learning English listening?
- How do you self-study listening at home?
Part 2: Investigated the listening comprehension problems The five point Likert Scale was used in this questionnaire with the following criteria:
According to difficult in studying listening skill, the experiences and the problems encountered after going through 6 courses of listening skills at Hong Duc University The researcher compiled questions about the listening problems that English Linguistics students are facing It has 4 parts as follows:
- Listening problems from the listening text:
Unfamiliar words, unfamiliar situation, difficult grammatical structures,…
- Listening problems from the listeners:
Difficult to understand the text from the first listening,…
- Listening problems from the speakers:
Difficult to understand speakers with unfamiliar accents,…
- Listening problems from the physical setting:
The questionnaire for the participants was created at this phase The researcher concluded that there were four major concerns after evaluating the theory of listening and the challenges in learning skills in line with the practical practice of this skill by freshmen in the first semester They were influenced by the speakers, the listeners, the
29 physical setting, and the listening text Furthermore, the researcher wanted to discover how students perceived the solutions to these difficulties
The questionnaire was distributed to 3 respondents to determine if parts of the questionnaire were confusing and needed correction or addition After they had gone through everything, the researcher asked for comments and suggestions Finally, the change was made
The researcher had a direct interaction with the respondents and delivered 100 survey questionnaires for 3 classes K25B, K25C, K25D English Linguistics Before asking the students to do the survey, the researcher briefly explained the format, the length and told them that their questions would be thoroughly answered to clarify any misunderstanding about the survey questions while completing the items Besides, the researcher used oral Vietnamese instructions and explanations to help respondents avoid any misunderstanding and ambiguity
2.2.3.1 Justification for conducting an interview
As previously stated, the researcher overcomes the problems of employing questionnaires using the interview approach According to Thanajaro (2000), qualitative interview helps the researcher to gather more in-depth insights on participants’ attitudes, thoughts and actions The interview is a versatile data collecting strategy that employs several sensory channels, both verbal and nonverbal This strategy is effective for gathering thorough information regarding personal feelings, perceptions, and views By giving students the opportunity to report on their own words, they may develop insight, comprehension, and attitude Furthermore, it can deliver a high response rate, trustworthiness, and face validity It helps the researcher avoid ambiguity and misunderstanding
On the contrary, the time and cost of conducting an interview might have an impact In more depth, the researcher need more time to complete the step-by-step process of setting up the environment, conducting interviews, transcribing, evaluating, and reporting the results As a result, in order to avoid the disadvantages of this
30 strategy, the interview questions and environment should be thoroughly planned ahead of time Each interview lasted roughly 15-20 minutes, and all of them were audio-taped In addition, notes were utilized to capture important information
A semi-structured interview question list is intended to elicit information on the participants' listening methods The interview consists of two parts with 27 questions designed to investigate the tactics used by first-year students to learn to listen Because this is a semi-structured interview, the researcher may include or exclude some elements to reach the goal
Following the delivery and collection of the questionnaires, the researcher proceeded to construct interview questions in order to get more in-depth information than was obtained in the previous procedure The survey surveys were used to create the interview questions
To be more explicit, the researcher conducted interviews in Vietnamese in order to eliminate misunderstandings and maximize the accuracy of the data acquired Furthermore, the interviews were mostly done outside of the classroom to provide the respondents more comfort and freedom
To generate particular statistics, statistical analysis was carried out These figures were then placed in charts or graphs for better demonstration and explanation, resulting in a more compact and scientific analysis
The data transcription was thoroughly reviewed, and any errors or gaps were removed to ensure that the acquired data was trustworthy Following the distribution and collection of 100 surveys
The researcher categorised the primary data based on the study questions
Determine which factors in your data collection can be evaluated to answer the study question
Step 4: Conducting the investigation: Choose the best statistical analysis approaches Then, generate descriptive statistics (modes, ranges and so forth)
Step 5: Create a tables and charts: Create images or tables to demonstrate the relationships for comparisons and contrasts
Step 6: Analyze the data and draw conclusions: Relate the findings to the study question To put it another way, respond to the research questions
The research approach used to conduct the research was covered in this chapter
To begin, the sample selection, sampling procedures, justification, and description of two data instruments were provided Second, the development of survey questionnaires and data gathering processes is presented Finally, a straightforward data analysis procedure was outlined in order to further support the findings reported in the next chapter.
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS
The findings of the study "A study on difficulties of English listening comprehension skills for first-year English Linguistics students at Hong Duc University" are presented in this chapter The survey was divided into three sections:
- The frequency of responses to the listening comprehension challenge
1 How much time do you spend on learning
2 How do you like learning English listening?
3 How do you self-study listening at home?
Listen to English songs or films
Listen to tapes or disks of the syllabus in university
Listen to news in English 1%
Listen to English from TikTok,
4 How do you assess the level of learning listening skill at HDU after one semester?
5 What would you like your listening teacher to do to help you overcome listening difficulties?
Gives you the vocabulary you need for listening activity
Design listening tracks more suitable for students' listening levels and preferences
Recommend listening sources and create variety listening material
Explain the speaker's words in the listening passage
Table 3.1.1 General Background of the Respondents
The table above shows the analytic result of the survey about the respondents' general background In this survey, the 100 participants are asked 5 questions which they will be divided based on their choice of answer:
Question 1 How much time do you spend on learning English listening?
The second question is aimed at figuring out how invested the students are in honing their listening skills The result points out that the majority of students asked often practice listening on a daily basis ranging from 15 minutes to two-three hours a day with the longest being the choice for fifteen of the students And the most popular practice session is thirty minutes daily done by twenty-three percent Besides daily,
34 fifteen percent of the students choose to practice English at inconsistent intervals spread throughout the week totaling two hours Another nine percent do the same but with the total timespan adding up to four or five hours weekly As for the last three percent, they don’t practice at all
Question 2 How do you like learning English listening?
The question aims to dive into how affectionate the students are with learning listening Thirty-eight percent of the participants revealed that they don’t like doing it much The majority expressed a more positive attitude toward acquiring the skill with forty-three saying they like it Only fifteen percent said they like it very much And lastly, four students said that they don’t like learning listening at all
Question 3 How do you self-study listening at home?
The mission given to this question is to investigate the method through which the students enhance their listening skills at home by themselves It appears that the majority of students are not interested in the more academic approach of listening to the syllabus with only eleven percent choosing this The rest resort to outside sources with one listening to the news in English, the somewhat conventional source of music and movies seem to have fallen off as the most trusted with only twenty-eight students saying that they rely on this method compared to English TikTok or YouTube videos being the preference of more than half or fifty-one percent of the students taking part The last one percent said that they listen to dictation to improve their listening While other sources become the choice for the last three percent
Question 4 How do you assess the level of learning listening skill at HDU after one semester?
This question was to determine how much their time at HDU improved their English listening skills Twenty-two percent of the participants said that they still found it very difficult Sixty-five percent found this skill was still quite hard to grasp Thirteen expressed they didn’t find this skill too difficult None seemed to have gotten a more positive outcome from their time in HDU and said they found it easy
Question 5 What would you like your listening teacher to do to help you overcome listening difficulties?
The question gives students a chance to express their thought on how listening should be taught to them Thirty-eight percent seem to struggle with vocabulary when they said they wanted their teacher to explain the speaker’s words in the recording While thirty-one hope to be given more sources for practice and have access to materials with more variety created by the teacher Fourteen percent expressed their desire for listening tracks that are more well-suited for their level and preferences Another fourteen percent are keen on their teacher giving them the needed vocabulary for the listening activity in advance The remaining three percent never see this as an obstacle
3.2 Respondents’ difficulties in Listening comprehension
Chart 3.2.1 Frequency of Listening problems related to Listening Text
Q4: Difficult to understand long listening text
Always Often Sometimes Rarely Never
The chart above shows how frequently the survey participants encounter some specific problems with the listening text These seem like problems that are very troublesome to get rid of since they affect all of the participants with the differences lying in the frequency at which they influence individual student’s performance
There is a worrisome sign arises from the survey where fifty-one percent of the students asked answered that they always have difficulties with unfamiliar words in the text and another 34 percent reported having this problem on a regular basis Only
15 percent appear to have more decent control of their English having said that this is only sometimes a problem
Context appears to be a milder struggle for HDU’s English major freshmen as twelve percent of the students asked stated that this is rarely a problem for them Only twenty-two percent reported they always perceive an unfamiliar context in a listening text as an obstacle Thirty-eight percent of the participants said that this is a usual difficulty Another thirty-three percent conveyed that they sometimes see this as a problem And the remaining seven struggle with this
This is one of the surprising outcomes of this survey Because grammar, given its nature, should be less of a problem since the majority of the listening materials can easily cover a few English grammatical structures, thus giving the students plenty of opportunities to familiarize themselves This is always a struggle for merely twenty-three percent of the students taking part in the survey Another whopping forty-four percent said that this is their frequent problem A whopping twenty-seven percent reported sometimes stumble on this obstacle in the listening text The remaining six percent are students who rarely have this struggle
Contrary to the previous question, the result of this one is nothing out of the blue with eighty-five percent of the asked students saying lengthy sentences become a nuisance on frequencies ranging from often to all the time with forty-two and forty-three percent respectively Fourteen percent of the student asked said that they sometimes have this difficulty And the last exceptional one percent stated that this is rarely their problem
Another unexpected result comes from slang and idiom expressions, the reason why this is so unpredicted is despite the participants’ frequent exposure to English-speaking countries’ pop culture, the outcome was that this plagues the majority of the participants Thirty percent expressed that they encounter this problem all the time Another thirty-nine percent reported this as their regular problem Twenty-six percent of the students seemed to not have that much of a problem saying they sometimes encounter an idiom or slang that they are not familiar with This rarely affects four percent of the participants And the last one percent said that they never have this problem
Chart 3.2.2 Frequency of Listening problems related to Speaker
Question 6 Difficult to understand the natural speech which is full of hesitation and pauses
Question 7 Difficult to understand the meaning of words which are not pronounced clearly
Question 8 Difficulty understanding speakers with unfamiliar accents
Question 9 Difficult to understand well when speaker speak too fast
Question 10 Difficult to understand well when speaker speak wrong grammar
Always Often Sometimes Rarely Never
Question 11 Difficult to understand the meaning of spoken text without seeing the speaker’s body language
The chart aims to investigate the difficulties that the participants encounter in the circumstance of communication The difficulties listed are the most common that a speaker might run into in a normal speaking situation
CONCLUSION
1.1 General Information of the Respondents
According to the study, student like learning listening skill They spend quite a lot of time daily for practice listening skill, it is a amount of time and they prefer to improve their skill through social media After almost a year, students find it difficult to learn listening skills at Hong Duc University The researcher realizes that they need to hone their skills more to achieve high listening scores in the upcoming semesters
1.2 Listening problems related to listening text
Most of the respondents agreed that listening text also caused listening problems Unfamilar words were the most significant factors that made them difficult to understand the listening text Slang, idiom expressions also made them to difficult to understand the listening text Due to different culture and background, it was hard for Vietnam respondents to understand both slangs and idioms
Apart from the mentioned factors, unfamiliar situations, difficult grammatical structures and long listening text were also factors that affected the respondents’ listening ability
1.3 Listening Problems related to the Speaker
According to the study, the respondents also pointed out that the speaker was one of the factors that affected the listening comprehension They felt that it was difficult to understand well when the speaker is not pronounced clearly They couldn't understand what the speaker was going to say There were many other factors that decreased their listening comprehension such as the meaning of the words which were not clearly pronounced, or if the speaker speaks with various accents
Some respondents did not dare to ask the speaker to repeat the messages If the speaker conducted a natural speech which is full of hesitation and pauses, the respondents will be in trouble The pitch and the international of the speaker also made them understand the sentences difficult Some respondents felt that it is difficult to understand the text without speaker's body language, and if the speaker speaks with wrong grammar
1.4 Listening Problems related to Physical Setting
Most respondents believe that noise and poor quality equipment play a major role in affecting their listening comprehension Insist that they are not satisfied with poor quality equipment
Listening Problems related to Listener
The respondents were not sure what mostly affected them in listening However, they felt that it was quite difficult to understand the text from the first listening They were a bit awkward to answer questions after listening A lot of students do not have the adequate vocabulary so despite capturing the full phonetic of the words, they often can not write down as they either downright not understand the what they heard or can only guess the spelling of those words And it is hard to fathom why a number of these student can struggle with the grammar as the English grammar only has 12 basic tenses and are supposed to be covered by their years of experience with English
Most of the Faculty of Foreign Languages freshmen at Hong Duc University have difficulties grasping English listening skill Listening to various speakers or from various sources can still be problem for them Slang, idiom expression, unfamiliar words, and extensive text were the three important characteristics that affected listening to the text Because students only use English in class, they were unaccustomed to these factors It would be more beneficial if they listened to it more frequently, whether from movies or the news They've also had issues when the speaker speaks too quickly To understand the message, they must request that the speaker speak more slowly
The most significant element connected to the physical environment that causes hearing problems is noise Background and environmental noise are important in this since they may bother pupils while they are studying in class Most students believe that understanding the material from the first listening is tough that they were not familiar with them What they have done when facing this situation is that they are going to review the chapter at home and try to understand it
As a result, individuals must underline their weaknesses, which generate listening difficulties They discovered that they had not practiced sufficiently They did, however, confess that the more they practice listening, the more they understand the messages
The participants were asked to provide recommendations or suggestions on how to improve English listening comprehension skill The answers are presented as follows:
The participants were suggested that reading English books, listening to English news or English song, and watching English movies or YouTube can help to improve their listening comprehension skills The listeners can get the new words and increase listening comprehension from these things The researcher recommended that vocabulary recitation can increase listening skill and mentioned that learning about accents and pronunciation can improve English listening comprehension skill Students need to be used every day and listeners should not be nervous to communicate in English Sometimes, the students should take English courses
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 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
Based on the findings and the conclusion of the research, there were some suggestions offered First, students need to practice regularly and enriched their vocabulary mastery One of the ways that students could do is by listening to English songs or watching western movies They also could learn various accents by doing that Second, use Dictation method to improve listening skill The researcher offered
52 techniques to improve their listening abilities Respondents would listen more to movies or music to improve their listening skills They don't have to devote an entire day to listening to them Listening for 1-2 hours every day should suffice As a result of listening, the responses will become accustomed to the accent and terminology It might help them understand the story better Furthermore, if they don't understand what the speaker is saying, they will suggest that the speaker speak slower
First and foremost, teachers should design listening tasks that arouse students’ interest and help them learn listening skills and strategies Thirty-one percent students at HDU hope their teachers to design English listening text more appropriate to their level These tasks not only test the students’ listening comprehension but also motivate them to use various types of listening strategies in order to gain the maximum benefits in doing their activities
Students should have teachers providing them with different types of input like lectures, radio news, films, TV plays, announcements, everyday conversation, and interviews
Second, students need to be helped to familiarize themselves 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
Then, teachers can help their students to be familiar with the accents of different native speakers Due to the fact that native speakers have specific accents it is necessary for students to recognize the differences between American and British accents