Difficulties encountered by the eleventh graders in learning english listening skills at chu van an high school in dak nong master graduation project in english language

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING LAC HONG UNIVERSITY TANG THI HOAI HIEN DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED BY THE ELEVENTH GRADERS IN LEARNING ENGLISH LISTENING SKILLS AT CHU VAN AN HIGH S

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING LAC HONG UNIVERSITY

TANG THI HOAI HIEN

DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED BY THE ELEVENTH

GRADERS IN LEARNING ENGLISH LISTENING SKILLS

AT CHU VAN AN HIGH SCHOOL IN DAKNONG

MASTER GRADUATION PROJECT

IN ENGLISH LANGUAGE

MAJOR: ENGLISH LANGUAGE MAJOR CODE: 8220201

INSTRUCTORS

1 Assoc Prof Dr PHAM HUU DUC

2 Dr NGUYEN THU HUONG

Dong Nai, 2024

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

THE RECOGNIZANCE FOR NON -PLAGIARISM

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

LIST OF TABLES

INTRODUCTION 1

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1.1 Overview of Listening 5

1.1.1 Definition of Listening and Listening skills 5

1.1.1.1 Definition of Listening 5

1.1.1.2 Listening Skills 5

1.1.2 The importance of listening skills 6

Listening process 7

1.1.3 Elements of Listening 8

1.1.4 Types of Listening 9

1.2 Difficulties in Learning Listening skills 9

1.3 Factors affecting listening learning in class 12

1.3.1 Content 12

1.3.2 Learners 15

1.3.3 Speakers 17

1.34 Stages of listening 19

1.3.5 Physical setting 21

1.4 Previous related study 23

1.4.1 Previous study overseas 23

1.4.2 In Vietnam 24

1.5 Research gap: 25

1.6 Conceptual framework: 25

1.7 Chapter summary 25

CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 26

2.1 Research design and research site 27

2.2 Research methodology 27

2.3 Participants 27

2.4 Data collection instrument 28

2.5 Survey Questionnaires 28

2.6 Data collection procedures 29

2.7 Data analysis 29

2.8 Reliability, validity, and ethical considerations 30

2.9 Chapter Summary 31

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 32

3.1 Difficulties the eleventh grade students encounter in learning listening skills at CVA high school in Gia Nghia City 32

3.1.1 Data analysis of students’ survey questionnaire 32

3.2 The eleventh grade students’ attitudes towards the difficulties clarified in learning listening skills 45

3.3 Chapter Summary 48

CONCLUSION 50

REFERENCES

APPENDIX

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The submission of this research paper marks the end of a lengthy journey If many people hadn't supported me along the way, I never would have started this question First and foremost, I would like to sincerely thank my supervisoAssoc Prof Dr Pham Huu Duc and Dr Nguyen Thu Huong, for their immense knowledge, wisdom, and suggestions, all of which served as a continual source

of motivation for me during the project

I would like to send my thanks for the useful materials, advice, and enthusiasm for this study to all lecturers and staff of the Department of Graduate Division of Lac Hong University

My personal thanks also go out to the CVA high school students and teachers who willingly gave up their valuable time for the interview process

Last but not least, I would also like to express my gratitude to my friends and family for their support in getting me over the challenges I had in order to complete my study

Dong Nai, July 2024

Author

Tang Thi Hoai Hien

Both the educational process and daily interactions depend heavily on listening abilities The teaching and learning state of listening has long been disregarded, despite its significance This study looks into issues with listening instruction and learning at CVA high school in Gia Nghia city, Dak Nong Semi-structured interviews and questionnaires were the primary research instruments utilized in this work to collect data to address the research problem A synopsis of the participants and the techniques used to obtain the data was given The study's findings indicate that most hearing impairments fall into one of five major categories: content, learners, speakers, physical environment, and listening stages Following an examination of the challenges, the researcher offers several suggestions for how teachers and students might improve their listening instruction

THE RECOGNIZANCE FOR NON-PLAGIARISM

I accordingly declare that the thesis, “Difficulties encountered by the eleventh graders in learning English listening skills at Chu Van An high school

in Dak Nong,” was written entirely by myself and was not submitted to this university or any other institution to be regarded for admission to a degree, diploma, or other qualification

This master's dissertation has never been released in print And I'm prepared

to accept accountability, even having my academic degree suspended if i had any wrong things while doing my research

Dong Nai, July 2024

Author

Tang Thi Hoai Hien

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

CVAHS: CVA high school

T: teacher

Ss: students

EFL: English as a Foreign Language

%: Percentage

LIST OF TABLES

Table 3 1 I am unable to catch important key words of the recording 36

Table 3 2 The difficulties of students about the length of the text 36

Table 3 3 The listening texts are too difficult for the students 37

Table 3 4 Connected speech 38

Table 3.5 My background knowledge of listening topics is limited 38

Table 3 6 I do not have any social knowledge about the topics 39

Table 3 7 Concentration of the students on recording 41

Table 3 8 Strange accent and pronunciation 41

Table 3 9.The speed of the speaker 42

Table 3.10 Facilities of the class are in good conditions 44

Table 3.11 Classroom atmosphere 44

Meanwhile, in their listening comprehension of the test at school, students faced several difficulties By studying the listening comprehension challenges of students, they would be able to overcome barriers such as loss of vocabulary, misunderstanding structure, failing to comprehend natural expression, losing confidence, retaining focus, and poor recording As Hamouda (2013) said, causes that cause listening comprehension difficulties for students are classified into multiple outlets, including listening text related issues, listening difficulties related to tasks and exercises, listener related issues, and instructor technique Thus, from three key fields, it was the way to find out the problems of the students: listener causes, listening content, and physical environment

Moreover, to improve the language of students, teaching listening requires more attention Listening requires more time and focus in some situations in the language classroom to understand the content that involves learning dialogue and monologue text It could be said that listening is a complicated process in which several things happen within the mind simultaneously Nevertheless, in the learning process, the teacher has a very important requirement When the students experience issues with their listening, it was clearly because they were learning The teacher was able to deal with the students and the situations of the class, and it became the teachers' duty to solve the students' problems Most teachers, however, paid little attention to it and thought that it was not necessary

to do so

As a researcher, for the above reasons, I would like to present the thesis title

“Difficulties encountered by the eleventh graders in learning English listening skills at an upper secondary school at CVA high school in Dak Nong ” It will make helpful contributions to the growth of the method of teaching and learning

Aims of the Study

This study aims at:

 Investigating the difficulties and the causes in learning listening skills perceived by students at upper secondary schools

 Presenting students’ attitudes towards the clarified difficulties and some solutions that the students apply to improve their listening skills at schools and giving out some suggested solutions for common teaching listening problems for teachers

Research questions

1 What difficulties do the eleventh grade students encounter in learning English listening skills at CVA high school in Dak Nong?

2 How do these eleventh grade students feel when facing the difficulties clarified in learning English listening skills?

Scope of the Study

The study is concerned with student's difficulties in learning listening comprehension It is conducted on 11th graders at CVA high school in Gia Nghia City Because of the limitations of time and knowledge of the shortage of reference material, this study cannot cover the whole issue of listening skills

Significance of the study

The study mainly aims at pointing out the causes of difficulties in learning listening skills for students at upper secondary school As a result, once having been completed, the study is expected to bring considerable benefits to both teachers and students Pedagogically, the findings and suggestions of this study are believed to enhance the teaching and listening process of students and teachers at high schools in Gia Nghia city

The results of this study may be a good help for the students themselves and other people who are interested in this field Furthermore, the findings of this study also provide comments for listening material developers as well

More importantly, the research findings would raise the teachers’ awareness of the students' difficulty, thereby guiding them in reconstructing their program of teaching to suit their students’ needs

Structure of the study

The study consists of five parts: Introduction, Literature Review, Methodology, Findings & Discussions, and Conclusion

 The introduction presents the rationale, aims, research questions, scope

of the study, the significance of the study, and research

 Chapter 1: Literature Review gives an overview of listening skills with the investigation of prior literature to clarify some major terms

 Chapter 2: Methodology includes the participants, data collection instrument, data collection & data analysis procedure context of the study In this part, the researcher summarizes all the findings revealed, draws conclusions, and suggests some contributions to the study

 Chapter 3: Findings & Discussions describes the data of the questionnaires and interviews, then gives findings through the data analysis; and suggests some solutions perceived by teachers to the current problems

 Conclusion focuses on recommendations for further study

REFERENCES

APPENDIX

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter discusses relevant research papers The researcher also noted the document gap and explained why it is advisable to conduct current research to close the gap

1.1.1.2 Listening Skills

In language teaching, “listening skills” means listening and understanding skills

or listening comprehension skills This is also the sense of listening used in this thesis, where listening means trying to understand the oral messages that people are conveying There are a wide variety of listening definitions suggested by various individuals Listening is the practice of paying attention to and seeking

to gain meaning from what we hear, according to Underwood (1989) Meanwhile, Mendelsohn (1994) describes hearing as the ability of native speakers to comprehend the spoken language

Listening seems to be a passive skill superficially, but in fact, it is still a process that is involved Listening is not just the way of acquiring the input from the speakers, it is not only listened to by the students, but also able to process it, perceive it, comprehend it, analyze it, and finally respond effectively to it (Underwood, 1989) It means that students must be able to process it in their

brains after perceiving the oral results They will evaluate the utterances' illocutionary force and then render the reaction Besides, Buck (2001) notes that

“listening comprehension is an active process of constructing meaning and this

is done by applying knowledge to the incoming sound” Rost (2002) sees listening as a process of receiving the speakers' knowledge, building and representing meaning, negotiating meaning with the speakers and reacting, and generating meaning through engagement, creativity, and empathy, sharing the same ideas with Buck

In conclusion, we perceive from all the above meanings that listening is not just listening, but it is an “active and dynamic process” involving multiple forms of activities, such as understanding, remembering, and drawing inferences based on the speakers’ messages

1.1.2 The importance of listening skills

One of the most difficult aspects of teaching and learning English as a foreign language is teaching and learning listening The importance of listening comprehension must be taken into consideration for anyone who wants to learn English with great success In discussion and communication, a lack of listening comprehension skills creates a lot of difficulties

The important role of listening comprehension in second and foreign language learning is summarized in a recent publication by Rost, (1994:141) as follows: “Listening is vital in the language classroom because it provides input for the learner Without understandable input at the right level, any learning simply cannot begin.” Therefore, listening comprehension is very necessary when you study any language If students do not learn to listen effectively, they will not be able to take part in oral communication because according to Mary Underwood (1989:4), “Merely to hear what a speaker says is insufficient for communication to occur” It implies that communication has broken down when nobody listens to a speaker or when a listener fails to understand the message

By listening, we do not mean that students only learn to hear it, but as Mary Underwood (1989:4) says, “We mean our students to attend to what they hear,

to process it, to interpret it, to evaluate it and to respond to it” Therefore, to succeed in communication, participants need to be active in listening Listening

is an important way of acquiring the language, a good way of picking up vocabulary and structures Teaching listening to spoken language is therefore of primary importance

Listening process

The method of listening is often defined as the perspective of information processing and “an active process in which listeners select and interpret information that comes from auditory and visual clues to define what is going on and what the speakers are trying to express” (Thompson and Rubin, 1996, p 331) In other words, listening is an active process, as opposed to hearing, because listeners actively choose what they want to know and perceive the information they get Above everything, the listener can listen closely and concentrate on stress, grammar, and speech intonation

Understanding of the concept of listening awareness is necessary when teaching and studying high school listening skills, especially in tenth grade, when students develop their learning strategies They should be prepared and listen closely, i.e they should know what they are supposed to listen to, as well as to which hints or information In addition, language teachers must encourage their students to understand why listening skills are necessary First of all, listening skills are the key component for all language and cognitive learning factors and play a lifelong role in communication processes Wills (2008) has determined that 45% of the time people spent on conversation is listened to Strother, 1987, also quoted this report This result confirmed Rankin's observation in 1928 that

70 % of people spent waking time talking and 34% spent listening and speaking,

as well Second, listening provides the recipients with input In a newsletter

(1952, quoted in Wills, 2008) listening is the main language It is a means through which people read, learn, appreciate the environment and human life, have a lot of their thoughts, interest, and appreciation On this mass communication day, “the importance of listening cannot be underestimated; it is imperative that it not be treated trivially in second and foreign language curricula” (Morley, 1991, p 82)

1.1.3 Elements of Listening

The two aspects of listening, the macro, and the micro-skill cannot be differentiated Macro skills are easier to comprehend because it simply means understanding what is said However, micro-skills are a little more difficult to understand, since it is not only about understanding as a whole, so we have to notice things like word choice, intonation, mood, deeper definitions, and a lot further Below is a summary of the macro and micro-skills used in general communication and academic discourse (Richards, 1983, quoted in Jansen, 1998)

Brown (2004) also proposes the micro-skills involved in interpreting what

we are told by others The listener should: maintain short-term memory chunks

of expression, distinguish between distinctive sounds in the new language, recognize patterns of stress and rhythm, tone patterns, intonational contours, recognize reduced types of terms, recognize word boundaries, recognize standard patterns of word order, recognize vocabulary, identify keywords, such

as those that identify themes and concepts In addition, Brown (2007) states that the following are the macro-skills for conversational discourse: identify coherent instruments in spoken discourse, recognize the communicative roles of utterances, according to circumstances, participants and goals, infer circumstance, participants, goals using real-world knowledge, distinguish between literal and inferred interpretations, construct and use a battery of listening strategies In total, in practicing listening comprehension, the macro

and micro-skills in listening are very important In defining the targets for learning, these aspects of listening are valuable These aspects of listening are effective in identifying the priorities for the learning process

1.1.4 Types of Listening

There are two ways of listening in real life, according to some authors, namely Nguyen Thi Van Lam and Ngo Dinh Phuong (2006) Depending on the listening purpose, they are casual listening and focused listening Casual listening, one form of listening, involves listening without a specific purpose When we listen, unless there is anything that interests us, we do not pay much or even any attention to the information We hardly remember the content of what

we hear, thus Normally, when we listen to music or listen to the news on the radio or TV when doing some housework or talking with a friend, we do this kind of listening Listening focuses on another type of listening It is when, for a specific reason, we listen and find out the details we need to hear It occurs quite commonly in everyday life Here, with much more focus, we listen and aim to get as many details as possible We do not listen to every word; however, we know what we are supposed to listen to beforehand, but we just obtain the most important points from the speech or the lecture Learners also use this form of listening in the classroom

1.2 Difficulties in Learning Listening skills

Willis (1981, p.134) has extended another point of view, listing a range of abilities to listen to issues she terms 'enabling abilities' for coping with To quote

a few of them are:

 Predict what people will communicate about

 Guessing without panicking over unfamiliar words or phrases

 Using one’s own subject information to help one understand

 Inferred knowledge comprehension

From my own experience in my teaching class and the experiences of many writers, I have read about the subject that seems to indicate that listening problems come from four sources: the speaker, the content, the learner, and the physical setting It is difficult for most students to listen to a message rather than

to read the same message in or elsewhere in their textbook Since the listening speed is not controllable, it becomes an issue, but you may take your time to read and pause and go through the message at will If you like, you can also check a dictionary I notice there are particular areas of vocabulary that have specific problems if you offer dictations or if students dictate My students have trouble hearing regular verb sounds like ‘job, wish or watch’ from the past When I make the dictation the final /t/ sound of ‘ed’ is generally omitted so the expression

“Tim worked hard yesterday” Comes out as “Tim work hard yesterday.” The students fail to hear the voiceless “t” final Liaison (the linking of words in rapid speech) is another problem “What is she going to do tonight?” sounds like

“Whaisigunnadotanight?” This causes an interesting problem for the untrained ear liaison

I have been struggling with issues students have with listening up to this point

It is now time to recommend strategies to help them improve more effective listening skills In general, foreign-language learners devote more time to reading than to listening, and therefore lack exposure to various forms of listening For students, spending much of their listening time interpreting foreign words and phrases for long periods is tiring There are eight spoken language features that make it difficult to listen to (Brown, 2001, p.252) In spoken language, we break down speech into smaller groups of words because of memory limitations They are referred to as clustering, for example, “a lot of,” “a number of” and so on Therefore, learners must learn to pick out manageable word clusters while listening, avoiding attempting to listen to every word of the speech It is not important and makes it possible to distract learners In addition, there are a great

number of redundancies in the spoken language They are the product of rephrasing, repetitions, elaborations, and some insertions, such as “as I said” and

so on Learners may have difficulty with this at first It is easy to confuse them However, learners can take advantage of redundancies with some training to have more time and additional knowledge

Spoken language, on the other hand, has several reduced forms as well This could be phonological, morphological, syntactic, or pragmatic, such as “you're” instead of “you are”, “won't" instead of “will not” or “can't" instead of “cannot” These reductions are major problems for learners, especially beginners, as they begin to learn the full form of the English language Sufficient quality is the next feature of spoken language Spoken language consists of a lot of hesitations ("er",

"uhm"), false starts, stops, and corrections because of unexpected action They confuse the listeners In real-life listening, colloquial language is another issue that can interfere with listeners since they are familiar with traditional written language The appearance of idioms, slang, reduced forms and shared cultural vocabulary are popular in monologues and dialogues Learners need to understand language delivered at various speed rates and delivered with few pauses while listening, so they do not have the chance to interrupt the speaker and listen many times again

English is a language of stress, so it is very important for learners to consider its prosodic characteristics Listeners may perceive more subtle signals like irony, mutual admiration, insult, request, encouragement, etc through stress, rhythm, and intonation Finally, engagement is also an aspect that plays a major role in the understanding of listening Language learners should be taught in the two-way nature of listening To continue the understanding process, they have to read Negotiation, explanation, attending signs, turn-taking, subject nomination, maintenance, and termination are such principles of interaction

In short, both of these features of spoken language must be understood by language learners in order to make conversation in general and listening in particular easier

1.3 Factors affecting listening learning in class

1.3.1 Content

The density of information

It should be taken into account that information on density is one of the most challenging for students, especially beginners The dense passage (Rost, 2006) is a long one with a significant amount of data included Again, it is thought that larger data density produces higher cognitive requirements for L2 listeners, which may increase the effort involved in listening comprehension (Gilmore, 2004)

The complex text

The organization of the text is very complicated in some instances Cervantes and Gainer (1992) found that on a recall examination, listeners who heard a syntactically simplified version of a lecture scored considerably higher than listeners who heard a more complicated version of the lecture Therefore, if students are unable to draw a simple outline of this text, they also fail to effectively capture the content

The reduced form, elision, and assimilation

The speaker's ability to effectively express the meanings in the articulation

of clauses Therefore, there may be slurred or dropped words that play a less critical role in the message, and other words may be more prominent (Brown, 1977) In particular, spoken English is distinguished by three characteristics of sandhi-variation, according to Madsen and Bowen (1978) contraction (e.g.,

wanna, gonna, ), reduction (e.g., “could” /kʊd/ is reduced to /kəd/ in a sentence like I could meet you this evening), and assimilation (e.g., /hi eɪʃt ər ləntʃ/ for

“He ate your lunch”)

Johana (2005) points out that the points at which the listener needs unambiguous information, namely word beginnings and ends, are precisely influenced by accommodatory phonological processes To be more accurate, in materials such as assimilation, elision, or linking words, learners may have some problems Liaison (link of words in the speech when the second word begins with a vowel, e.g., an orange) and elision (leaving out a sound or sounds, e.g., suppose that it can be pronounced in fast speech) are common phenomena that make it difficult for students to recognize or understand individual words in the speech stream In their textbooks, they are used to seeing terms written as distinct elements

The intonation and stress

Stress and intonation are one of the excellent features of English The purpose of stress is to emphasize content phrases to express meaning Somehow, students do not distinguish between the terms for content and function In fact, they do not know the fact that words are often not given the same stress in spoken continuous speech as they are said in isolation (Underwood, 1989) As a consequence, they can't hear a word they already know Also, because of the stress, foreign learners often fail to understand the grammar points in listening

The noise and redundancy

The listeners also have to deal with the amount of noise when they listen Some words, such as the surrounding sounds, are perhaps drowned by outside noise More effort must be made by foreign language learners to understand the significance of these noises Sometimes, because of the disruption of noise, they cannot get the point In addition, repetitions, false beginnings, rephrasings, self-

corrections, elaborations, tautologies, and seemingly meaningless additions such

as "I mean" or "you know" (Ur, 1984) can take the form of redundant utterances This redundancy is a natural feature of language and could be a benefit or an obstacle, depending on the level of students It may make it harder for beginners

to understand what the speaker is saying; on the other hand, it may allow more time for experienced students to "tune in" to the voice and speech style of the speaker

The difference of the cultures

Being unknown to cultural language skills plays a significant role in understanding the meaning Language-culture marriages are indivisible (Brown, 1994) The subject can be entirely different from that of the students Students could find it hard to imagine what they were saying in this situation Here, the instructors should offer the subject previously For example, if the listening part involves Easter Day, and it is not popular in the region where students learn language, certain points cannot be reached

The unfamiliar vocabulary

Hung (1989) noted that it is easier for learners to listen to passages with known phrases, even though the subject is unfamiliar to them His study found that understanding the meaning of the words could stimulate interest in learning for students and lead to a positive impact on listening capacity Another issue here

is that many words have more than one meaning, and students get confused if they are used in their less popular use

1.3.2 Learners

Lack of vocabulary and background knowledge

The lack of socio-cultural, factual and contextual awareness of the target language may be a barrier to understanding because language is used to communicate its culture (Anderson & Lynch, 1988) To help understand the messages based on those keywords, knowledge of the world helps The further expanded information you have, the better you can capture the point, to put it in another way If students listen to an unfamiliar subject, they will be frightened and confused; therefore, they cannot listen

The shortage of vocabulary often prevents students from listening comprehensively, apart from the lack of context information The limited vocabulary of collocations and slang prevents students from guessing and predicting the content in general and the missing words and phrases in particular (Yagang, 1993)

Incorrect pronunciation:

It is clear that good pronunciation makes a major contribution to listening skills

It could help students understand the correct form of words and write them down One of the ways to improve pronunciation is to form a habit of checking the vocabulary Gilakjani (2012) offers empirical evidence that even though they make mistakes in other fields, learners with good English pronunciation are likely to be understood; while learners with poor pronunciation are not even though their grammar is excellent

The students' motivation

The motivation of students is one of the key factors affecting listening comprehension In listening comprehension, even the slightest delay in focus will significantly ruin understanding for students to retain focus in a foreign language learning classroom It will be simpler to understand as students find the subject

of the listening text interesting Even if they are interested in the subject, students find listening very boring because it takes a massive amount of effort not to miss the meaning

The concentration of the student

It is assumed that a learner 's understanding of the content is much better in a long comprehension exercise and starts getting worse as he / she moves on Because of the psychological phenomenon, learners sometimes run out of motivation and excitement for learning at the end of the class Yagang (1993) notes that listening is not a easy process; it is a complicated psychological one,

on the other hand It means that a student cannot focus while he or she is stressed

or nervous More significant, they can also be distracted from their listening by the classroom setting and the surrounding environment For instance, whether people are talking or there are sounds in the tape recorder, the listeners cannot pay attention to listening Concentration was necessary to interpret and capture the meaning of the spoken text The lack of concentration made the spoken text misunderstand what it was talking about It was hard for the students to find the meaning while listening to the material at the same time As stated in Hamouda (2013), Gilakjani and Ahmadi (2011) suggest that when students or teachers find the longer exercise, it will be easier to turn it into the shorter section

1.3.3 Speakers

The accents

Firstly, while speaking to someone else, but not their teachers, many foreign language learners are shocked and dismayed because they are accustomed to the accents of their teachers In addition, learning the spoken mode of language requires the modification of a single speaker's idiosyncrasies (Underwood, 1989) Ikeno and Hansen (cited in Bloomfield et al., 2010) find that lower accuracy comes from unfamiliar accents

Accented speech was found to influence both the degree to which listeners effectively comprehend the message of a speaker and the effort involved in recognizing certain words in the message by listeners (Floccia et al., 2009) To some extent, the students are quite familiar with native speakers such as American or English in academic courses; but in fact, they can also listen to speakers from non-native English-speaking countries Consequently, they are unable to capture the words or express the messages of the conversations, and the result is broken down communication

Munro and Derwing (1999) said that too much accented speech would lead to a substantial decrease in incomprehension 66 percent of learners listed the accent

of a speaker as one of the most critical factors influencing listener comprehension, according to Goh (1999) Unfamiliar accents, both native and non-native, can cause serious listening comprehension difficulties and accent familiarity helps the listening comprehension of learners Buck (2001) suggested that crucial problems in hearing would occur as listeners hear an unusual accent such as Indian English for the first time since they learn only American English This will disrupt the entire phase of listening comprehension because, at the same time, an unusual accent makes it impossible for the listeners to comprehend

The speed of the speakers

Secondly, the speed of the speakers also hinders the learners in their effort of learning English Because the students cannot sort them out when listening before they disappear It is different from remaining reading text on the page for them to retrieve whenever they want Sometimes, while they are working on this part, they miss the next part Most foreign language students perceive that native speakers speak too fast and that makes it difficult for them to follow (Brown & Yule, 1983) Similarly, Butt (2010) has the same ideas in negative impacts of the native speakers to listening comprehension This coincides with the results of the studies done by Flowerdew and Miller (1992) who have reported that their subject unanimously rated the speed of delivery as one of the greatest obstacles

to understanding The students can play recorded materials repeatedly until getting the information

Student levels also play a significant role in listening to long sections and keeping all the information in mind Listening for more than three minutes of listening and then completing the desired tasks is not easy for the lower-level student Short listening texts enhance awareness of listening and decrease boredom, keeping learners alive with concentration Atkins et al (1995) It is not easy to store all in mind, exceptional listening capacity, and the technique needed to understand whether text contains a lot of information (Carroll, 1977)

Length of the listening

Another reason that makes it difficult to listen to text is the speed It may be difficult to catch target words if the speakers speak faster than normal listeners Underwood states that the listener cannot control the speed of the speaker, directly opposed to reading comprehension, and this causes the greatest difficulty with listening comprehension (Underwood, 1989, p 16) For most language learners and teachers, it is clear that a slower speed of speech would facilitate the listening comprehension of beginner learners (Flaherty, 1979; Griffiths, 1990,

1992; King & Behnke, 1989; Zhao, 1997) Blau (1990) concluded that one of the effective techniques that helps second language learners understand is to reduce the input speed

Using slang and colloquial words

A particular difficulty is colloquial language If listening materials are made up

of daily speech, a lot of colloquial words and phrases, such as material stuff as well as slang, can be included These phrases may not be common to students who have been exposed primarily to formal or bookish English Brown (1992) points out that it is often surprising and difficult to deal with colloquial language for ESL learners accustomed to traditional written English and "textbook" language

Hesitations and pauses:

According to Hasan (2000), hesitations and pauses in spontaneous speech cause perceptual issues and comprehension errors for non-native speakers They sometimes pause when people speak, repeat themselves, say stuff that is ungrammatical, and change their minds halfway through a sentence These items are a normal speech aspect and can be either a support or a hindrance, depending

on the level of the students

1.34 Stages of listening

Pre-listening, while-listening, and post-listening processes are typically subcategorized as listening activities (Wilson, 2009) It is very important to involve teachers in "pre-listening" and "post-listening." In the course, teachers should aim to help determine the selection of appropriate methodology and classroom procedures The basic framework for designing a listening lesson is separated into three steps (cited in the 2nd edition of the ELT technique, p.141)

• Pre-listening:

In the pre-listening stage, teachers help their students train for three objectives, including inspiration, contextualization, and readiness, to listen to them Firstly, through interesting activities and tasks planned by teachers, students should be encouraged to listen Secondly, teachers can also assist students in contextualizing and interpreting the text, subjects, and themes Finally, particular language or phrase is offered to students that can help interpret the recordings Pre-listening activities that precede the listening passage should prepare students for the task of understanding by enabling the vocabulary and context awareness

of students or supplying students with the appropriate details to interpret the substance of the listening text (Thanajaro, 2000) In this process, by enabling their schemes, the students are supported in planning what they will hear (Wilson, 2009) Brainstorming words, reviewing grammar areas, or discussing the topic of the listening text are part of the tasks For the pre-listening period, two simple goals are to provide appropriate context to match what would be available in real life and to create earners' motivation for what they would hear (Field cited in Richard and Renandya, 2002)

• While listening:

Teachers help concentrate the attention of students on the listening text and encourage the development of their comprehension of it While-listening can help students improve the ability to extract meaning from the stream of speech Students interpret the messages of the speakers, check, and revise their predictions To work out the main idea of the text, teachers can ask students to note keywords (Karakas, as cited in Gilakjani, 2011) Students will listen for a second time, either to check or to answer more detailed questions In this situation, several opportunities for receiving feedback will reduce the anxiety of students for teaching purposes This ensures that they will listen to the passage considered difficult There is a range of other aspects that come into play

concerning the passage: difficulty, duration, concentration on pedagogy, and the potential for boredom It may be repeated several times if the objective is on close language study, while if the focus is on listening to the gist, it won't be (Wilson, 2009)

• Post-listening:

Teachers help students integrate into their current knowledge what they have learned from the text There are two different forms that can be taken by post-listening activities "A reaction to the text" is the first one Discussion can be introduced as an "answer to what they have learned." Another type is "language analysis," which includes "focusing students on the text's linguistic characteristics." Students may have the chance to improve their language skills, such as vocabulary and grammatical structures Post-listening tasks consist of extensions and developments of the listening assignment, following the listening passage Cultural themes and other things connected to the materials can be emphasized In addition, Wilson (2009 ) mentions that, at this point, problems such as unknown vocabulary and reaction to the content of the passage are discussed, usually orally

1.3.5 Physical setting

Poor quality of the equipment and facilities

Teachers use some recorded materials in some classes that are not high quality The quality of the sound system can have an impact on the understanding of listening by learners We are still living in the 21st century, which is that there are still some classrooms that do not have computers, smartboards, multimedia systems, and so on The quality of the sound system also affects listening comprehension The ambiguous sounds that result from poor-quality devices can interfere with the listener's understanding Furthermore, the students who sit at

the end of the classroom may not listen to the lessons clearly in a crowded classroom The scarcity of opportunities to listen to various spoken texts with the help of good equipment and learn English with native speakers, especially in rural areas, contributes to listening performance, according to Chetchumlong (1987) In addition, large classrooms, surrounding noise, and noisy classes also have negative impacts on listening

Using audio

Moreover, students also practice audio recording when listening to lessons Therefore, without watching, they cannot guess what the speakers are saying But at the other hand, video is a rich and useful resource, according to Hemei (1997, cited in Çakir, 2006), and it is valued by both students and teachers Obviously, by explaining relationships in a way that is not possible with words, video makes meaning clearer, confirming a well-known saying that an image is worth a thousand words This is in line with Yagang (1994) and Harmer (2001) that failure to see the gesture and facial expressions of the speaker makes it harder for the listener to understand the meaning of the speaker

The class atmosphere

Classroom inconvenience sometimes affects students’ comprehension of listening Students who sit in the back rows may not hear the recording as students sit in front in the large classrooms The noise that comes from outside also influences students who prefer to stay next to the windows As a teacher, all these conditions in the body must be taken into account The size of the classroom also makes it difficult for the teacher to manage all classes or receive feedback from learners in group activities It is possible to count the class temperature as a factor that makes listening comprehension difficult It may be too hot in summer or too cold in winter for a class that has no air conditioner or heater

1.4 Previous related study

1.4.1 Previous study overseas

Because listening is one of the most important skills for being a good communicator, in which people spend about 60% of their time listening (Rubin

& Thompson, 1994), several studies have been done to investigate difficulties

in learning EFL learners’ listening skills

Yagang (1993) presented the general definition of simple listening that

"listening is the ability to identify and understand what others are saying" (p.5) During the listening process, he said, four main factors that can lead to difficulty for EFL learners include the message, the listener, and the physical context He points out that many learners find it difficult to handle a message whose content

is not well organized When listening, they cannot predict what the speaker will say in the recorded message because they are unfamiliar with the "no intonation sentence", the "spontaneous topic" or because the message was recorded Likewise, they will be challenged when communicating with speakers who may sound superfluous or have strange voices Greater obstacles can arise if the listener himself is not proficient at predicting information, unfamiliar with color writing, cliches, or different types of listening material

Ferris & Tagg (1996) focused more on listening and speaking tasks in learning for ESL students Through surveys conducted with full-time professors from various colleges and universities, Ferris and Tagg analyzed students' difficulties

in learning to listen academically Although students may be aware of the importance of listening skills, they are rather hesitant and do not want to participate in classroom discussions or interact with their peers (except those who speak their native language.) either ask or answer questions The implications of this study suggest that teachers should be the ones to help develop students' communication and listening strategies Their research is a useful reference for ESL students However, it would be better if the survey investigated

the opinions of both teachers and students It is better if students who are having difficulty can tell what their problems are

Chen (2005) also studied the barriers to achieving listening strategies for EFL learners and suggested some pedagogical implications The study was conducted based on a report by students from Takming College, Taiwan His research has analyzed seven main types of learning obstacles including 22 subgroups These are emotional barriers, habits in habits, learning difficulties related to information processing, English proficiency, and learners' beliefs about listening; the problem focuses on the nature and procedure of using the strategy, and the listening materials the learner practiced This thorough research can be a useful resource in listening teaching and learning

1.4.2 In Vietnam

In Vietnam, teaching and learning listening skills for 10th graders is no longer a new thing or strange because new English textbooks have been in use for 10 years In fact, listening skills have not been paid attention to and invested in properly In the article “Textbooks of the year 80” (textbooks of the 1980s) posted on the website tuoitre.vn, the reporter gave comments on the content of textbooks for high school students He quoted a teacher as saying that his listening skills were either ignored or not taught in his high school because both teachers and students wanted to focus on exams that did not include tests listening skills With a small investment, listening skills still cause many difficulties for intermediate and low-level students The purpose of the current study is to collect information about the hearing difficulties of CVAHS 11th graders The research is guided by the following research question: What difficulties do the students encounter in learning listening skills?

1.5 Research gap:

The research gap indicates the participants faced some listening problems due to their (1) lack of vocabulary knowledge, (2) inability to recognize and distinguish sounds, (3) limited reasoning ability and limited ability to use listening strategies such as judgment, taking notes, or memorizing, and (4) lack of concentration The above results also show some issues to which teachers need to pay attention

to help learners improve their listening skill

1.6 Conceptual framework:

The implementation of varied listening tasks in a large class will enable students

to be more interested in developing their listening skills The researcher used video clips on YouTube on the subject matters in the language classroom that enables them to train themselves day by day The resources give students chances

to develop their listening skills by listening to spoken texts, recordings, and talking to each other They can also monitor and get feedback on their own performance, even without the intervention of the teacher They can also ask the teacher without being known by other students Furthermore, The researcher used many apps or videos relating to learning listening skills that covered the topics covered in language classes so that students could gradually train themselves Through conversations, recordings, and spoken texts, the materials allow students to practice listening comprehension Even without the teacher's help, they can keep an eye on their own performance and receive comments In addition, they can ask the teacher a question without the other pupils knowing

1.7 Chapter summary

Previous literature on listening skills difficulties is discussed in this chapter

We only pay attention to the pertinent portions of the message when speaking

in our first language As a result, rather than processing sentences word by word, the emphasis is on the concepts included in them and the ways in which

they are connected to form conclusions Brown (1992).The researcher hopes that he has gathered enough applicable information for his research with a description of many scholarly studies However, it can be seen that some parts are not suitable for Vietnamese students, written in foreign contexts Therefore, the researcher hopes to compensate for the above limitation by his

observations, and detailed descriptions are provided in the following chapters

CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The researcher would like to present some aspects of the research methods in this chapter, including the setting, participants, instruments, and data collection techniques, as well as the research's validity and reliability The following is a detailed explanation of each aspect

In terms of methodology, this study used interview and questionnaire questions Nunan claims that questionnaires are inexpensive, simple to complete, and more measurable These methods are effective for gathering data (Cohen & Manion, 1989; Weir & Roberts, 1994) Furthermore, because questionnaires are anonymous, which promotes greater honesty, they are thought to be more reliable methods (Cohen 2000:269)

Both closed- and open-ended questions were asked during the interview and questionnaire Mixing closed and open-ended responses serves the dual

function of making the former easier to compile and evaluate and the latter offering greater flexibility to allow respondents to deliver more accurate

answers

The participants are 86 eleventh graders at Chu Van An High School Students should be prepared for this stage with a range of strategies from their very first listening experiences By then, students will have improved their listening skills with the right techniques

2.1 Research design and Research site:

This study used the survey for data collection, measurement, and analysis The survey was conducted at Chu Van An high school (CVAHS) in Gia Nghia city After the data, which were questionnaires and interviews (see appendixes), were collected, they were measured and analyzed

The place I carried out the survey for the research is at grade 11A1, 11A3 of Chu Van An high school in Gia Nghia City, Dak Nong province

2.2 Research methodology

Some steps in the study were conducted as follows:

 First, for students and teachers, the survey questionnaire was to find out their difficulties in learning listening skills Also, the questionnaire showed the views of the students on the strategies they and their teachers should do

to solve the listening difficulties

 Second, personal interviews were conducted with the teachers to help the researcher gain a deep understanding of the challenges of listening and know the rationale behind them

 After that, the information was quantitatively and qualitatively obtained, sorted, and analyzed to obtain realistic results

 To conclude, suggestions were proposed based on the results found from all instrument data for the solutions to the listening problems of the students

2.3 Participants

The subjects of the study were 86 students of grade 11 of CVA high school (CVAHS) in Gia Nghia city These students were selected from 2 classes of grade 11 (11A1,11A3) And 7 teachers from the English Department at CVAHS who are currently teaching listening skills at CVAHS for years with the intention

of finding difficulties in teaching listening skills to the students at CVAHS in Gia Nghia City

2.4 Data collection instrument

The study employed the survey using questionnaires and focus group interview Firstly, questionnaires were used as the main research instrument because the study aimed to exploit many participants Therefore, the two research instruments were advantageous in collecting wide, rich and detailed information

of participants

2.5 Survey Questionnaires

The questionnaire is constructed based on the theoretical framework of literature review and interview taken with 86 eleventh form students at CVAHS, which aims to investigate the difficult factors affect students’ perception of listening skills Section A of the questionnaire contained Personal information, required the students to provide their personal information including their gender, age, years of learning English Section B of the questionnaire comprised items that were employed to elicit the students’ opinions on the project-based approach In addition, the students gave their opinions in the questionnaire by Likert-type scale from 1 to 5 Likert (1932) proposed a summated scale for the assessment

of survey respondent’s attitudes which consists of a series of declarative statements Individual items in Likert’s sample scale had five response alternatives: Strongly approve, Approve, Undecided, Disapprove, and Strongly disapprove The subject is asked to indicate whether he agrees or disagrees with each statement In this paper, 1 means Strongly disagree and 5 means Strongly agree Participants were asked to give their opinions by choosing from 1 to 5

2.6 Data collection procedures

To fulfill the above aims, the study was carried out with quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection The study was conducted at CVAHS following these steps Firstly, the survey questionnaires were handed out to 86 students from 2 classes of grade 11 (11A1, 11A3) and 63 students out of 86 who are currently learning at these classes The questionnaire took place when participants had free periods to avoid interference with their teaching and studying process The researcher provides enough time for participants to answer questionnaires carefully Before participations answered, they were instructed and checked for the understanding about the questionnaire carefully The researcher was waiting while participants were answering the questionnaire to ensure that they could receive on-time assistance if needed After analysis of the data collected, in the second stage, the students were contacted for semi-structured interviews with the researcher Time for each interview lasted approximately 7-10 minutes and all interviews were audio-taped The interviewees are free to raise their opinions about their difficulties in learning listening skills

2.8 Reliability, validity, and ethical considerations

In any study, researchers are expected to check the validity and reliability of their investigations, which are the most essential criteria for scientific research (Bryman & Cramer, 2012) Reliability is defined as the stability and consistency

of an instrument's scores (Creswell, 2021) The validity, meanwhile, is the extent

to which a test measures what it is intended to measure (Richards & Schmidt, 2002) The validity and reliability of this study, including the tests, questionnaire, and interview, was evaluated as follows

To ensure the reliability of the questionnaire, the researcher askes two teachers at CVA school to check the questions regarding their clarity and applicability To increase the content validity of the tests, the researcher incorporated various task types for the students, such as choosing the correct words, matching, and reordering The combination of numerous task types enabled the researcher to precisely evaluate the grammar performance of the students To ensure construct validity, the researcher arranged the test items and task categories in increasing difficulty order Besides, content, rubrics, and inter-rater reliability are important aspects that influence the reliability and validity of tests The rubric was brief, straightforward, and consistent Initially, all participants were evaluated at the same time, location, and under the same conditions Next, instructions with precision and clarity were presented Finally, two other English teachers at CVA school working as co-teachers and inter-raters provided their views and suggestions as well as scoring regarding the organization, clarity, etc to create a final version that was valid

For ethical considerations, because the data was collected from this study from written tests designed for the eleventh graders at CVA high school in the school year 2023 and 2024 Moreover, the researcher delivered the consent forms

to the students for their agreement to participate in the study Additionally, in the study, the researcher drew some results and discussions from the research findings, statistics, frequencies before coming to final conclusions Thus, it can

be assured that the research results were reliable

2.9 Chapter Summary

In this chapter, the research methodology employed to conduct the research was discussed Firstly, the selection of samples, sampling methods, justification, and description of data instruments were presented Secondly, the elaboration on use

of survey questionnaire and procedures of data collection are also reported Finally, a simple data analysis process was described to be better justify the finding presented in the next chapter

CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

This chapter introduces the main findings of the study All information and data gathered from the interviews and questionnaires will be analyzed and discussed

to provide answers to the research questions The data collected will be presented

in table and figure form, and this chapter introduces the main findings of the study

3.1 Difficulties the eleventh grade students encounter in learning listening skills at CVA high school in Gia Nghia City, Dak Nong

3.1.1 Data analysis of students’ survey questionnaire

The data collected from the questionnaire will be analyzed in this part of the study The information about the students who participated in the survey is presented in the following table (Table 3.1)

Table 3.1 Information about students participating in the survey

Gender Quantity Percentage

Table 3.2 Students’ attitudes before listening to the lesson

Table 3.3 Students’ attitudes towards the importance of the English

listening skills

Students’ attitudes towards the

importance of English listening

skills

As illustrated in Table 3.3, descriptive statistics are presented for the students’ perceived importance of English listening skills The mean of the importance is 4.02 which is higher than the average Likert-type rating from 1-5 (from not at all important to extremely important) Besides, Mode is 5, Median is 4 and Standard Deviation (SD) is 1.02 These numbers show that most of the students had awareness of the importance of listening skills However, there were still many students who did not highly evaluate the role of listening skills Some students expected to be more proficient in listening to English so that they would have chance to talk with foreigners as well as look for a good job in the future Share quite similar ideas, some students thought listening skill was important to their English study They were aware of the importance of listening skills but assumed that this is the most difficult one among the four skills as well As not being included in the final examinations, listening skill has not been given much consideration by both teachers and students at Chu An High School