Những vấn đề gặp phải trong việc dạy và học kỹ năng nghe hiểu tiếng Anh của giảng viên và sinh viên năm thữ nhất không chuyên tại trường đại học Sao Đỏ và một s

This study attempt to present listening comprehension problems encountered by lecturers and first-year students at Sao Do University at the same time pointing out the factors affecting l

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

MỘT SỐ GIẢI PHÁP KHẮC PHỤC)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 6014.0111

HANOI – 2013

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

MỘT SỐ GIẢI PHÁP KHẮC PHỤC)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 6014.0111

Supervisor: Dr Duong Thi Nu

HANOI – 2013

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all, I would like to express my sincere thanks to my supervisor, Dr Dương Thị Nụ from Faculty of English Language Teacher Education, University of Languages International Studies for her precious advices, insightful comments, patient guidance, criticism, corrections and support throughout my research Without her help, this thesis would not have been accomplished

I would also like to thank all the lecturers of the Department of Post Graduate Studies, University of Languages International Studies for their useful lectures and materials which are of great values to my thesis

I am also grateful to my colleagues, the non-English freshmen at Sao Do University for their assistance and valuable information during the process of preparing this research

Finally, I wish to thank all the support and encouragement of my family in time

of difficulty and frustration

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ABSTRACT

Listening plays an important role in communication as it is said that, of the total time spent on communicating, listening takes up 40-50%; speaking, 25-30%; reading, 11-16%; and writing, about 9% (Mendelsohn, 1994 This study attempt to present listening comprehension problems encountered by lecturers and first-year students at Sao Do University at the same time pointing out the factors affecting learners‟ difficulties and the listening teaching difficulties The thesis is based on data collected from survey questionnaires One hundred students and fifteen lecturers at Sao Do University have taken part in this study In addition, interviews and class observation were applied as well to enhance the reliability and validity of the study The results showed that learners encountered various kinds of listening problems which were divided into four categories: students‟ linguistic difficulties in learning listening, students‟ listening difficulties related to the listening text, factors related to the speakers, and factors related to the listeners From the findings of the research, some recommendations were presented to help them overcome the difficulties in learning and teaching

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART I: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aims of the study 1

3 Research Question 2

4 Scope of the study 2

5 Significance of the study 2

6 Methods of the study 3

7 Design of the study 3

PART II: THE DEVELOPMENT 5

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1.1 Theoretical background of listening 5

1.2 Potential problems in learning and teaching listening 8

1.3 Previous studies on listening difficulties in Vietnam 12

1.4 Summary 13

CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 15

2.1 The setting of the study 15

2.2 Participants 15

2.3 Data collection instruments 16

CHAPTER 3: THE STUDY 18

3.1 Survey questionaires 18

3.2 Interview 28

3.3 Class observation 30

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CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDTATIONS 32

4.1 Findings 32

4.2 Recommendation 35

PART III: CONCLUSION 40

REFERENCE 42 APPENDICES I APPENDIX 1 I APPENDIX 2 IV APPENDIX 3 VI APPENDIX 4 IX INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR TEACHERS IX APPENDIX 5 X

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TABLE OF CHARTS

Chart 1 Learners‟ perceptions of listening difficulties related to listening text

Chart 2a Learners‟ perceptions of their linguistic difficulties in learning listening Chart 2b Learners‟ perceptions of learning difficulties related to listeners

Chart 3: Learners‟ perceptions of their listening difficulties related to the speakers Chart 4 Learners‟ perceptions of their listening difficulties related to the listening environment

Chart 5 Teachers‟ assessment of listening task in the textbook

Chart 6 Teachers‟ perception of students‟ attitudes towards listening lessons

Chart 7 Learners‟ expectations towards their teachers and teachers‟ opinions about how can help their students

it is not the case at present In recent years, communicational skills such as listening and speaking skills have been paid more attentions since they are the major key to international communication Therefore, students‟ communicative competence has been stressed At Sao Do University (SDU), as most other universities in Vietnam, communicative approach has been more and more applied in teaching and learning English; However, despite the teachers‟ and students‟ efforts, the students especially the non-English major freshmen often have a lot of difficulties in learning listening comprehension Most of students find listening so challenging for them to learn well while teachers find it so difficult to motivate students, make them eager and interested in listening lessons After careful observation and practical teaching, I realized that the reasons for this situation seem to be popular to Vietnamese students such as lack of vocabulary, anxiety during listening, accents of speakers, etc These problems make students demotivated in learning listening Moreover, a certain number of researches have been conducted to investigate the problems in learning and teaching at SDU; none of them is about listening skills

As a teacher of English, therefore, it is essential and motivating for me to conduct

a research on the topic: “The Problems faced by teachers and first year non- English major students at Sao Do University in teaching and learning English listening skills and some solutions” with the hope to make a small contribution

towards improving the quality of teaching and learning listening skill at SDU

2 Aims of the study

Within the framework of minor thesis, the study is aimed:

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- To investigate the problems that first year non - English major students of SDU encountered in learning listening skills

- To identify factors causing the students‟ problems in learning listening skills

- To investigate the areas of difficulties faced by teachers at Sao Do University

in teaching listening skills

- To provide some suggested solutions to help students and teachers overcome these difficulties, improve the quality of teaching and learning listening comprehension at SDU

3 Research Question

In order to achieve these aims, the study has three research questions as follows:

1 What are the problems faced by teachers and first year non – English major students of Sao Do University in teaching and learning listening skills?

2 What factors cause these difficulties to students and teachers?

3 What are suggested solutions to improve teaching and learning listening skill?

The study; therefore, focuses on seeking the answers for aforementioned questions

4 Scope of the study

As a Ukrainian scholar once said “learning a second language is a long and complex undertaking” Thus, problems in learning and teaching a second language are unavoidable In the scope of this study, the writer„s typical purpose is to investigate the difficulties in learning and teaching to non - English major freshmen

of SDU The study also offers some pedagogical recommendations to improve the current situation

5 Significance of the study

The study provides an insight into problems in teaching and learning listening comprehension at SDU Its findings may benefit both learners and instructors For learners, they can perceive of their own listening difficulties; then, ascertain what should be the best learning strategies in the future Gradually, with the help of

6 Methods of the study

This study will be conducted in quantitative methods Survey questionnaires will

be employed to collect data for reliable result with the participation of 100 first year non English - major students and 15 English teachers at SDU In addition, informal interviews and class observation will also be exploited to collect further information The data will be processed and analyzed carefully in order to draw out the final conclusions

7 Design of the study

This is the focus of the study and consists of three parts:

- Part I: Introduction - presents the rationale, the aims, the scope, the

significance, the methods and the design of the study

- Part II: Development - consists of 4 chapters:

Chapter 1: Literature review - provides some theoretical background about

listening comprehension, teaching listening skills, and problem with listening activities Moreover, it reviews previous studies on listening problems encountered

by second language learners in Vietnam context

Chapter 2: Methodology - in this part, the introduction of research method

including research questions, data collection instruments are presented

Chapter 3: The study - shows the procedure of carrying on the research and

presents the data analysis result from survey questionnaires, interviews and class observation

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Chapter 4: Findings and Recommendations - reports and discusses the findings

obtained from the data, then proposes some solutions for teaching and learning improvement

- Part III: Conclusion - review of the findings, implications and limitations

of the study and some suggestions for further research

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PART II: THE DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1.1 Theoretical background of listening

1.1.1 Definition of listening comprehension

For many years, a lot of different proposed definitions of listening have been provided One of definitions we should consider is that of Emmert (in Emmert, 1994)

According to Emmert (1994) Listening is more than merely hearing words Listening is an active process by which students receive, construct meaning from and respond to spoken and or nonverbal message

Underwood (1989, 1) simplified the definition of listening to "the activity of paying attention to and trying to get meaning from something we hear” Mendelsohn (1994) defines listening comprehension as ―the ability to understand the spoken language of native speakers.''

Meanwhile, Buck (2001, 3) highlights the role of learners as interpreter who use both linguistic cues and nonlinguistic knowledge to achieve full comprehension This point of view shares the ideas of Rubin Rubin (1995) conceives listening as an active process in which listeners interpret information which comes from auditory and visual cues in order to define what is going on and what the speakers are trying

To sum up, each definition reflects its author‟s own point of view; however, it is widely admitted that listening comprehension is not merely the process of a

to warm up their non-native language skills before doing an exercise” These activities provide students with the necessary information so that they can listen more effectively This stage also can serve as the tool to catch student‟s attraction to the listening text Davies and Pearse (2000, 78) list out a variety of pre- listening activities such as: Discussing a relevant picture, relevant experiences In regard to topic, we can design a variety of activities; for instance, associating ideas or vocabulary with the topic, predicting information about topic and writing the questions about topic

Teachers should base on the level of students to choose the suitable pre – listening tasks for the listening lesson

1.1.2.2 While-listening

While-listening activities are what students are asked to do during the time they are listening to the text As far as the listening comprehension is concerned, the purpose of these activities is to help learners understand the text and develop the skills of eliciting messages from spoken language (Underwood, 1989)

The While-listening activities should be interesting, so that the students can become interested in listening The origin of interest partly comes from the topic and the content of what was said Thus, the listening text should be carefully chosen with the concern of the possibilities for varying the levels of difficulty and the

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inconvenience of carrying out activities as well as the type of listening learning: self- studying or class learning as Underwood (1989, 74-78) states In addition, Davis (2000, 78) suggests some while - listening activities as follows:

- Identify the exact topic, or an aspect of it

- Note two to four pieces of information

activities are extensions of the work done at the pre-listening and while-listening

stages and some relate only loosely to the listening text itself

Davies (2000, 78) provides some ideas for post-listening stage as below:

- Give opinions

- Relate similar experiences

- Role-play a similar interaction

- Write a brief report

- Write a similar text

- Debate the topic

1.1.3 Strategies of listening comprehension

Listening strategies are technique or activities that contribute directly to the comprehension and recall of listening input It can be classified by how the listener process the input

Top-down strategies are listener based; the listener taps into background

knowledge of the topic, the situation or context, the type of text, and the language This background knowledge activates a set of expectations that help the listener to

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interpret what is heard and anticipate what will come next Top-down strategies include: listening for the main idea, predicting, drawing inferences, and summarizing

Bottom-up strategies are text based; the listener relies on the language in the

message, that is, the combination of sounds, words, and grammar that creates meaning Bottom-up strategies include: listening for specific details, recognizing cognates and recognizing word-order patterns

Strategic listeners also use metacognitive strategies to plan, monitor, and evaluate

their listening They plan by deciding which listening strategies will serve best in a particular situation Moreover, they monitor their comprehension and the effectiveness of the selected strategies They also evaluate by determining whether they have achieved their listening comprehension goals and whether the combination of listening strategies selected was an effective one However, to most

of Vietnamese learners are poor strategic listeners Hence, teaching listening seems

to be more challenging compared to that of other skills

1.2 Potential problems in learning and teaching listening

1.2.1 Situational problems

1.2.1.1 Size of the class and teaching facilities

The normal class size in Vietnam especially the class of non – foreign language majors is really a problem for foreign language learning The average number/quantity of students in one class at tertiary level ranges from 47 to 54 students, too much bigger than that of an ideal foreign language class of 15 ~ 20 This also affects the teaching and learning results Another situational problem originates from teaching facilities How can we have a successful listening lesson if the teaching facilities don‟t agree with you? The lack of listening materials, or listening files of poor quality, old – fashioned cassette players, out of date textbooks… can result in teaching and learning problems

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1.2.2 Listening materials problems

1.2.2.1 Familiarity of the topic

Listing topics are so varied, ranging from daily life topics, to travelling, economic

or even political topics This variety makes students so difficult in listening As

Rixon (1986) mentioned in his books named “Developing listening skills” “Even

someone with a minimal grasp of a foreign language can follow a conversation or a talk on a subject that is familiar to him as he has familiar concepts and ideas about that topic in his mind already, so he can fill in any gaps in comprehension In contrast, someone with a good command of a language may experience difficulty when listening to something that is new or strange to him Even native speakers can suffer from this” For this reason, unfamiliar topic may be considered as the most troublesome factor to the learning listening

1.2.2.2 Strange sounds and different accents

As the matter of fact, Vietnamese students have a lot of problems with some

English sounds such as the „θ‟sound There are some English sounds which do not

exist in Vietnamese and this fact can cause difficulties to Vietnamese learners Moreover, it is not only the sounds which cause comprehension problems but also the way they vary in speech In English, the most important phonological changes are: assimilation (changing sounds), elision (losing sounds), and intrusion (adding

or joining sounds) Listeners‟ lack of phonological knowledge might lead to reduced comprehension (Buck, 2001)

Another “obvious source of difficulties for learners” as Rixon (1986, 37) states is

„native speakers‟ pronunciation‟ It is so clear to notice that many learners can recognize English words quite well in written form, but they fail to understand them

in spoken form as they are used to hearing a clear and careful pronunciation of the words; thus when there are some types of changes in sounds such as assimilation or elision, the learners find it difficult to recognize Apart from unfamiliar sounds, the difference of accents also makes students confused in listening Buck (2001, 35) considers accent as the “potentially important variable in listening comprehension”

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He also confirms that “unfamiliar accents can make comprehension almost impossible for listeners” Thus, it is the role of teachers to support students with valuable instructions and flexible teaching method in order to overcome these difficulties

1.2.2.3 Speech rate

Despite the fact that we can cope with missing whole chunks of speech having a conversation on in our own language, many people do not seem to be able to transfer that skill easily to a second language Thus, a fast speaker usually causes a fear for the foreign listener as they cannot catch his or her speech rate; they feel that the utterances disappear before they can sort them out (Underwood, 1989) It is really the case in my university when the students regularly ask for the pause or short stop during listening because they fail to follow the speed The reason for this failure are analyzed by Underwood (1989) as “they are so busy working out the meaning of one part that they miss the next part or they simply ignore a whole chunk because they cannot sort it out quickly enough” One method of tackling this

is to show them how to identify the important words that they need to listen out for and it belongs to teachers‟ role

1.2.3 Learners’ potential problems

1.2.3.1 Learners’ bad learning habit

One of the bad learning habits of second language learners is trying to understand every word during listening They don‟t have the habit to focus on the key words for comprehension This is one aspect of the problem above that all second language learners have experienced at one time or another This often happens when they concentrate too much on finding the meaning of a word, therefore they may lose the thread of what is being said by the time they remember what it means Sometimes, students are easy to be distracted by outside environment As a teacher, we can reduce this problem with pre – listening activities and by getting students to talk about the same topic first to bring the relevant vocabulary for that topic Besides, we instruct listening strategies For the

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concentration problem, a flexible teaching method is strongly advisable, take for example varying the topics for listening, designing interesting tasks and activities…

1.2.3.2 Low English proficiency

Apart from the bad learning habit, the low proficiency of learners also affect the overall result of learning One of the common drawbacks of Vietnamese learners

is the lack of linguistic and cultural knowledge of the target language; therefore, a longer time for language acquisition is required in this case Besides, it is quite easy for low – proficient learners to feel bored and become anxious before listening Perceiving this fact, it is necessary for teachers to provide students with interesting warm-up activities or various pre – listening tasks In addition, contextualizing the text is also a good idea to reduce learners‟ anxiety To that end, the listening tasks should be simple and appropriate as well

1.2.3.3 Lack of vocabulary and grammar structures

It is not really a difficult task to guess the meaning of a word or phrase in the mother tongue; however, this task seems to be a difficult one for second language learners Thus, the shortage of vocabulary or grammar structure is one of the major obstacles in learning listening The reason is just simple as Underwood (1989) states

“for foreign language learners, an unknown word can be a barrier causing them to stop and think about the meaning of the word and making them miss the next part of the speech” As the result, they are left behind and totally lost

1.2.3.4 Low motivation

According to Gardner (1985) “the relationship between attitudes, motivation and

second language achievement is complex; they always interact and influence each other” Meanwhile, listening and speaking are considered as difficult skills in second language acquisition by Vietnamese learners Being a teacher at SDU, the writer has discovered quite many problems which students encountered in listening practicing Students often feel bored and want to quit whenever they are stuck in difficulties and learning problems They also get discouraged when they fail to complete the task again and again Gradually, they are demotivated in learning listening Hence,

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it is advisable for teachers to “help students see how successful they have been in doing the task” Hedge (2000, 244) The combination of a variety of listening materials, visual aids and game in class room are recommendations for teachers in this case

1.2.3.5 Fatigue and concentration

It is undeniable that concentration plays an important role in learning especially

in listening Only a minute of distraction during listening can result in wholly misunderstanding of the listening text “Even the shortest break in attention can seriously impair comprehension” Underwood (1989, 19) However, concentration capability in listening of foreign language learners is not so good Most of them will easily feel tired of listening for a long time According to Ur (1984), reading, writing and speaking are also tiring, but at least the learner can set his own pace and makes breaks when he wants; in listening, the pace is set by the speaker and the breaks may not occur when the listeners need Despite common and interesting listening topics, students still find listening tiring and stressful as they have to try hard to catch the speed of speakers

1.3 Previous studies on listening difficulties in Vietnam

Listening plays an important role in communication as it is said that, of the total time spent on communicating, listening takes up 40-50%; speaking, 25-30%; reading, 11-16%; and writing, about 9% (Mendelsohn, 1994) If you cannot hear it well you may find it so difficult to communicate naturally with other people In the process of second language acquisition it should be noted that the learner‟s perception of their listening problems and strategies can affect their comprehension both positively and negatively (Wenden, 1986) Therefore, it is advisable to find out their listening problems which cause difficulties to them in order to improve their English listening skills

In Vietnam, some studies have been conducted on EFL listening even though the available research on second-language listening comprehension is insufficient in comparison with other skills These studies share the finding that Vietnamese

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students have many difficulties in learning listening; however, each researcher has different suggestions and solutions to overcome these obstacle Nguyen Thi Anh Tuyet (2007) studied on how to improve the methods of teaching listening skills to non – English major at Hai Phong foreign language center, Hai Phong Universtiy Dang Thi Hong Nhung (2010) conducted the study on the difficulties faced by teachers in teaching listening to non – English major students at HaUI Nguyen Thi Minh Hanh (2010) who share research context with Hong Nhung investigated the factors causing challenges in learning listening skills faced by first-year non-English major students at Hanoi University of Industry However, these two studies

do not suggest any solutions Mai Thi Thu Trang (2010) studied the reality of teaching and learning listening skills to first-year non-English major students at Phuong Dong University - Problems and solutions

The previous studies mentioned above pointed out some certain problems in learning listening regarding to vocabulary, pronunciation, speech rate and learners‟ anxiety Some solutions have been given including using game and music in pre-listening activities, combining various strategies in teaching listening To some extent, these studies share similar studying context with that the writer is doing, so she would like to take advantage of each study in order to avoid the deficiencies in her research

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that come from the learners themselves have been discussed in detail and closely with the actual learning listening situation in Vietnam

Next, some previous studies related to listening problems are introduced

To sum up, a necessary theoretical background has been provided in this chapter for the present study to look into the listening obstacles that SDU first year non - English major students meet in learning as well as the teaching difficulties of SDU English teachers so that some treatments can be adopted to help improve the quality

of teaching and learning listening comprehension

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CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This chapter will introduce the context of Sao Do University (including teachers and students as the participants) where the study has been conducted and methodology employed in this study

2.1 The setting of the study

This study has been conducted at Sao Do University, Hai Duong province and limited to non – English major freshmen

2.2 Participants

2.2.1 Teachers

This study was carried out with the participation of 15 teachers at the Faculty of foreign languages at SDU All of them are Vietnamese and their ages range from twenty five to sixty years old They all have good academic background with the distinguished rank in B.A degree At present, the number of M.A teachers accounts for 90% of the total 15 out of total 20 teachers are assigned to teach English to the first year non-English major students After a quick observation, I realize that all listening classes are conducted in form of a fifty- minute lecture with most of the time teachers as the main speakers Methodologically, most of them follow the traditional teaching method

2.2.2 Students

A hundred students of first year non-English major students are at the age of 18

to 21 They come from different provinces in the North of Vietnam These students were chosen randomly from about 2000 first year students The study was conducted when they were in their first semester of the first year at SDU Most of students have studied English at high school; however, their English proficiency is not the same Besides, some of them only consider English as the sub – subject, so only little attention has been paid to English learning Some of them even feel afraid

of learning English in particular and foreign language in general They fail to

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prepare a good state of mind before English class However, they all share the similar point of being good at grammar other than language skills

2.3 Data collection instruments

As aforementioned, quantitative method in form of survey questionnaires are mainly employed in this study to find out listening comprehension problems experienced by first-year students and teachers at Sao Do University This instrument was applied to both students and teachers

In the first phase, the group of subjects for questionnaire was constituted by 100 first year non - English major students In order to increase the reliability and validity of the research study, at the same time, gain in-depth, rich data information, and a random sampling procedure will be applied also

Basing on the scores calculated in the questionnaires for teachers, five teachers will be chosen as interviewees for the second step

2.3.1 Survey questionnaires

Questionnaire for students was originally designed in English then translated into Vietnamese so that the students would fully understand the requirements It consisted of three parts with different purposes Part one aimed at obtaining some background information of the subjects including their age, gender, and the number

of years they had been learning English as well as their major Part two was designed to investigate the difficulties they encounter during learning listening and their expectation from teachers would be presented for selection in part three Unlike the students‟ questionnaire, the teachers‟ are all in English without translation It aimed to find out the difficulties the teachers faced during teaching, their comments on current textbooks and their own solutions for them

2.3.2 Interviews

The second data gathering instrument is interview The purpose of interview was

to confirm and double check the information obtained by questionnaires Five out of

In short, aforementioned content is mainly about the methodology of this study,

or in other words, it discusses the actual context, participants as well as the instruments of this study Chapter 3 will deal with data analysis of the study

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CHAPTER 3: THE STUDY

This chapter deals with the procedure of which data was processed and analyzed The answers and perceptions of students and teachers at SDU in response to the questionnaires and interviews would be categorized and analyzed accordingly For the precision and convenience in analysis, the result would be converted into percentage

3.1 Survey questionnaires

3.1.1 Questionnaire for students

The purpose of this study was to identify the listening problems faced by teachers and first year non – English major students of Sao Do University in teaching and learning listening The combination of questionnaires, interviews; classroom observation helped the researcher gather the essential and useful information which was analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively, then, divided into four main categories: listening text, speaker, and listener (learner) and studying environment However, we cannot deny the fact that it is a very complicated job to distinguish these categories because of their interrelation to each other The learners may claim that because of too many new words in listening text, they cannot tell what it is about; hence, it is the listening text that interferes with their listening comprehension Meanwhile, it can be learner‟s problem that make the listening text incomprehensive because of their lack of vocabulary and grammar structure Being aware of this complication, and in order to make the analysis reliable, the researcher followed Yagang and Rubin (1994) to divide the data into four categories namely: text, listener, speaker and environment For the sake of readability, the options were arranged in that aforementioned order accordingly

3.1.1.1Problems related to listening text

The listening text itself may be the main source of listening comprehension problems due to unfamiliar topics, complicated vocabulary and grammatical structures, lengthy speech The chart below shows how the listening text challenges students of SDU

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3.1.1.2 Problems related to listeners

The problems of listeners may result in their inability to select inappropriate learning strategies, incompetence to grasp the pronunciation and the in ability to employ the 5 sub component skills in learning effectively The difficulties of students in learning listening caused by factors related to the listeners themselves are presented in chart 2a and 2b as follows:

Chart 2a Learners’ perceptions of their linguistic difficulties in learning listening

From chart 2a, we can easily find that most of the students admitted that they had troubles with vocabulary in listening (43% often, 30% always) In terms of sound, the chart shows that 43% of the students often could not recognize familiar words when they were in spoken form More than half of the students found it difficult to recognize key words in the listening texts while it is so surprised to find out that 16% students did not have any trouble with background knowledge The result seems to be on contrary to the findings above on the importance of the topic in listening text This matter will be taken in detailed discussion in the part of class observation and teacher interview

The data in chart 2b shows that a high percentage of students (47%) reached an agreement that they often easily got distracted during listening Only 2% claimed that they never experienced distraction in listening lessons Anxiety and tiredness is also a serious source of difficulty to students with 45% often and 11% always

A large number of students also confessed that they didn‟t have much interest in listening lessons 30% of students claimed that they often felt unmotivated in listening while the rate of “sometimes” and “always” of this category also account

3.1.1.3 Problems related to speakers

Speakers can also be a source of listening comprehension problems because of some speaker – related factors: fast speech rate, different accent, number of speakers in a conversation The chart below shows how the speaker – related factors challenges students of SDU

Chart 3: Learners’ perceptions of their listening difficulties related to the speakers

Chart 3 reveals the students‟ difficulties related to speakers in learning As we can see from the chart, a half of students often could not keep up with the speakers‟ speed None of participants found it an easy job and never had trouble with it The findings show that speech rate is the most troublesome speaker-related factor to students

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A large number of students (42% often) responded that they could not listen effectively when the accent in the recording was unfamiliar with them 43 students out of 100 students admitted that they always or sometimes found it difficult to recognize the word they knew because of the speakers‟ pronunciation These figures make it possible to rank “accent” the second troublesome speaker – related factor Meanwhile, the matter of number of speakers deserves to be ranked the third interfering listening comprehension problem when 14% of students never had any difficulties in listening to the recordings of many speakers The number of students always found it problematic only accounts for 16% equivalent to the minority of participants

The result obtained shows that the speech rate is the biggest interfering listening comprehension factor which makes listening difficult to students in term of speaker – related factor In addition, different accents should also be taken in consideration

to find the solutions for the listening problems

3.1.1.4 Problems related to listening environment

The environmental factors can also have some given influence on listening comprehension In particular, the poor quality of listening files or audio players, time allowance limitation and class size can be regarded as the most visible listening environment factor