Factors causing challenges in learning listening skills faced by first-year non-English major students at Hanoi University of Industrykhó khăn khi học nghe hiểu

To identify factors causing challenges for the first year non-English major students at HaUI in learning English listening comprehension.. To give some pedagogical implications and sugge

1.1 The role of Listening in language Learning and Teaching 4

1.2 Previous studies in listening problems faced by language learners 6

3.1.1 The English program for non-English major students at HaUI 15

3.1.3 The textbook of “New headway Elementary and Pre-intermediate” 16 3.1.4 The types and requirements of listening comprehension activities for non-

3.4 Analysis of the data obtained from observation of the classroom listening

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

EFL – English as a Foreign Language

ELT – English Language Teaching

HaUI – Hanoi University of Industry

L1 listening – Listening in a Native Language

L2 listening – Listening in English

LIST OF TABLES

Page

Table-1: Factors related to listening texts 19

Table-1a: Learners‟ responses that refer to listening problems related to unfamiliar words and difficult grammatical structures 19

Table-1b: Learners‟ responses that refer to listening problems related to long spoken text 20

Table-1c: Learners‟ responses that refer to listening problems related to

unfamiliar topics 21

Table 2: Factors related to listeners 22

Table-2a: Learners‟ responses that refer to listening problems related to the skills of predicting and getting general idea of a text 22

Table-2b: Learners‟ responses that refer to listening problems related to native speakers‟ pronunciations 23

Table-2c: Learners‟ responses that refer to listening problems related to the ability of managing tasks 24

Table-3: Learners‟ responses that refer to listening problems related to the natural speech of native speakers 25

Table-4: Learners‟ responses that refer to listening problems related to the listening environment 27

Table-4a: Learners‟ responses that refer to listening problems related to the listening recording material 27

Table-4b: Learners‟ responses that refer to listening problems related to insufficient time to accomplish tasks 27

Table-5: Other factors that affected learners‟ listening performance 30

Table-6: Learners‟ responses that refer to the listening problem that poses the most difficulty for them 30

Table-7: Factors that influenced the learners' listening comprehension 35

LIST OF FIGURES

Page

Chart 1: Learners‟ responses referring to listening problems related to native

speakers‟ Pronunciations 24

Chart 2: Learners‟ responses referring to listening problems related to speech of

the native speakers 26

PART I: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

It cannot be denied that English has been taken up by people in all walks of life, especially in companies, academic institutes and so on in Vietnam People are eager to learn English and wish to acquire it at an early age Also, in order to speed up the country‟s economy and to improve the living standards as soon as possible, it is necessary for engineers, technicians, scientists, etc to learn and acquire English to keep up to date with the latest developments in technology in the world To meet the requirements of these people in learning English, now more and more teachers of English who have teaching qualifications are needed in Vietnam In brief, nowadays more and more Vietnamese people want to learn English, and more and more teachers of English are needed to meet the social requirements

In learning and teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) in Vietnam, the macro skill of listening is of great importance and it draws the attention of both teachers and learners as Brett (1997) states that “listening is a key language skill, it has a vital role

in the language acquisition process”(p.39) Compared to the other language skills, research

on listening suggests that on average people can expect to listen “twice as much as we speak, four times more than what we read and five times more than we usually write” (Morley, 2001, p.70)

As listening being a vital skill for oral interaction, it is, therefore; the most important medium for input in learning a foreign language (Lewis, 1993) and by increasing our students‟ ability to perceive speech, the amount of input they receive will increase and thus aiding students‟ language acquisition; which is true to the students of Hanoi University of Industry (HaUI) Hence, it is essential for them to acquire the ability to listen

to spoken English effectively However, despite the teachers‟ and students‟ efforts, the students, especially the first year non – English majors often have a lot of difficulties in learning listening comprehension Many students fail to take the listening input so they can hardly understand the spoken messages That is the reason why lots of them find it challenging to learn listening well or they become stressful in listening lessons Therefore,

as a teacher teaching English listening, it is necessary and motivating for the writer to carry out a study on factors causing challenges to the first year non – English major students at

HaUI in learning English listening comprehension Furthermore, this thesis is expected to provide insights for teachers and students in learning and teaching English listening so that even more successful ELT in Vietnam or elsewhere could be achieved

2 Aims of the study

The general aim of this study is to seek useful information that can help to solve the problems of non – English major students in learning English listening comprehension and

to suggest possible measures that could contribute to planning a lesson taking the learners‟ problems into consideration

The specific aims of the study are:

1 To identify factors causing challenges for the first year non-English major students

at HaUI in learning English listening comprehension

2 To find out which particular factor poses the most difficulty for the non-English major freshmen at HaUI in learning English listening comprehension

3 To give some pedagogical implications and suggestions to improve the teaching and learning English listening comprehension of the non-English major students at HaUI

3 Research questions

The purpose of the study is to find out factors causing challenges in learning English listening comprehension faced by the first year non-English major students at HaUI To this end, the researcher has formulated the following leading questions to be answered in the course of the study:

1 What factors cause challenges for the first year non-English major students of HaUI

in learning English listening comprehension?

2 Which particular factor poses the most difficulty for the first year non-English major students of HaUI in learning English listening comprehension?

3 What could be done to improve the teaching and learning of English listening comprehension of the non-English major students at HaUI?

The study, therefore, tries to seek answers to the three above questions

4 Significance of the study

Awareness of the factors causing problems that EFL learners encounter in learning English listening would benefit both the learners and the instructors After

this study is completed, the finding may help instructors to become aware of the problematic areas of listening skill so that they can take necessary treatment measures, which are suggested as an implication of the study More specifically, the study derives its importance from the context it explores, i.e., it tries to give an account of the difficulties EFL learners of HaUI encounter in listening classes These particular learners,

as the researcher observed them in the past, had listening problems when they engaged in EFL listening activities Understanding their listening difficulties will permit the instructors to modify their teaching practices

The study would also help learners to identify their difficulties of learning English listening skill to ascertain what further learning strategies are necessary Learners need to be aware of the factors which contribute to their difficulties in listening; when listeners know something about their own problems, they will be able to improve their listening practices and become better listeners

The finding would also encourage material designers (instructors) to conduct needs analysis, and to revise modules or course contents in order to adjust the materials in such

a way that they address the learners‟ listening deficiencies, which are indicated as an implication of the study Hopefully, this information can probably be used as additional evidence for sources of difficulties that Vietnamese college students have in learning English listening

5 Scope of the study

Dealing with all factors causing challenges in all aspects of learning English listening of EFL learners is too broad for a study of this size Therefore, this study focuses

on investigating the factors causing challenges in learning English listening comprehension, especially with the course book series “New Headway” Also, due to the constraints of time, this study just involves a sample of non-English major freshmen at HaUI

6 Design of the study

The study is divided into 3 parts:

The first part, Introduction, presents the rationale, aims, research questions,

significance, scope and design of the study

The second part, Development, is the main part of study, consisting of three

Chapter 3 presents the results, discussion of major findings on factors causing challenges faced by the non-English major freshmen at HaUI and the particular factor posing the most difficulty for them in learning English listening comprehension

The third part, Conclusion, summarizes what are addressed in the study and makes

a brief summary of major findings as well as gives some recommendations The limitations and suggestions for further study are also included in the last section

PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter comprises four sections The first section discusses the role of listening skills in language learning and teaching The second section reviews the studies conducted on listening problems faced by language learners in general and in Vietnamese context Then common potentials problems in EFL listening comprehension are presented in the third section Finally, a brief summary of the reviewed literature will be given

1.1 The role of Listening in language Learning and Teaching

Language acquisition depends on listening since it provides the aural input that serves as the basis for acquisition, and listening is the first language mode that children acquire At birth we know nothing about language, and yet we will complete much of the first language acquisition process within our first five years, depending almost exclusively on listening As it is indicated in second language acquisition theory,

language input is the most essential condition of language acquisition As an input skill (says Krashen) listening plays a crucial role in learners‟ language development (1985)

Beginning in the early 70's, work by Duker, Carroll and others, and later by Krashen, brought attention to the role of listening as a tool for understanding and emphasized it as a key factor in facilitating language learning As the studies on listening increased, it became a centre of attention not only in the process of first language acquisition but also in second language acquisition As a result, it is recognized as an important language skill for EFL learners especially for those students who learn English for academic purposes

Feyten (1991) points out that listening plays a very important role in a student's academic success and it is a key component to successful learning This is true according

to Dunkel (1986) in the sense that students spend most of their time listening to their teachers‟ lecture Duker (1971) is also among the writers who early noticed the importance of listening Duker reported data on how people spend their communicative time: of the total time devoted to communication, 45% is spent on listening, 30% on speaking, 16% on reading and 9% on writing From the data given above, one can understand that listening is the most frequently used language skill which plays a great role in the process of communication

Similarly, an article which appeared on the web page of International Listening Association (Beard, 2005) indicated that listening is the fundamental language skill, and it is the medium through which people gain a large portion of their education, their information, their understanding of the world and of human affairs, their ideals, sense of values, and their appreciation In this day of mass communication, much of it oral, listening is of vital importance and students should be taught to listen effectively and critically

Although listening has such significant roles in communication and second language acquisition, it has long been the neglected skill in research, teaching, and classroom assessment (Rubin, 1994; Richards and Renandaya, 2002) In recent years, however, there has been an increased focus on developing foreign language listening ability because of its perceived importance in language learning and acquisition Especially these days, there has been increasing emphasis on listening comprehension in

second language pedagogy, and this is also reflected in several methodologies and in the development of numerous listening materials such as textbooks, audiotapes, videotapes, and CD-ROMs (Richards and Renandaya, 2002)

Assuming its great importance in foreign language classrooms and in language acquisition, scholars have started giving greater attention to second/foreign language listening comprehension (e.g., Ur, 1984; Krashen, 1985; Underwood, 1989; Rost, 1994) Some of the ideas that have been of focus in the insights are the factors that affect learning and teaching English listening In this context, therefore, this study aims to explore the barriers that hinder EFL learners, especially the non-English major freshmen,

in learning Eng lis h listening skill at the tertiary level listening classes of HaUI

1.2 Previous studies in listening problems faced by language learners

1.2.1 In general

Research on second-language listening comprehension draws on studies done on first-language learning (Anderson & Lynch, 1988; Duker, 1964; Dunkel, 1991; Keller, 1960) It can be said that much of the information we have about L2 listening comprehension is rooted in the work of first-language researchers The research available

on second-language listening comprehension is insufficient There is little knowledge about how listening takes place Comparing it with other language skills, Goh (1997, p.161) states that, “there are fewer insights about the process of listening and the way it is learnt” Similarly, Richards (1985, p.189) says that “there is little direct research on second language listening comprehension”

The literature available on L2 listening includes empirical research (Rubin, 1994; Flowerdew, 1994) as well as theoretical and pedagogical studies (Ur, 1984; Mendelsohn & Rubin, 1995) Research on second-language listening has also attempted to point out the factors that may influence learners‟ comprehension (Dunkel, 1991; Lynch, 1988; Richards, 1985) Grant (1997) chooses four strategies which would help learners to listen to English: activating/building schema, guessing/inferencing/predicting, listening selectively, and negotiating meaning Effective listeniners use background knowledge and relate this pior knowledge or schemata to the new information contained in the spoken text and this will help them to comprehend the text as they process it As Faerch and Kasper (1986, p.264)

put it, “comprehension takes place when input and knowledge are matched against each other.”

The difficulties encountered by EFL learners in listening comprehension have also been pointed out (Hasan, 1993) Yagang (1994) attributes the difficulty of listening comprehension to four sources: the massage, the speaker, the listener and the physical setting Higgins (1995) studied Omani students‟ problems in listening comprehension and found that the factors which facilitate or hinder listening are speech rate, vocabulary, and pronunciation Flowerdew and Miller (1996) studied learners‟ strategies and difficulties in listening to academic lectures They found that students‟ problems were speed of delivery, new terminology and concepts, difficulties in concentrating, and problems related to physical environment Rubin (1994) identified five factors which affect listening comprehension: text characteristics, interlocutor characteristics, task characteristics, listener characteristics and process characteristics Further researches investigated the role

of temporal factors facilitating or inhibiting successful listening (Boyle, 1984; Higgins, 1997)

Theoretical explanations of listening comprehension provide us with clues about the problems which learners face when they listen to a spoken text These insights cannot, however, accounts for exhaustive explanation of these problems As Nunan (1991, p.38) states “theories, ideas, and research are as good as teachers and textbook writers make them Interesting and unexpected things happen in the classroom, and in the final analysis, principles and ideas need to be tested in practice.” Although much information has been provided about listening comprehension, there is still a gap between research theory and classroom practice As Vogely (1995, p.41) states “we still need research that documents empirically the relationship between what theory says and what learners actually know and more importantly do.” To locate the sources of listening comprehension, we need to consider the discourse itself in the context of the classroom

EFL listening Researches on teaching listening have been carried out so far by some candidates of the Department of Post-Graduate Studies at University of Languages and International studies, VietNam National University, Hanoi However, they focused on rather different aspects of teaching listening: Do Thi Thu Thuy (2005) conducted a study

on the obstacles preventing the first year English-major in the Foreign Language Department, Haiphong University from acquiring listening skills Nguyen Minh Tuan (2005) looked at how to exploit video in teaching listening and speaking skills to the non-English major students at pre-intermediate level at his school of Education, National University Nguyen Thi Anh Tuyet (2007) studied on how to improve the methods of teaching listening skills to non-English major students at Haiphong foreign language centre, Haiphong University These studies are similar to the environment that the investigator is doing so she would like to take the advantages of each study and avoid

deficiencies in order to supplement the research on “Factors causing challenges in learning English listening skills faced by first year non – English major students at HaUI”

1.3 Common potential problems in EFL listening comprehension

This section began with a summary of those factors which were given most emphasis in books and articles about listening comprehension, which base their ground

on insights derived from foreign language teaching experience of many years (Penny

Ur, Mary Underwood, Fan Yagang, and Joan Rubin), from the works on reading comprehension (Long, 1989; Dunkel, 1991; Rubin, 1994) and from studies conducted on native language listening comprehension (Carroll, 1977; Watson & Smeltzer, 1984; Samuels, 1994)

Listening comprehension is a process in which the listener constructs meaning out

of the information provided by the speaker (Samuels, 1984) This involves understanding

a speaker‟s accent or pronunciation, his grammar and his vocabulary, and grasping his meaning (Howatt & Dakin, 1974) Morely (1972) provides a broader definition of listening comprehension which includes the process of reauditorizing, extracting vital information, remembering it, and relating it to construct meaning, besides the basic auditory discrimination and aural grammar Considering various aspects of listening comprehension, Underwood (1989) organizes the major listening problems as follows: (1) lack of control over the speed at which speakers speak, (2) not being able to

get things repeated, (3) the listener's limited vocabulary, (4) failure to recognize the

"signals," (5) problems of interpretation, (6) inability to concentrate, and (7) established learning habits Underwood sees these problems as being related to learners' different backgrounds, such as their culture and education

Further research by Samuels (1984) points out that the differences between the spoken features of the learners‟ mother-tongue and the target language can be another factor that hinders the students listening performance He further points out that sometimes the target language differs enough from the listener's language in pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary, and the existence of such differences places additional demands on the listener's processing which can severely interfere with comprehension

In addition, there are other scholars who forwarded factors that are thought to affect foreign language listening comprehension Rubin (1994) identified five factors which affect listening comprehension: text characteristics, interlocutor characteristics, task characteristics, listener characteristics, and process characteristics Yagang (1994) attributes the difficulty of listening comprehension to four sources: the message, the speaker, the listener and the physical setting

1.4 Summary

In summary, the reviewed literature serves as a base of the problems that EFL learners encounter in listening comprehension The previous researchers have investigated different categories of EFL learners in terms of the difficulties they may encounter in listening comprehension However, the researchers have not yet thoroughly studied what problems HaUI first-year non-English majors face in listening comprehension Furthermore, their studies do not focus on the listening factors relating to specific context

of learning and teaching English listening at HaUI It is, therefore, essential for the researcher to fill in the gap by investigating what factors causing challenges to HaUI first-year non-English majors in learning listening so that proper teaching treatments can be adopted to help them overcome these difficulties to become better and effective listeners in English

CHAPTER 2: THE STUDY

This chapter introduces the context of Hanoi University of Industry where the study

is conducted Then it describes the methodologies employed in the study in terms of the research questions, target population and sampling, the data gathering instruments and data analysis

2.1 The context of Hanoi University of Industry

Hanoi University of Industry (HaUI) was officially established in December 2005

on the basis of Hanoi Industrial College, one of the leading vocational colleges in Vietnam

where thousands of skilled workers and engineers are trained every year

HaUI is a big university which is in the process of developing to reach the aim of being one of the great universities of Southeast Asia Have awareness of the importance of English, the university authorities have paid due attention to the matter of improving the quality of teaching and learning English The ultimate aims are specific with the hope to enhance the training quality and increase the standard of graduate students with good job opportunities

2.1.1 Teachers

The English teaching staff in the Department of Foreign Languages consists of 58 teachers whose ages range from 23 to 45 years old Most of the teachers are female, except seven of them All of the teachers hold B.A degrees from different universities in Vietnam

At present, 72% have M.A degree or are doing an M.A course

The academic background of the teachers shows that all of them have been exposure to different teaching methods such as communicative method or learner-centred approach, etc However, most teachers usually employ the traditional method of teaching listening Classes are usually conducted in the form of lectures, with most of the time the teachers play the key role in the classroom, being the main speakers working through the text The teachers explain new words, terms or structures and then guide students to answer warm-up questions Then, they play the tape and check answers from students or correct them Discussions are rarely held due to the limitation of time

2.1.2 Students

In general, the students here are at the age of 18 -22 They are mostly male students, coming from different provinces all over the country The class size is about 50

students each Most of students have studied English at high school; however, the problem

is that most of them do not consider English as their major, so they did not pay much attention to study English at that time This gives us-the teachers a number of work

Besides, English is not their favourite subjects Most of students are not really interested in leaning English due to the fact that they find it difficult to learn and use English skills, especially Listening and Speaking, Writing For illustration, they are familiar with the common teaching methods at secondary and high school with the focus is

on Grammar

2.1.3 Teaching and learning facilities

As presented above, the class size for an English lesson is about 50 students each,

but the classrooms, though being well equipped with a projector, a computer, a cassette player and two loudspeakers at the corner of the room, are designed for about 80 to 100 students classes which are actually too big for an English class of a much smaller size This causes certain problems such as the sounds and the tape or CD quality It is often very noisy and the sounds are unclear, too Another problem is that all students and most

of the teachers who are teaching the course book “New headway Elementary & intermediate” have to use unclear, black and white photocopied books This fact prevents

Pre-them from exploiting colour, photographs and pictures for learning and teaching

2.2 Research questions

The purpose of the study is to find out factors causing challenges in learning English listening faced by the first year non-English major students at HaUI The study, therefore, tries to seek answers to the following questions

1 What factors cause challenges for the first year non-English major students of HaUI

in learning English listening comprehension?

2 Which particular factor poses the most difficulty for the first year non-English major students of HaUI in learning English listening comprehension?

3 What could be done to improve the teaching and learning of English listening comprehension of the non-English major students at HaUI?

2.3 Target population and sampling

This study was carried out with the participation of 10 full-time teachers and 114

freshman students who were teaching and learning English as a foreign language at Hanoi University of Industry The 114 students under investigation were in their first academic year These students were randomly chosen from first year students during the 2009-2010 academic years, belongings to six classes It was very difficult to select a random sample of individuals since the students had already been arranged to different classes In this case, cluster random sampling – which means that instead of randomly selecting the individuals, the investigator randomly selects the groups or classes for investigation Thus, the students chosen in this study could be representative for the whole group of freshmen at HaUI

2.4 Data Gathering Instruments

The instruments used in this study were: (1) student questionnaire, (2) structured interviews with the EFL listening instructor of the subjects, (3) observation of the listening environment, and (4) document analysis These instruments are described in detail below

2.4.1 Student questionnaire

The first instrument which was employed in this study was questionnaire The questionnaire was used to get information about the difficulties the students faced in EFL listening while taking the English listening course at HaUI The questionnaire was designed after a review of the literature (Carroll, 1977; Watson & Smeltzer, 1984; Samuels, 1994; Ur, 1984; Underwood, 1989; Rubin, 1994; Yagang, 1994; Long, 1989; Dunkel, 1991; see also references of this research) about factors that influence listening comprehension Items of the questionnaire were 16 questions (i.e., 12 close-ended and 4 open-ended questions) For the close-ended items in the questionnaire, the researcher used a five-point scale where 1-represents the lowest and 5-represents the highest experience of listening difficulties Here, the numbers 1 to 5 were designated by the adverbs of frequency: „Never‟, „Seldom‟, „Sometimes‟, „Often‟, and „Always‟ respectively The open-ended questions, on the other hand, were designed in a way that the students are able to express their feelings and to add supplementary listening difficulties on the course if there were any that were different from those presented

in the close-ended questions

2.4.2 Teacher interview

The second data gathering instrument which was employed in this study was interview The purpose of the interview was to confirm the information that was obtained through the questionnaire; to obtain data on how the listening difficulties which had been identified through the questionnaire affected the learners‟ listening skill; to obtain information about the reasons behind the learners‟ difficulties of learning English listening; and to find out if there are any other listening difficulties that affect the learners‟ listening skill On the other hand the instructor interview aimed to provide information about her approach in the teaching of the listening course, about the quality of the listening materials, about the support she provided while the learners engaged in listening and the opportunity she gave for the students to practice in the classroom

2.4.3 Classroom observation

The third data gathering instrument which was employed in this study was observation The observation was used to get information about the current physical appearance of the listening environment and the equipment in the classroom The researcher has been teaching in the target institution since 2006 She observed the listening environment to see if any change has been made to the equipments and the machines of the classroom in the past four years In fact, it was important to conduct classroom observation while the course was in progress in order to see how the teaching-learning process of the EFL listening was going on Furthermore, the researcher also tried to find out this information with the interview of the course instructors Valuable information was obtained from the interviews regarding the teaching-learning process In addition, the researcher had observed similar students for two years while she was offering the same listening section in the same listening environment at HaUI Her experiences add invaluable information about the teaching-learning context under investigation

2.4.4 Document analysis

The fourth data gathering instrument which was employed in this study was document analysis According to the Instructional Assessment Resources (IAR) Website of The University of Texas at Austin: Document analysis is the systematic examination of

instructional documents such as syllabi, assignments, lecture notes, and course evaluation results in order to identify instructional needs and challenges and describe an instructional activity The focus of the analysis should be a critical examination, rather than a mere description, of the documents The analysis should include questions about the instructional purpose of the document; how teachers and students are using it, and how it is (or is not) contributing to learning

Document analysis works best when the purpose is to gain insight into an instructional activity or approach… Although, it may have some limitations such as:

 Documents or materials may be incomplete or missing

 Data is restricted to what already exists

 Does not evaluate current student opinion, needs, or satisfaction

This tool was used with the current course syllabus, assignments, lecture notes, and course evaluation results “to gain insight into” the factors that cause challenges for the first year non-English major students of HaUI in learning English listening comprehension from the perspective of teaching documents

2.5 Data Analysis

The data obtained through the questionnaire, the interview, the observation and the document analysis were organized and analyzed While the data obtained from the questionnaire and the document analyses were analyzed quantitatively (using percentage and numbers) and qualitatively (using the three themes as posed in the three research questions), the data obtained from the interview, the observation were analyzed qualitatively with the help of a checklist cross tabulating cases and themes to identify the listening problems that affected the EFL learners of Hanoi University of Industry, thus, answering the three research questions

CHAPTER 3: RESULTS

This chapter presents and discusses the results of the study The first section discusses the results of the document analysis The second section presents the analysis and the findings from questionnaire data The third section discusses analysis of data from the instructor interview The forth section reports the data of the observation of the listening environment Finally, a brief summary of the results will be given

3.1 Results of the document analysis

3.1.1 The English program for non-English major students at HaUI

At HaUI, English is taught as a compulsory subject and has been considered as a pre-requisite for graduation of non-English major students because it is considered to be useful both for students‟ study at university and for their future jobs The English training program is divided into two main parts: General English and English for Specific Purposes

Of the total 5 semesters with 375 periods of formal class instruction, the first 4 semesters are designed as General English course to help students master English at pre-intermediate level The last semester is devoted to introduce English for Specific Purposes content with

45 periods of class instruction

The aim of this General English course is that at the end of the course, students will

be able to acquire basic grammar and vocabulary items as well as the four language skills

to communicate well To achieve the aim, the New Headway series (New Headway Elementary and New Headway Pre-intermediate) by John and Soars (2000) are used as the

textbooks Following the General English course, English for Specific Purpose courses have been given to students of all faculties with the main aim to enable students to read their subject matter materials in English effectively

In the first semester of the academic year, the textbook New Headway Elementary

is used for the first year non-English major students having passed the placement test before Then comes New Headway Pre-intermediate in the second and third semester Its aims are to provide students with thorough coverage of basic grammatical and lexical items and to develop all the four language skills in order to improve the communicative skills Also these four skills are integrated in simple daily conversations so as to engage and motivate the students

It is notable that the English program in the second semester of non-English major freshmen at HaUI comprise two different sections: teaching English offline (at classroom) and online (on the internet) at the same time The first one consisting of 65 periods focuses

on teaching seven first units in New Headway Pre-intermediate This involves the participation of both the teacher and students‟ activities at the classroom Whereas the second section with 25 periods just involves the students‟ activities outside classroom The

second semester non-English major freshmen are asked to study English online at specially-designed website for HaUI students: http://haui.vietnamlearning.vn/

3.1.2 The website http://haui.vietnamlearning.vn/

This is a modern, easily-used English learning website designed for only English major students at HaUI It is not only designed in a friendly way to the user but it also has a variety of available learning-assisted tools such as: dictionary of vocabulary, word-family, grammar revision, pronunciation, speaking lab, etc At this website, students have to do exercises in seven units which are respectively designed to seven first units in New Headway Pre-intermediate To some extents, those exercises are kinds of supplementary tasks for the text book of New Headway Pre-intermediate In fact, each unit

non-in English onlnon-ine program contanon-ins two compulsory exercises and two optional ones It should also be noted that those exercises involve four English skills: reading, speaking, writing and listening This means that the non-English major freshmen are able to practise their listening comprehension as many times as they want and at several places where there

is an internet access They can make full use of the learning-assisted tools available at that website to improve their English and take the advantage of other linked websites for their further study However, the listening and speaking tasks are quite limited; most of the exercises focus on reading and writing skill Another problem is how to check and control students‟ online learning The answers to this question are being studied in another research in English Department at HaUI In the scope of this paper, the writer aims at studying the challenges in listening comprehension faced by non-English major freshmen

in the textbook of New headway series

3.1.3 The textbook of “New headway Elementary and Pre-intermediate”

The textbook of New Headway Elementary and Pre-intermediate by John & Liz Soars were published by Oxford University Press in 2000 Each textbook comprises 1 students‟ book, 1 students‟ workbook, 1 teacher‟s book with extra photocopiable material,

1 photocopiable teacher‟s resource book, 2 cassettes/ CDs, 1 optional students‟ workbook cassette/ CD

At HaUI, the text book “New Headway Elementary and Pre-intermediate” are introduced to the first-year non-English major students Each text book contains 14 units

and each unit consists of Vocabulary, Grammar, Reading, Listening, Writing, Speaking, and Everyday English The total time for these materials is 180 periods (=12 credits) divided equally into two terms of the academic year Each week, students have 4 periods and each one lasts 45 minutes Each unit lasts 8 to 10 periods, depending on the length and difficulty of its content It is notable that there is a “stop and check” section after every four unit which gives a review of the previous four units as well as a progress test The other supplementary materials are also complied in the textbook of New Headway: the tape scripts of listening section, the grammar references, the word list, the workbook and workbook answer key Those can benefit students in both learning English listening in class and at home

3.1.4 The types and requirements of listening comprehension activities for

non-English major students at HaUI

The content of listening comprehension section is often presented in the form of interviews, phone dialogues, conversations, and mono-talk In my opinion, the listening comprehension sections in “New Headway Pre-intermediate” are quite long with a lot of new words, phrases and structures This perhaps prevents students from comprehending the text correctly Besides, the speaking speed is quite fast and with a lot of hesitation, pauses and redundancies, etc This troubles students in the comprehension process The next feature is about types of exercises Each listening comprehension section often begins with some topic-related questions for students to brainstorm and discuss After that students will have to complete some exercises given in the book such as questions answering (both long and short answer questions), true/ false, gap-filling, matching, correcting mistakes etc In the end, students will have follow-up questions which are normally pair or group discussion about the topic or related topics Such activities require students to listen to the whole text and then do the different tasks However, those kinds of listening tasks require students long answers rather than multiple choice answers or short answers This means that in order to fulfil the listening tasks in the textbook, non-English major students have to be good at note-taking skill On the other hand, types of listening tasks in final exams are much more different In fact, non-English major students are asked to do an English final test including listening section with 10 multiple choice questions and 10 True-False sentences which are much more different from listening tasks in the textbook of New headway series This is such a big

problem for not only the learners but also the teachers at HaUI As a result, it is doubtful whether the objectives of the listening course to help the students to improve listening skills, use listening strategies effectively, build confidence in listening, and get high score

in the listening section at the final exams can be achieved or not

3.2 Analysis of the Questionnaire Data

As mentioned in chapter one, the purpose of this study was to identify the listening difficulties that affected the EFL learners of Hanoi University of Industry To this end, a questionnaire was administered to the first year non-English major students The close-ended and the open-ended items in the questionnaire required students to identify the listening difficulties they faced in the English listening lessons Furthermore the students were asked to identify the listening barrier that poses the most difficulty for them The responses to the questionnaire were gathered Then, the data obtained from the questionnaire was analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively

The study identified factors that the students believed had influenced their EFL learners‟ listening comprehension These have been further organized into four categories according to their common characteristics: text, speaker, listener, and environment In fact, it is difficult to clearly distinguish between speaker, listener, and text factors because they are interrelated, and one factor can be associated with the other one; for example, „pronunciation‟ is a speaker factor if the way the speaker pronounces interferes with the listener‟s comprehension, at the same time it can be a listener factor if it interferes with the listener‟s comprehension to the fact that the listener may fail to grasp the pronunciation However, to make the analysis easily readable, the researcher used the characteristics or categories suggested by Yagang (1994) and Rubin (1994) Based on that categorizating scheme, the data were divided into four categories: listener, text, speaker, and environment factors Furthermore, questions that refer to factors related

to the listeners, to the message, to the speakers, and to the environment were put together under their respective categories Finally, they were tabulated and presented as follows

3.2.1 The listening text

The listening text itself may be the main source of listening comprehension problems In particular, unfamiliar words, difficult grammatical structures, and the length

of the spoken text may present students with listening problems (Table-1a, Table-1b, and Table-1c)

Table-1: Factors related to listening texts

1 I found it difficult to understand the listening text because of unfamiliar words

2 I was confused with the complex grammatical structures of sentences in the listening texts

3 I felt tired and couldn‟t focus on listening to long spoken texts

4 I had difficulty in understanding the listening text with unfamiliar topics

Table-1 shows factors related to listening texts Let us see them in detail in the following four tables: Table-1a, Table-1b and Table-1c

To make the analysis easier, item number 1, 2 are presented and analyzed together

on Table-1a because all of them are factors directly related to bottom-up processing strategy in which learners make use of the analysis of words and sentence structure to enhance their understanding of the spoken text

Table-1a: Learners‟ responses that refer to listening problems related to unfamiliar

words, difficult grammatical structures

The second question elicited information on whether complex grammatical structures interfered with the learners‟ listening comprehension The great majority of the students 95/114 (83.33%) have responded that difficult grammatical structures (sometimes, often, always) interfered with their listening comprehension

From the result obtained above, it is possible to generalize that unfamiliar words, and complex grammatical structures interfere with the listening comprehension of the great majority of the students This confirms Rubin‟s opinion (1998) which shows that the difficulty in listening comprehension is partly due to the structural component of the text This is possible that students relied on the bottom-up processing strategy in which they make use of the analysis of words and sentence structure to enhance their understanding of the spoken text, and this might be due to the inadequacy of the top-down processing strategy in which learners make use of their previous knowledge for understanding the text

Table-1b: Learners‟ responses that refer to listening problems related to long spoken text

Table-1c: Learners‟ responses that refer to listening problems related to unfamiliar topic

From the above result, therefore, it seems reasonable to generalize that unfamiliar topic hinders the listening comprehension of the majority of the students This is also consistent with Nuttall‟s declaration (1996) which shows that a more interesting requirement to understand a text is that the learner should share certain assumptions about the subject to the fact that students construct their understanding of the subject they listen

on the basis of their experiences; problems arise, therefore, when there is a mismatch between the subject and the previous experience of the learner

In general, Table-1a, Table-1b, and Table-1c indicate that the listening text itself can be the main source of listening comprehension problems In particular, unfamiliar words, complex grammatical structures, long spoken text, and unfamiliar topic pose listening difficulties to EFL learners

3.2.2 Listener factors

Listeners‟ problems may arise from their inability to use appropriate listening strategies, inability to grasp pronunciation, and the demand of other skills at the expense

of listening (See Table-2a, Table-2b and Table-2c)

Table 2: Factors related to listeners