Common mistakes made by pre-intermediate students in TOEIC listening tests and some suggested solutions = Những lỗi sinh viên trình độ tiền trung cấp hay mắc tr

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES NHỮ HÀ PHƯƠNG COMMON ERRORS MADE BY PRE-INTERMEDIATE STUDENTS IN T

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

NHỮ HÀ PHƯƠNG

COMMON ERRORS MADE BY PRE-INTERMEDIATE STUDENTS IN THE TOEIC LISTENING TEST AND

SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS

NHỮNG LỖI SINH VIÊN TRÌNH ĐỘ TIỀN TRUNG CẤP HAY MẮC KHI LÀM BÀI THI NGHE TOEIC VÀ MỘT SỐ GIẢI

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements i

Abstract ii

List of figures, tables and appendices iii

List of abbreviations iv

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Statement of the problem and rationale for the study 1

2 Aims and objectives 2

3 Significance of the study 2

4 Scope of the study 2

5 Methods of the study 3

6 Organization 3

PART B: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 4

1 Listening 4

1.1 Listening Definition 4

1 2 Listening Comprehension 4

1 3 Factors affecting learners’ listening comprehension 6

2 Error 11

2 1 Error definition 11

2 2 Classification of errors 12

2.3 Different approaches towards the study of error 13

3 The TOEIC test 14

3 1 Overview of the TOEIC test 15

3 2 Overview of the TOEIC listening test 16

4 Related studies of listening comprehension and TOEIC listening errors 20

PART C: METHODOLOGY 22

1 Selection of subjects 22

PART D: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 26

1.3 Learners’ perceptions of the causes of common errors when

1.4 Test-taking strategies applied by students in TOEIC listening 33

2 Findings from the analysis of students’ TOEIC listening test papers 35

REFERENCES

APPENDICES

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research would not have been completed without support from a number of people My lecturers at University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, friends and family have given me support and have in one way or another contributed to the work present here

First and foremost, I would like to heartily express my deepest appreciation and gratitude to my supervisor, Ms Phan Thi Van Quyen, M.A who is always willing to work hard to give her expert guidance, knowledge, insight and time She followed the research from the initial stage giving support and constructive criticism I am very grateful and have learnt much from her

My particular thank goes to all students who were enthusiastic participants in the study

And I am immensely grateful to my friends who nonstop encourage

me to continue the research Moreover, without the well of love and support from my family this thesis would not have been as successful

Nhu Ha Phuong

ABSTRACT

Phuong, N.H (2012): Common errors made by pre-intermediate students in the TOEIC listening test and some suggested solutions A Master’s Thesis submitted to Vietnam National University, University of Foreign Languages and International Studies

In Vietnam nowadays or Haiphong’s institutions in particular, a new standard for English proficiency is set, that is the requirement of TOEIC certificate Thus, many foreign language centers emphasize the development

of teaching and learning TOEIC While efforts have been made, far less attention is paid to the common errors made by students in TOEIC test To bridge the gap, this thesis aims to explore the errors made by pre-intermediate students in the TOEIC listening test and to find out the solutions regarding this issue This work hopes to both contribute to the existing body of TOEIC research as well as to pave the way for future studies in this field

LIST OF FIGURE, TABLES & APPENDICES

Figure 1: Information sources in comprehension

Table 1: Factors influencing listening comprehension (Teng)

Table 2: Categories of barriers reported in learning the listening strategies Table 3: Learners by age, gender and occupation

Table 4: Learners’ experience of learning English in years

Table 5: Learners’ purposes of taking TOEIC preparation course

Table 6: Learners’ evaluation of the level of difficulty of TOEIC listening test

Table 7: Learners’ evaluation of the most difficult part of TOEIC listening test

Table 8: Learners’ feelings when doing TOEIC listening test

Table 9: Causes of TOEIC listening errors

Table 10: Strategies used by learners when taking TOEIC listening test

Table 11: The percentage of wrong-answers in each TOEIC listening test Table 12: Types of errors in TOEIC listening test and their percentage

Appendix 1: Questionnaire for student respondents

Appendix 2: TOEIC listening test sample and its tape script

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

TOEIC: Test of English for International Communications HFLC: Haiphong Foreign Language Centre

PART A: INTRODUCTION

This initial part states the problem and the rationale of the study, together with the aims, objectives and the scope of the whole paper Above all, it is in this chapter that the research questions are identified to work as clear guidelines for the whole research

1 Statement of the problem and Rationale for the study:

Facts have shown that English proficiency tests such as the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC), the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL), and the International English Language Test System (IELTS) are currently enjoying a surge in popularity in both workplace and universities, especially the TOEIC test In other words, many colleges and universities award credits in English courses to students who reach test score requirements, and an increasing number of companies are using these scores as one criterion for selecting new recruits and promoting employees Specifically, in Haiphong, the three biggest universities namely Vimaru (Vietnam Marine time University), Haiphong University and HPU (HaiPhong Private University) are forcing their students to have at least TOEIC 450 as a crucial requirement to graduate HPU also announced the target score for Vietnamese English teachers as TOEIC over 700 Some companies in the region like Vietnam register of shipping or Internal Relations Office demand their employees to have TOEIC at least 380 Yet,

to many TOEIC students, listening is a nightmare and most failing in TOEIC, TOEFL or even IELTS are generally weak at listening Obviously, achieving language proficiency means mastering the four skills and listening

is considered to be one of the most problematic

Establishing reputation for being a reliable place providing and training English courses for such a long time, Haiphong Foreign Language Centre has attracted thousands of learners to register TOEIC courses since they were first introduced in 2010 Identifying the demands of studying

TOEIC in Haiphong as well as the teaching situation, “Common errors

made by pre-intermediate students in the TOEIC listening test and some suggested solutions” was conducted to gain insights into students’ problems

when listening TOEIC practice tests with the hope to contribute to the improvement of TOEIC teaching in Haiphong Foreign Language Centre as

well as other educational institutions

2 Objectives of the study:

The purpose of the study is to explore the following objectives:

 To explore the students’ perceptions of the TOEIC listening test

 To investigate the errors that pre-intermediate students at Haiphong Foreign Language Center often make when taking the TOEIC listening test

 To suggest solutions to avoid errors based on the results of the study The research questions, therefore, are addressed as below:

1 What are pre-intermediate students’ perceptions of the TOEIC listening test?

2 What strategies do these students often apply when doing TOEIC listening test?

3 What are the common errors when taking the TOEIC listening test made by pre-intermediate students?

3 Significance of the study:

With the above objectives, the study primarily displays insightful knowledge of errors conducted by pre-intermediate students as well as their

difficulties or strategies in listening TOEIC Pedagogically, the findings of the study are believed to be useful for both TOEIC teachers and learners

4 Scope of the study:

The research focuses mainly on the analysis of the data collected from the students’ TOEIC listening test papers and the survey questionnaire distributed to TOEIC students at Haiphong Foreign Language Centre

5 Methods of the study:

Both quantitative and qualitative approaches, including a survey questionnaire, students’ TOEIC listening test papers and semi-structured interviews, are employed to collect data for the study and the major method used is the quantitative one Firstly, the analysis of students’ TOEIC listening test papers is conducted to find out the common errors as well as the current situation of learning this skill Then, the data is also collected through survey questionnaire, informal interviews and discussions with these TOEIC learners

6 Organization:

Part A- Introduction describes the study’s rationale, aims, objectives,

research questions, scope, methods and significance

Part B- Theoretical Background lays the theoretical foundation for the

research

Part C- Methodology details the research methods that have been used

and the procedures of conducting the study

Part D- Results and Discussion presents the research’s findings about

the errors of pre-intermediate students when listening TOEIC test and then explains the causes of these errors This explanation will lead to some possible implications behind the findings

Part E- Conclusions ends the study by summarizing its main points,

implications, limitations and suggestions for further studies

Moreover, the thesis includes Appendices where the study’s bibliography, sample questionnaires and interview transcription are attached for reference

PART B: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND

This part attempts to provide the framework within which the research is carried out

1 Listening

1.1 Listening

There are different definitions about listening coming from different views of the linguists It is believed that listening is a significant and essential element of communication and interaction in a native language and

in second language as well Rost (2002, p 279) defines listening as “mental

process of constructing meaning from spoken input” Similarly, Helgesen

(2003, p.24) proposes “listening is an active, purposeful processing of

making sense of what we hear” From these definitions, it is clear that the

listener is doing more than simply decoding what is heard

In fact, a person who is trying to learn a second or foreign language has to improve four basic language skills possessed by the native speakers of that language As stated by Harmer (1998), speaking and writing, which involve language production, are referred to as productive skills Listening and reading, on the other hand, involve receiving messages and therefore, they are identified as receptive skills

Listening skill is a receptive skill in which listeners actively produce comprehension There is a purpose behind every listening people perform However, in a conversation listeners should also consider other factors apart from sound Listeners do not only receive the auditory stimuli but also visual stimuli, for example face expression, posture, movement, appearance and so

on For example, in the TOEIC listening Part 1, visual stimuli (in the form of photographs) is used

1.2 Listening Comprehension

When listening is referred to during discourse, it tends to be connected

automatically to comprehension This is due to the fact that “comprehension

is often considered to be the first-order goal of listening, the highest priority

of the listener, and sometimes the sole purpose of listening.” (Rost, 2002)

Especially for the L2 learners who are acquiring a new language, the term

“listening comprehension” typically refers to all aspects of listening since

comprehension through listening is considered to be a foundation for enabling learners to process the new language, and since L2 listening research has focused exclusively on the comprehensive aspect of academic

listening However, Rost (2002) insisted that the term “comprehension”

needs to be used in a more specific sense in listening studies

Buck, G (2001: 31) shares the idea that "listening comprehension is

an active process of constructing meaning and this is done by applying knowledge to the incoming sounds" in which "number of different types of knowledge are involved: both linguistic knowledge and non-linguistic knowledge" Thus, the development of good listening skill is suggested to be

valuable for its own sake and support the growth of other aspects of language use, such as reading and speaking

Listening comprehension is influenced by the listener’s world knowledge, linguistic knowledge, text structure knowledge, and met cognitive knowledge The following figure shows that the listening comprehension process is established through the relationship between the two main sources of information; namely: systematic or linguistic knowledge (knowledge of phonological, syntactic, and semantic components

of the language system) and schematic or non-linguistic information In fact,

it is hard to differentiate between what was actually said and what we have constructed by integrating the spoken words with students' own knowledge and experience

Background knowledge Systematic

- what has been/ will be said

1.3 Factors affecting learners’ listening comprehension

Of the five main lines of research on listening summarized by Dunkel (1991: 434), the following two have some bearing on the listening difficulties that learners experience while listening, namely: 1) Research on

the components (sub-skills) of listening involved in SL listening and 2) Research on the factors inside and outside the head that enhance or inhibit the comprehension of input in the SL

As the listening is a complicated active process in which learners decode and construct the meaning of the text by drawing on their previous knowledge about the world as well as their linguistic knowledge, there seems to be many factors affecting listening comprehension and these factors have been classified into different categories Boyle (1984), after conducting an interview with thirty teachers and sixty students from two Hong Kong University suggested lack of practice as the most important factors He also pointed out such factors as linguistic understanding, general background knowledge, while attitude and motivation may affect listening directly but more powerfully Two other factors that were mentioned by the students but not teachers in Boyle’ interview were “memory” and

“attention/concentration” In general, these factors can be divided into four categories, i.e., listener factors, speaker factors, stimulus factors, and context factors In her study Teng (1993) further divided these factors into a list as presented in the Table 1

2 Accent/dialect

3 Speech of delivery

4 Degree of pauses and redundancies

5 Prestige and personality

1 Type of international event

2 Distraction during listening

3 Interval between listening and testing

4 Note-taking

Table 1: Factors influencing Listening Comprehension Teng (1993)

The factors characterize listeners are the language facility, knowledge

of the world, intelligence, physical conditions, metacognitve strategies and motivation (Boyle)

The language facility requires the learners have the knowledge of the phonological, lexical, syntactic, semantics and pragmatics which are not easy for the learners especially the low level learners and the non major ones

One of the most important factors which have influence directly on the listeners’ ability is the physical conditions which should be free from illness, and able to function efficiently and effectively, to enjoy leisure, and

to cope with emergencies Health-related components of physical fitness include body composition, cardiovascular fitness, flexibility, muscular

endurance, and muscle strength Skill-related components include agility, balance, coordination, power, reaction time, and speed Therefore it is advisable for the teachers to pay more attention to the learner’s health

Interest in a topic increases the listener’s comprehension; the listener may tune out topics that are not of interest This can create the motivation for the listeners to listen well and study better

These factors are suggested to play an important role in creating the enthusiasms and motivation for the listeners to improve the listening ability The familiarity of the topic helps students feel safe and confident and they feel comfortable when dong the listening task This is a useful tip for teacher teaching listening skills On the contrary, the abstractness of the material causes quite great deal of difficulties for listeners, in other words, they do not know what to do and get lost and left behind Moreover the numbers of the words especially the new words also headache the learners Furthermore, the condition- acoustic environment and the mode of the listening task also give favors to the learners If they are put in high technology environment along with the visual material, they can analyze the task and complete them quite eagerly

 Context factors

The concentration is always the best way to study any skills of a foreign language, particularly the listening which is considered as a complex process That is the reason why the distraction affects the listening ability so much, the distraction here can the class noise, street noise, background noise

of the acoustic materials Furthermore, the note taking technique is also a key factor to study listening skill well The listeners can save time and effort

if they know how to process the input effectively

Rixon (1986, 37) identifies two problems arising in listening comprehension, one stems from pronunciation and the other stems from passage or discourse Some examples of listening problem stemming from pronunciation are weak relationship between sounds and the way they are spelt in written language, change in sounds where they occur in rapid and connected speech, the rhythm patterns of English speech, and different ways

of pronouncing the same sounds These problems only appeared when students deal with listening tasks The next problem stemming from passage/ discourse may include type of delivery (the speech of utterance, clarity, processing time and accent) and numbers of speakers

Another researcher from Taiwan, Chen (2005) conducts a listening obstacles research with Chinese native speakers, those who language has quite many similar things to Vietnamese Seven major categories of learning obstacles were derived, including 22 minor groups as follows:

Barrier category 1: Affective barriers

Barrier category 2: Habitudinal barriers

Barrier category 3: Information processing barriers

Type 3: Obstacles pertaining to input retention

Barrier category 4: English proficiency barriers

Barrier category 5: Strategic barriers

processing

Barrier category 6: Belief barriers

text

Barrier category 7: Material barriers

Table 2: Categories of barriers reported in learning the listening

Therefore, to have a comprehensive view of errors made by second language learners, we should review different ways of defining errors by different researchers Through the development of error analysis, some analysts have defined errors directly Some defined “errors” as a deviation from the norm

of the target language A noticeable representative of this view is Corder

(1973, p89), who considered “error” as the “breaches of codes” However,

this definition is not very clear because the definition of “norm” itself is still ambiguous One language has a number of variants and dialects, which means that what is considered erroneous in one region may be acceptable in others Therefore, if we define “error” in this way, we should identify a very specific basis on which something is considered erroneous

Besides, there are many other terms which are easily mistaken with

“error”, especially the term “mistake” Therefore, many analysts defined

“error” through the distinction between “error” and “mistake” Corder

(1967, p25) says that it will be useful to refer to error of performance as

“mistakes” which is not significant to the language learning process , and

reserve the term “error” for the systematic errors of the learner from which

his knowledge of the language can be reconstructed

Snow (1977) had a different view of distinguish between “error” and

“mistake” which is based on learners’ conscious of doing something wrong

According to him, there are three stages that second language learners have

to experience in learning language The first stage is when learner does something wrong without knowing it, in the second stage, he does know that

it is wrong but he does not know how to put it right and the last stage is when he can correct his wrong version For him, error occurs at the first two stages while mistake belongs to the last stage

From the linguists’ opinion above, it can be concluded that a mistake

refers to a performance error that is either a random guess or a “slip”, in that

it is a failure to utilize a known system correctly Mistakes are what

researchers have referred to as “performance errors” while errors are a

result of one’s systematic competence (the learner’s system is correct)

2.2 Classification of errors

When dealing with students’ errors, it is better if they are put in different categories for various treatments Therefore, we should have an overview of different ways of classifying errors so far As a matter of fact, different researchers have different purposes of studying errors as well as different criteria for categorizing errors Therefore, to reach a common classification of listening errors seems to be infeasible Even for the same author, his way of classifying errors can change over time As it would be impossible to list all the ways of classifying errors, therefore, in this thesis, the author just wants to mention some typical and common ones of some well-known authors

Based on the magnitude of errors, which includes errors at different levels such as a phoneme, morpheme, word, sentence or paragraph, Richards (1984, p123) divides errors into two kinds: global errors and local errors

According to him, “global errors” are those which involve the “overall

structure of the sentence” Therefore, it can hinder the communication and

prevent the message from being understood On the contrary, local errors are

those which affect “a particular constituent” of the sentence and they do not

prevent the message from being comprehended because the hearer can still guess the intended meaning easily

In order to identify the source of errors, James (1998) distinguishes four categories of errors: 1 Interlingual errors: when the required target

language item is unknown and the learner borrows a first language substitute As a result, they can make a mother tongue transfer error (p.175)

2 Intralingual errors: Errors include false analogy (e.g boy and boys vs child and Childs), misanalysis, incomplete rule application (under

restrictions, hypercorrection and overgeneralization (pp.185-187) 3 Communication-strategy errors: Errors include the use of holistic strategies (e.g Students do not find the required form, so they try to use another near-equivalent second language item which they have learnt) and analytic strategies (expressing the concept indirectly, by allusion rather than by direct reference, also called circumlocution) (p187-188) 4 Induced errors: Errors include materials-induced error, teacher-talk induced error, exercise-based induced errors, errors induced by pedagogical priorities, look-up errors (p191-200)

2.3 Different approaches towards the study of error

There are various approaches towards the study of error In general, they belong to either Linguistic Approaches or Non- Linguistic Approaches The Linguistic Approaches include : (i) Contrastive Analysis Approach (ii) Error Analysis Approach while the Non-Linguistic Approaches include: (i) Sociological Approach (ii) Psychological Approach In the scope of this study, only Linguistic Approaches are closely considered

Contrastive Analysis Approach borrowed principles from the field of psychology of learning such as imitation, reinforcement, habit strength and positive and negative transfer This approach presupposed that language development consists of the acquisition of a set of habits, so errors in the second language were regarded as the result of the first language habits interfering during the acquisition of the habits of a second language Thus,

special attention should be paid to the differences between the mother tongue and the second language However, this approach provides an incomplete presentation of the second-language acquisition process and it gradually became unpopular because of some obvious shortcomings Firstly,

it overemphasizes the interference of the outer environment of language study while the language learners themselves are totally neglected Secondly, the fact shows that most of learners’ errors are not predictable on the basis of contrastive analysis For examples, some types of errors like rule simplification and overgeneralization which show a striking resemblance to errors made by children while acquiring a first language, could not be accounted for by contrastive analysis

Error Analysis Approach is considered more reliable than the Contrastive Analysis Approach This approach adopts the view that the sources of linguistic interference are not restricted to the learners’ mother tongue Many analysts of this approach has pointed out that there are some similarities between the types of errors made by second language learners and those made by native speakers in their first language acquisition Therefore, the process of acquiring the first and second language are essentially the same (Corder 1967, Dulay and Burt 1972, Richards 1973) This approach aims at describing the nature of the interlanguage in its stages

of development through the evidence in errors, from which the process of second language acquisition can be inferred Between these two linguistic approaches, the writer prefers the Error Analysis Approach because it reflects truthfully the nature learning a foreign language as well as the nature

of errors which are not only caused by the interference of the mother tongue but by other intralingual factors as well

3 The TOEIC test

3.1 Overview of the TOEIC test

The Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC), which was developed by Educational Testing Service (ETS) in Japan in 1979, is defined as “a standardized test that measures your listening and reading

skills Unlike other tests, the TOEIC evaluates your ability to function in the

business world rather than in an academic setting” For this reason, TOEIC has become the preferred exam for corporations, government agencies and many educational institutions to test learners’ English capabilities Many do the TOEIC with the hope to measure their improvements in English, others

need to meet the demands of school or work

Traditionally and popularly, TOEIC is a paper-and-pencil test consisting two sections: listening and reading comprehension There are 100 multiple-choice questions in each section Separate scaled scores are provided for each section, the part score scales ranging from 5 to 495 and the total score scales ranging from 10 to 990 The TOEIC test provides a good indication of candidates' abilities in English

These are some examples of the topics examiners may find in TOEIC test questions, according to “TOEIC Examinees Handbook- Listening & Reading” (2008: 3)

 Corporate Development — research, product development

 Dining Out — business lunches, banquets, receptions, reservations

 Entertainment — cinema, theater, music, art, exhibitions, museums,

 Health Care — medical insurance, visits to doctors, dentists, …

 Housing/Corporate Property — construction, specifications, buying

and renting, electric and gas services

 Human Resources — recruiting, hiring, retiring, promoting, job

applications, job advertisements, salaries, pensions, awards………

 Manufacturing — assembly lines, plant management, quality control

 The Office — procedures, board meetings, committees, letters,

memos, telephone, fax and e-mail messages, equipment

 Purchasing — shopping, ordering supplies, shipping, invoicing

 Technical Areas — electronics, technology, computers, laboratories

and related equipment, technical specifications

 Travel — trains, airplanes, taxis, buses, ships, ferries, tickets,

schedules, station and airport announcements, car rentals, hotels, reservations,

3.2 Overview of the TOEIC listening test

Needless to say, TOEIC listening is a kind of listening comprehension The TOEIC listening test includes 100 questions with a time limit of 45 minutes It is divided into 4 sections, namely: picture description (10 questions), question-response (30 questions), short conversations (30 questions), and short talks (30 questions) Thus, each section has different stimulus material The listeners’s ability to understand what they hear and then choose the correct answer is being evaluated It might be a detail to remember, an inference to make, or main idea that they need to comprehend All the questions will have topics or situations that you would likely encounter on a regular basis in a business environment

Part one: Pictures description (10 questions)

(Example taken from Tactics for the TOEIC® Listening and Reading Test, © Oxford University Press, 2007)

In this part, for each of the ten questions, the test taker sees a

photograph and hears four descriptive statements related to the photograph Examinees are asked to select the statement that best describes what is presented in the photograph The photographs show people in typical

workplace settings as well as in everyday situations

There are four question types in this part They are:

* Location Questions

* Action Questions: can be in either the active or the passive form

* Situation Questions: the condition of things in the pictures

The incorrect answers may have:

 words that refer to a context other than the one shown in the picture The best way to approach these questions is to scan the picture completely and identify what's happening, just like a journalist or a spy Ask yourself: who, what, where, why? Listen for any words that are stressed, as they may hold a clue

For example:

The man is sitting on a couch

The man is coaching the woman

For example: The man is selling watches vs The man is sailing

The man is waiting for a train vs The man is weighing a train

Part two: Questions and Responses (30 questions)

In this part, test takers will hear a short exchange between two speakers with a question and three possible responses They must choose the response that best answer the question The question may ask about people, location, time, an activity, an event, emotions, reasons or opinions In short, the questions represent everyday conversational English The Question Types of Part 2 are information questions including three types: Questions with an Interrogative (Who/ Whose/ Whom, What/ Which, Where, When, Why, How), Questions with No interrogative (Be/ Do, auxiliary verbs) and Other types of Questions like Indirect questions, Tag questions, Negative questions, Alternative questions, Declarative sentences and Suggestions The trick here is to watch out for:

 words that sound similar but have different meanings

answers

To do well, keep the question clearly in mind when scanning the possible answers Choose the one that makes the greatest sense If in doubt, guess

Part Three: Short conversations (30 questions)

In this part, examinees will hear a short dialogue After each conversation, they are asked to answer three questions about what the speakers say The question will ask about the general idea of the conversation; usually it will not focus on specific details Students will be asked to identify an activity, an emotion, a relationship, or the location of the speakers In some instances, they may have to do some minor calculations based on measurements in the dialogues They will need to use short term memories as well Here comes one example:

Similar to Part 2, Part 3 includes Who, When, Where, What, How, Why, and Which question types The best strategies are to beware of:

It will help if students can read the question, and possibly even the answers, before you hear the dialogue Check all the options and try not to choose too quickly Try and picture the speakers and where they are

Part Four: Short talks (30 questions)

As in Part 3, students hear a listening passage, followed by three questions The difference is that instead of a conversation, the listening features a single speaker giving a talk: a news report, an advertisement, an acceptance speech, and so on

There are four types of question in this part, which are: Main Idea Questions, Fact and Detail Questions, Inference Questions and Cause and Effect Questions The same techniques as Part 3 are applied in this Part

4 Related studies of listening comprehension and TOEIC listening

errors

There has been relatively extensive research on difficulties encountered by learners when listening to a foreign or second language The most well-known are Underwood (1989), Hasan (2000) and so on Related

to TOEIC, to the best knowledge of the writer, many researchers assessed the reliability and validity of the test like Wilson (1989), Dudley-Evans (1996), Powers (2010), etc Significant studies on TOEIC have been

conducted, however, none points out students’ difficulties or common errors that they make in the TOEIC listening test

Similarly, in the context of Vietnam, a number of studies in L2 listening have been done by different authors like Phung (2008), Vu (2009), Tran (2010) They mostly focus on the critical role of both bottom-up and top-down processes in comprehension Listeners use top-down process when they use context and prior knowledge (topic, genre, background knowledge, and other schema knowledge in long-term memory) to construct framework for comprehension Listeners use bottom-up process when they build meaning by accretion, gradually combining increasingly larger units of meaning from the phoneme-level up to discourse-level features Needless to say, these studies just focus on exploiting the difficulties related to level of students, learner strategies and teachers’ assistance when teaching and

learning one specific textbook Bui (2009) had one study entitled “Problems

faced by Vietnamese learners in learning IELTS listening” In her study, she

analyses and finds out the real difficulties encountered by Vietnamese learners, which helps IELTS teachers adopt appropriate teaching method

Realizing that research in TOEIC listening is a new concept and being

a teacher teaching TOEIC, the expression of disappointment on the students’ faces always preys on the writer’s mind, encouraging her to find out the solutions related to TOEIC listening problems

PART C: METHODOLOGY

In the light of the literature reviewed in Part B the present study was undertaken with its own methods to bridge gaps existing in the research to date Hence, the aim of Part C is to report details of this implementation, including participant profiles, methods of data collection and analysis and procedures of collecting and analyzing data Justification for each step in the whole procedure will also be given

1 Selection of subjects

The participants of the study were 50 learners chosen at random from three TOEIC preparation classes at Haiphong Foreign Language Centre They were at the age of 19 to 35 and doing occupations of different fields, 70% of them were students and the ratio of male and female were 22/28 Although their length of time studying English was different, their English proficiency levels were reported to be at pre-intermediate All of them had already learnt the TOEIC listening strategies

2 Data collection instruments

The data were collected during a period of four weeks using various instruments to increase their validity and reliability The principal sources of data are (1) Students’ listening test papers, (2) Questionnaires and (3) Semi-structured interviews These will be presented at the end of the thesis in the appendix

The description and justification of each data collection instrument is revealed below

2.1 Students’ listening test papers

This data collection instrument is “considered a research technique that provides objective, systematic and qualitative data” (Verma and Mallick, 1999) In accordance with this, “data obtained from qualitative research is

usually detailed, rich and deep” (Burnes, 1999) Hence, this íntrument is supposed to provide the researcher with a closer look into the current situation The study involves a modest number of fifty students’ listening test papers for latter analysis

2 2 Questionnaires

Questionnaires, according to Verma and Mallick (1999:24), “can

provide data economically and in a form that lends itself perfectly to the purposes of the study” if well-structured Moreover, the fact that “the employment of open-ended in addition to the conventional close-ended questions of this method provide more helpful, reliable data and more accurately reflecting what the respondents want to say” (Nunan, 1992) led

the researcher to choose questionnaire as one of the major instruments to collect data

Pools of feedback from a large number of people were collected at different times via the questionnaire The questionnaire consists of four main parts The first part is intended to elicit personal information of the participants The second part with four questions aims at finding the students’ perceptions of the TOEIC listening test The third part investigates the students’ difficulties in listening TOEIC and the last part was designed to find out the strategies that students employ

2 3 Semi-structured interviews

Since interactions in an interview could be “incredibly rich” and the data could be “extraordinary evidence about life that might not be gained in

a questionnaire” in Nunan’s viewpoint (1992), in-depth information around

the topic were expected to be pursued

In the study, researchers used semi-structured interviews with the average length of approximately 10 minutes each The choice of informal or

formal settings depends on each interviewee The interviews helped to check the validity of the data from the questionnaires In addition, it allowed the researcher to gain an insight into the information provided by the participants

The interviewees were given a certain degree of control in the conversation to voice their opinions but were directed to the main areas if necessary All the interviews were tape-recorded to be transcribed at a later stage

All in all, for a collection of sufficient reliable and valid data for the study, students’ listening test papers, questionnaire and interviews were fully employed

4 Procedures of data analysis

First of all, the data collected from the questionnaire, the interview and the students’ listening test papers will be classified basing on the four

research questions This phase focuses on the preparation for data collection and involves the designing of the questionnaire, students’ listening test papers and interview questions The researcher collected students’ TOEIC listening test papers Then, she classified the frequency of each type of errors

Basing on the students’ listening test papers analysis, the researcher designed the questionnaire to find out more about the causes of the errors The Questionnaire was given to seven relevant respondents to get their feedback on the workability e.g: which questions or expressions were not clear and/ or lead to ambiguity and/ or misunderstanding Adjustments were made afterwards

Next, the questionnaire was randomly delivered to 50 students of the three TOEIC classes at Haiphong Foreign Language Center After the Questionnaires had been collected, the interviews were conducted to the preference of the interviewees The interviews were tape-recorded Lastly, the tapes from the interview were rechecked for technical mistakes regarding the tape’s quality and loudness in case they needed to be done again

PART D: RESULTS & DISCUSSION

This part aims to present and discuss the study’s finding with regard

to the following research questions:

1 What are pre-intermediate students’ perceptions of the TOEIC listening test?

2 What strategies do these students often apply when doing TOEIC listening test?

3 What are the common errors when taking the TOEIC listening test made by pre-intermediate students?

Moreover, the implications of this survey results will be discussed Additional explanations as well as the introduction of the cultural linguistic characteristics are also made

1 Findings from the Questionnaires and Interviews

1.1 General information of the participants

Table 3: Learners by age, gender and occupation

It can be seen from the table that 56% of the total number of participants are female and 44% are male The majority of the total population age from 18 to 35 32% of them are at the age from 23 to 35 and just 4% of them are over 35 years old 70% of the selected group are students, 24% work in different fields such as officers, assistants, and so on Those take the TOEIC course while looking for jobs accounts for 6% of the

participants From now on, the researcher calls those people learners of English as they are of different backgrounds

Years Learners’ experience of learning English

Table 4: Learners’ experience of learning English in years

The table indicates the learners’ experience of learning English Obviously, all the participants have learnt English for at least 7 years at schools, universities or some Foreign Language Centers To be specific, 56% has spent from 8 to 10 years learning English and 28% have been learning the language for 7 years 16% of the total has more than 10 years’ experience in learning English

The information presented in table 5 is about learners’ purposes of learning TOEIC

Purposes of learning TOEIC Number of learners Percentage

To fulfill the requirement of a

training course

Table 5: Learners’ purposes of taking TOEIC preparation course

As can be seen from the table, most of the learners have clear aims in attending TOEIC preparation course 50% of the total population learnt TOEIC in order to fulfill the requirement of a training course (e.g:

graduating from university) whereas 20% aimed at fulfilling their company’s requirement 12% of the learners learnt TOEIC to prepare for the future and

a small percentage of the informants learnt TOEIC to apply for a job (8%),

to have a good command of English (6%) or to be promoted (4%), In general, all of the learners have their own purposes of learning; therefore, they have good attitude or strong motivation towards learning

1.2 Learners’ perceptions of TOEIC listening test

Question 1 and 2 aims at asking learners about their opinions of the TOEIC listening test, the answers are presented in the charts below:

Learners’ evaluation of the level of difficulty of TOEIC listening test

Table 6: Learners’ evaluation of the level of difficulty of TOEIC

listening test Learners’ evaluation of the most difficult part of TOEIC listening test