An investigation into difficulties in learning English listeing skill at Tan Ky high school

In learning a foreign language, it is more and more important to learn this skill.Everybody knows that in order to listen to a message is not as simple as hearing it, so the listener has

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING

Nghệ An, 2014STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP

I hereby certify that the thesis entitled

AN INVESTIGATION INTO DIFFICULTIES IN LEARNING ENGLISH

LISTENING SKILL AT TAN KY HIGH SCHOOL

is the result of my own research for the Degree of Master of Education at VinhUniversity I confirm that this thesis has not been submitted for any other degrees

Author

Nguyễn Thị Thuần

Listening skill is one of the most necessary skills to communicate in the reallife In learning a foreign language, it is more and more important to learn this skill.Everybody knows that in order to listen to a message is not as simple as hearing it,

so the listener has to understand the message and responde in the right manner.Realizing the problems from teaching experiences, the author would like to do a

research titled An investigation into difficulties in learning English listening skill at Tan Ky high school The thesis study the subjective and objective difficulties of the

students in learning the listening skill Then, it would like to find out the reasons forthose problems and the sollutions for both teachers and learners in teaching andlearning the listening skill Therefore, the author applied the qualitative method anddescriptive method to do the research So the collecting data instruments likequestionnaires was used to do the study The results of the research point out thedifficulties that students meet when they learn the listening skill in the Tan Ky highschool More importantly, it helps the author find out the causes of those difficulties

so that she can work out the right solutions to the problems With the hope ofimproving students’ listening competence, the author has tried her best to do thisthesis on her own experiences and knowledge in English teaching methodology

My MA graduation thesis has been completed with a lot of encouragementand support from my teachers, students, colleagues and family

I would like to express my deep great thank to my supervisor, Assoc.Prof

Dr Ngo Dinh Phuong, for his indispensable and useful advice, suggestions andsupport for this thesis And I wish to thank many teachers for having taught me thesubjects in the MA TESOL course carefully and given me lots of useful advice sothat I could get more background knowledge to complete this thesis

I also wish to send my sincere thanks to the students of the classes I visited

in order to gather information for my survey questionnaire Without their help, thisstudy could not have been successful

I am indebted to my friends, my classmates, as well as my colleagues fortheir invaluable comments and criticism and also for their continued interest andencouragement

Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to family members whosesupport and encouragement greatly contributed to the completion of my study

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

Table 4.1 Students’ attitudes towards English listening 35

Table 4.2 The difficulties in terms of English vocabulary 37

Table 4.3 The difficulties in terms of grammar 38

Table 4.4 The difficulties related to lack of background knowledge 40

Table 4.5 The difficulties due to lack of listening skills 41

Table 4.6 Rank order of difficulties in English listening 42

Table 4.7 Students’ views of sources of difficulties 43

Table 4.8 The students’ needs for English listening materials and equipment 49

Table 4.9 The students’ needs for teachers’ methodology 50

Figure 4.1 Students’ attitudes towards English listening 36

Figure 4.2 Causes of difficulties from materials 44

Figure 4.3 Causes of difficulties from teachers 45

Figure 4.4 Causes of difficulties from students 46

Figure 4.5 Causes of difficulties from the physical setting 47

TABLE OF CONTENTS

STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP i

ABSTRACT ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS iv

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES v

TABLE OF CONTENTS vi

CHAPTER 1:INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Rationale 1

1.2.The aim of the study 2

1.3.Research questions 3

1.4.The scope of the study 3

1.5 The organization of the study 3

CHAPTER 2:THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEW 5

2.1 Previous students related to the topic 5

2.2 Theoretical background 8

2.2.1 Listening and listening comprehension 8

2.2.1.1 Definition of listening 8

2.2.1.2 The Importance of Listening Skills 9

2.2.1.3.Types of listening 10

2.2.1.4 Factors involved in listening comprehension 12

2.2.2 Listening difficulties for students at high schools 14

2.2.2.1 Linguistics problem 14

2.2.2.2 Listening skill problems 14

2.2.2.3 Other difficulties 16

2.2.3 Causes of difficulties in L2 listening 17

2.2.3.1 Low motivation 17

2.2.3.2 Insufficient listening skill 18

2.2.3.3 Lack of background knowledge 21

2.2.3.4 Listening material 22

2.2.3.5 Teaching methods 23

2.2.3.6 Heterogeneous classes 23

2.2.4 Overview of the “Tieng Anh 11” Textbook 25

2.2.4.1 General Description 25

2.2.4.2 Objectives and Approaches to the Textbook Development 25

2.2.4.3 Teaching Approaches of the “Tieng Anh 11” Textbook 26

2.2.5 Summary 27

CHAPTER 3:METHODOLOGY 29

3.1 Research questions 29

3.2 The setting of the study 29

3.2.1 The institution 29

3.2.2 The students 30

3.2.3 The teachers 30

3.3 The participants 31

3.4 Data collection instrument 31

3.5 Data collection procedure 33

3.6 Data analysis 33

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS 34

4.1 Overview 34

4.2 Findings and discussions 34

4.2.1 Students' attitudes towards learning English listening 34

4.2.2 Students' perception of English listening difficulties 36

4.2.2.1 Difficulties with vocabulary 36

4.2.2.2 Difficulties with Grammar 37

4.2.2.3 Difficulties related to Lack of Background Knowledge 39

4.2.2.4 Difficulties due to Lack of Listening Skills 40

4.2.2.5 Rank order of English listening difficulties 41

4.2.3 Causes of difficulties 42

4.2.3.1 The listening materials 43

4.2.3.2 The teachers 44

4.2.3.3 The students 45

4.2.3.4 The physical setting 46

4.2.4 The students’ expectation in terms of materials 47

4.2.5 The students’ expectation in terms of methodology 48

4.3 Sub- conclusion 50

4.4 Suggested solutions to learn English listening skills at Tan Ky high school 50

4.4.1 Increasing students’ listening interest and motivation 51

4.4.1.1 Making English listening interesting 51

4.4.1.2 Using visual aids in teaching listening 52

4.4.2 Raising students’ awareness of the usefulness of English 54

4.4.3 Training students to become efficient listeners 54

4.4.3.1 Making students aware of the nature of the listeninging process 54

4.4.3.2 Making students aware of the purposes of listening 54

4.4.3.3 Teaching students different listening strategies 55

4.4.3.4 Encouraging students to develop extensive listening habit 56

4.4.4 Improving teachers’ classroom techniques and subject background knowledge 56

4.4.4.1 Suggested Activities for English listening 56

4.4.4.2 Improving teachers’ professional knowledge 62

4.5 Summary 62

CHAPTER 5:CONCLUSION 63

5.1 Summary of the findings 63

5.2 Limitations of the study and suggestions for further study 63

5.3 Suggested further research 64

REFERENCES 65

APPENDIX A .69

APPENDIX B 76

Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Rationale

No one can deny the importance of listening skills in foreign languagelearning because the key to acquire a language is to receive language input.Krashen, Terrell, Ehrman, & Herzog (1984) claim that acquisition takes place onlywhen students absorb enough comprehensible input The same claim was supported

by Rost (1994) who confirmed that listening is vital in language classrooms because

it provides input for learners As an input skill, listening plays a crucial role instudents’ languagedevelopment Krashen (1985) argues that people acquirelanguage by understanding the linguistic information they hear Thus languageacquisition is achieved mainly through receiving understandable input and listeningability is the critical component in achieving understandable language input.Without understanding inputs at the right level, any kind of learning simply cannotoccur Thus listening is a fundamental language skill, and as such it merits a criticalpriority among the four skill areas for language students As an English teacher,with her own knowledge and experience in teaching, the author finds interested instudying the difficulties in learning the listening skill in English She would like to

present the thesis “An investigation into difficulties in learning English listening skills at TanKy high school" She chooses this matter due to the following

reasons

First of all, listening is the most important skill in communication in the reallife Listening and speaking are two major parts of communication They areclosely interdependent We are only able to talk sensibly when we understandwhat is said to us If we fail to understand spoken language, we may missimportant information and respond in a funny way Moreover, in learning alanguage, listening is a useful means of providing learners with comprehensibleinput, which is an essential component of the whole language learning process.And teaching listening skill in classroom helps learners make transition from

classroom English to real- life English more easily and effectively Therefore, theauthor would like to do this research so as to help teachers and learners pay moreattention to this skill.

Secondly, learning listening skill is the most difficult in learning a foreignlanguage Listening, like reading, is a receptive skill but it is often the mostdaunting for learners When reading, a reader usually has more opportunities torefer back to the text to clarify understanding, which a listener cannot do in mostlistening contexts such as TV programs, meetings, discussions, lectures orconversations As Harmer said:

Whereas the written word stays on the page and can be looked at morethan once, the spoken word, unless recorded on tape or record cannot berepeated Of course in a conversation it is possible to ask someone to saysomething again, but the fact remains that while a reader can look back atsomething as many times as he wants, the listener cannot

(Harmer, 1991)What is more, in teaching and learning English listening skill in Vietnam ingeneral and in TanKy in particular, teachers and learners cope with a lot ofproblems and difficulties because of both objective and subjective reasons Thus,the author chooses this topic to point out the main difficulties which the learnershave met and to find the reasons for them

The last but not least reason for choosing this thesis title is that manylearners are not interested in learning the listening skill They find listening classesboring On the other hand, practicing listening skill is difficult and it takes longtime It is necessary for teachers to foster the passion for regular listening and tocater for some learners’ need to listen for relaxation and pleasure That is the reasonthe author would like to work out some suggestions so as to help teachers motivatetheir learners to study listening skill more excited and better

1.2

The aim of the study

The study is done with the following aims:

Firstly, most students find it difficult to learn listening skill so the author

of the study would like to find the common difficulties that the learners face whenthey learn English listening skill at Tan Ky high school

Secondly, the study is carried out in order to survey the real state oflearning English listening skills at Tan Ky high school so that we could work outthe reasons for those difficulties

Finally, because of the difficulties, many learners are not interested inlearning and practicing this skill at the language class, therefore the study wouldlike to suggest some possible solutions to those difficulties They will be veryhelpful for the teachers of English at Tan Ky high school, as well as for teachers inother high schools, to motivate their learners in listening classes These suggestionsalso wish to help the learners catch up with the speed of a normal conversation inthe real life so that they can improve their communication competence

1.3

Research questions

The thesis mainly focuses on answering the three following research questions:

1 What are the students’ difficulties in learning English listening at Tan Ky highschool?

2 What are the causes of those difficulties ?

3 What are the possible pedagogical implications that can help to reduce thosedifficulties ?

1.4

The scope of the study

The study is a survey which focuses on the identification of the listeningdifficulties that students of Tan Ky high school encountered with according to theiropinions as well as some suggested solutions to help them deal with those problems

1.5 The organization of the study

The research consists of the following chapters:

Chapter 1: Introduction

This chapter deals with rationale, the aims, the research questions, the scope,the method and the organization of the study

Chapter 2: Theoretical background and Literature review

This chapter provide an in-depth review of the previous studies of the issues ofteaching and learning English listening skills It then presents the nature ofteaching listening such as definitions of listening, the importance of listeningskills, types of listening, factors involved in listening comprehension, Listeningdifficulties for students at high schools, causes of difficulties in second languagelistening Additionally, it gives out an overview of the "Tieng Anh 11" textbook

Chapter 3: Research design and Methodology

This chapter present research approach, subjects, data collection instrumentsand research procedures, data analysis and reliability and validity

Chapter 4: Findings and Discussion

This chapter summarize major findings of the study, suggest someimplications or recommendations for teachers and learners when teaching andlearning listening skills at Tan Ky high school

Chapter 5: Conclusion

This chapter summarize what have been done in the research, somelimitations of the study and suggestions for further study and suggested furtherresearch

Chapter 2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Previous studies related to the topic

It can be said that listening is one of the most challenging skills for both EFLteachers and learners Therefore, more and more studies of the issues of teachingand learning this kill have been particularly concerned by a lot of researchers andeducators

Yagang (1993) pointed out four major factors that made listening difficult tolearners such as the message, the speaker, the listener and the physical setting Healso suggested some solutions to these problems so that EFL teachers could providetheir students with suitable listening materials, background and linguisticknowledge, comfortable classroom conditions, enabling skills and useful drills toencourage them to obtain effective listening strategies

Olaofe (1994) studied teaching listening comprehension in large classes Hebelieved that students could get a lot even under these conditions In his viewpoint,

it was possible to create an interactive learning environment in large listening

classes In this case, the only solution is to work in groups in which all the learnersshould attempt to do the task individually before getting involved in group-discussion During group reports and presentations, practice in note-taking wasemphasized and the whole class participation enhanced As a result, the usualrowdiness accompanying group presentation is considerably reduced.

Jian (2005) paid much attention to teaching listening in a communicativeclassroom She showed the disadvantages of traditional listening teaching anddiscovered some communicative ways to teach listening from her experience In thetraditional classes, teachers act as “a tape-recorder player” and students are “passivelisteners” In contrast, in the communicative classes, students are given a realcommunicative environment with a variety of listening tasks, materials and listeningstrategies so that they can become more active and skillful in listening Therefore,the Communicative Language Teaching requires teachers to eradicate the traditionalimage of recording players and equip themselves with more knowledge and skills.Djiwandono (2006) indicated a technique for teaching listening comprehension that

is a combination of cooperative and stragic learning Students are required to work

in pairs or in small groups and then cooperate in comprehending the message of arecorded speech by using listening strategies This technique helps teachers create apositive classroom atmosphere as well as promotes interaction among students.The above foreign studies, to some extent, have significantly contributed toteaching and learning listening skill

In Vietnam, this issue has also been received much attention via variousstudies by teachers and educators It proves that teaching listening skills forVietnamese learners has become an integral part in the trend of globalization Sofar, there have been many researches related to this field Le Thi Xuan Anh (2001)revealed that “Listening Strategies” were unconsciously used by Vietnamesestudents at tertiary level She realized a relationship between the learners’ listeningabilities and their strategy choice The better listeners seem to employ listeningstrategies more often than the worse ones

Pham Thanh Vinh (2002) investigated the difficulties in listening faced byfirst-year students of English at Da Nang College of Education The authordiscovered four main types of problems that should be taken into carefulconsideration such as problems in linguistic features, problems in retrievinginformation, problems in catching the main information and problems in note-takingwhile listening.

Phung Thi Hoai Thu (2008) examined listening difficulties perceived byteachers and students in using the new English textbook for grade 10 at Que Vo IIupper-secondary school in Bac Ninh Teachers encountered the obstacles such asthe lack of well-equipped facilities, unfamiliar listening teaching methods,inexperience in teaching listening methodology and approaches Furthermore,students’ low levels of proficiency in terms of vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation,skills as well as learning habits were the reasons why students found it difficult andtough to listen to and they were not confident enough to do listening taskssuccessfully Hence, there was a must to create better suitable teaching methods andstrategies that could facilitate the effectiveness of listening lessons

Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan (2011) kept on studying the difficulties in teachinglistening comprehension in the course book “Head for Business” to the second-yearstudents at Economics Department, Hanoi Open University She pointed out thechallenges that listening teachers often face when teaching the listeningcomprehension part of the course book such as the lack of academic training forteachers, students’ mixed abilities and passive learning habits, poor facility ofteaching and learning, time allocation for listening comprehension as well ascharacteristics of the listening comprehension The research also suggested somesolutions to improve the efficiency of the listening comprehension

Nguyen Thi Thanh Huyen (2010) suggested using songs as a supplementarymaterial in teaching listening for the first-year non-major students of English atPhuong Dong University in Hanoi in order to erase their prejudice against listeningskill, evoke their like and improve the students’ listening state

Do Van Hoa (2010) proposed that the third-year students at Hong Duc

University in Thanh Hoa province could improve listening skills through portfolio.

The study emphasized the importance of portfolios to the students' self- study ingeneral and the listening skills in particular Pedagogically, the findings of the studywere believed to be useful for teachers to be aware of the essential role of portfolios

to the students' self- study in the listening skills

In summary, it can be seen from the above review that researchers focused onstudying either the general principles for teaching listening skills or the problemsfaced by learners in learning listening and suggested solutions to improve theirlistening skill Besides, their research subjects were mainly students at the tertiarylevel, not high school students On the contrary, this study emphasizes the problemsfaced by Vietnamese high school teachers in teaching listening and their solutions

2.2 Theoretical background

2.2.1 Listening and listening comprehension

2.2.1.1 Definition of listening

It is thought that listening plays an important role in the process of acquiring

a language However, different scholars defined this concept differently

Listening is theoretically considered as a process in which individualsconcentrate on selected area of aural input, construct meaning from passages, andrelate what they hear to existing knowledge (O’Malley, Chamot and Kupper(1989))

Rost (1994) states that listening is a complex process which enables us tocomprehend spoken message

Anderson and Lynch (1988) define listening as “the means to immediate oral production, the imitation of spoken forms” Listeners hear the input as well as

actively process the message to comprehend The objective of listeningcomprehension is that the learners are able to talk and write about what they haveheard after listening The term “active model builder” is used to refer to thelisteners’ language; they have to build their own “coherent interpretation” of spoken

language The authors emphasize that the “mental model” which is built as arepresentation of a spoken message is the result of our combining the newinformation in what we just heard with our previous knowledge and experience.

Buck (2001, p.31) points out that listening is an active process ofconstructing meaning by utilizing knowledge to the incoming sound in which bothlinguistic and non-linguistic knowledge are involved He indicates that

“comprehension is affected by a wide range of variables, and that potentially anycharacteristic of the speaker, the situation or the listener can affect thecomprehension of the message”

In short, it can be said that listening is a language skill involving a widerange of “sub-skills” It is more than simply hearing; it is “decoding” sounds andunderstanding the meaning behind those sounds

2.2.1.2 The Importance of Listening Skills

In daily life, people spend much time listening: students listen to theirteachers, children listen to their parents, and adults listen to the news on TV andradio Therefore, listening is said to be the most common communicative activity indaily life: “we can expect to listen twice as much as we speak, four times more than

we read, and five times more than we write” (Morley, 1991: 82)

In language use, the listening skill plays an integral part It consists ofvarious types of listener’s knowledge: knowledge of phonology, vocabulary, andsemantics of the language in use, culture of its people, his life experience in thetopic, his ability to predict and respond It decides his understanding, content andattitudes towards the speaker’s saying or utterance as well As a result, we will fail

to communicate with others if we are bad at listening as Mathews, Spratt andDangerfield concludes “communication cannot successfully take place unless what

is spoken is also understood” (1991: 61)

What is more, we cannot develop speaking skills unless we also developlistening skills; to have a successful conversation, students must understand what issaid to them Later, the ability to understand spoken English may become very

important for listening to the radio, understanding foreign visitors, studying and so

on In order to develop this ability, students need a lot of practice in listening toEnglish spoken at a normal speed That is because students can acquire the language

of “picking up” structures and vocabulary through listening to spoken English Weshould give students as much opportunity to listen to spoken English as possiblebecause they do not have the language environment outside the classroom

Harmer (2000) argues that apart from their teacher’s accents and varieties,the learners should be prepared to hear different ones for the real world listeningsuch as telephone conversations, speeches, broadcast news, announcement,advertisement, etc

In reality, students’ poor listening ability can cause communicationbreakdown Listening skill, thus, is an indispensable part in EFL learningenvironment in Vietnam today In the current high school curriculum, listening is anessential language skill that takes up 20% of the lesson’s content in Englishtextbooks

In summary, listening provides the aural input that serves as the basis forsecond language acquisition and enables learners to interact in spokencommunication

2.2.1.3

Types of listening

There are many different types of listening We can classify these according to

a number of variables, including listening purposes, the role of the listener and thetypes of texts being listened to

a Real-life Listening

According to some authors, namely Nguyen Thi Van Lam and Ngo DinhPhuong (2006), there are two ways of listening in the real life They are casuallistening and focused listening depending on the purpose of listening

Many students feel a big gap between listening activities in the classroom andactual situation This is because most listening materials including dialogues in

textbooks are very grammar-oriented and controlled in many ways The speakeroften speaks with perfectly controlled speech, voice, tone, accent and correctgrammar Whereas, in real-life conversations learners encounter various people withdifferent gender, age, accent, speed, voice, tone There may be improper grammarusage, incomplete sentences, redundancy, contractions, overlap and so forth.

There are two ways that people often listen in real-life; they are “casual” and

“focus” listening Many students have a habit of listening to a radio while studying

or the television is on while we are doing something else We listen with noparticular purpose This kind of listening is called “casual” listening, the typicalfeature is that we do not listen closely and intentionally, thus we may not remembermuch of what we hear or nothing is left in our mind “Focus” listening happenswhen listening for a particular purpose to get the information we need to know or tostudy the language In this case, we often listen with much attention, but we do notlisten to everything with equal concentration There is an association betweenlistener expectation and purpose and his comprehension If the listener expects andneeds are intentional, his listening is likely accurately perceived and understoodthan that which is expected, irrelevant or helpful

In real-life listening, we depend largely on visual information, includingspeaker’s facial expression, posture, movement and appearance When a listenerengages in listening, vocal massage filters through the short-term memory systemfirst, and at this time, the listener focuses on auditory or visual stimulus andconcentration on the message received Therefore, visual stimuli play a veryimportant role in listening

As for Ur (1992), it would seem reasonable to say that classroom practiceshould usually incorporate such characteristics of real-life listening as: We listen for

a purpose and with certain expectations, we make an immediate response to what

we hear, we see the person we are listening to, there are some visual orenvironmental clues as to the meaning of what is heard, stretch of heard discoursecome in short chunks, most heard discourse is spontaneous and therefore differs

from formal spoken prose in the amount of redundancy, “noise” and colloquialisms,and in its auditory characters Sometimes particular situations may lack one or more

of these characteristics For example, when watching television we are not normallyexpected to respond, when listen to a lecture we may have to hear uninterruptedspeech a very long time indeed, but it is very rare that none of them is present at all

To sum up, it is obvious that mastering the nature of real-life classroom canhelp teachers as well as learners gain success in teaching and learning listeningskill

2.2.1.4 Factors involved in listening comprehension

There are eight characteristics of spoken language which makes listeningdifficult (Brown, 2001, p.252)

1 In spoken language, due to memory limitations we break down speech intosmaller groups of words They are called clustering For examples ‘a lot of’,

‘a number of’, etc Therefore when listening, learners have to learn to pick

out manageable clusters of words, avoiding trying to listen to every word ofthe speech It is not necessary and makes learners become distracted.

2 Moreover, spoken language has a great number of redundancies They arethe result of rephrasing, repetitions, elaborations and some insertions such

as ‘As I have said ‘and so on At first, learners may get trouble with this.They are easy to be confused However, with some training learners cantake advantage of redundancies to have more time and extra information

3 On the other hand, spoken language also has many reduced forms It may

be phonological, morphological, syntactic or pragmatic like ‘you’re’instead of ‘you are’, ‘won’t’ instead of ‘will not’, or ‘can’t’ instead of

‘cannot’ These reductions are really significant difficulties to the learners,especially beginners when they start getting to know the full form ofEnglish language

4 The next characteristic of spoken language is performance variables As aresult of unplanned action, spoken language consists of a lot of hesitations(‘er’, ‘uhm’), false starts, pauses and corrections They make the listenersconfused

5 Colloquial language is another problem that can interfere listeners in reallife listening because they are familiar with standard written language Inmonologues and dialogues, the appearance of idioms, slang, reduced formsand shared cultural language are common

6 In listening, learners need to comprehend language delivered at varyingrates of speed and delivered with few pauses because they do not haveopportunity to stop speaker and listen again many times

7 English is a stress-timed language so it is very important for learners tounderstand its prosodic features By stress, rhythm, and intonation, listenerscan interpret more subtle messages like sarcasm, endearment, insult,solicitation, praise, etc

8 The last but not least, interaction is also an element that plays a large role inlistening comprehension Language learners should be taught theinstruction in the two-way nature of listening They have to learn tocontinue the process of comprehending Some rules of interaction arenegotiation, clarification, attending signals, turn-taking, topic nomination,maintenance, and termination

In short, it is necessary for language learners to understand all of these

characteristics of spoken language in order that they get more ease in interaction in general and in listening in particular

2.2.2 Listening difficulties for students at high schools

2.2.2.1 Linguistics problem

First of all, in phonological aspect, the listeners always get trouble withsounds They cannot catch the actual sound of the foreign language since mostlisteners rely mostly on context for comprehension Thus, they are oftenthemselves unaware of inaccurate sound perception

Moreover, most learners cannot understand fast, natural native speech.Normally, in English classrooms, learners usually ask their teacher to speak clearlyand slow down So they can listen to the words or sounds in isolation However,learners have to listen to fast, natural native speech in the real life or in listeningrecording

Vocabulary is also a big problem for listeners In a listening text, there arenot few new and strange words which make listeners confused It is oftencolloquial such as they use “guy” for “man”, or “kid” for “child” Since thelearners always try to listen to and understand every word Therefore they getmore difficult to understand exactly what is said It is an unconscious result caused

by the teachers or listening materials which encourage the learners to believe thatevery word is important However, the effort to understand everything oftenresults in ineffective comprehension as well as feelings of fatigue and failure

Additionally, English grammar is too complicated for students to realizetheir meaning when listening Especially, the students usually have poorknowledge of grammar They cannot understand all the natural talk with a lot ofdifferent structures or modality Informal speech also tends to be somewhatungrammatical such as unfinished clauses or sentences are common

Finally, the learners’ background knowledge about the world is notheterogeneous, which causes difficulty in understanding the discourse of thelistening text It is not easy for the learners to get it correctly

2.2.2.2 Listening skill problems

There are ten problems that learners often meet

1 The learners are trying to understand every words

Despite the fact that we can cope with missing whole chunks of speech having aconversation on a noisy street in our own language So one method of tackling this

is to show them how to identify the important words that they need to listen out for

In English this is shown in an easy-to-spot way by which words in the sentence arestressed (spoken louder and longer)

2 The learners get left behind trying to work out what a previous word meanThis often happens when the learners hear a word they half remember and find theyhave completely lost the thread of what was being said by the time they rememberwhat it means

3 The learners just do not know the most important words

4 The learners do not recognise the words that they know

The students might not recognise a word include not distinguishing betweendifferent sounds in English (e.g /l/ and /r/ in "led" and "red" for many Asians), orconversely trying to listen for differences that do not exist, e.g not knowing wordslike "there", "their" and "they're" are homophones Other reasons are problems withword stress, sentence stress, and sound changes when words are spoken together innatural speech such as weak forms What all this boils down to is that sometimes

pronunciation work is the most important part of listening comprehension skillsbuilding.

5 The learners have problems with different accents

In a modern textbook, students have to not only deal with a variety ofBritish, American and Australian accents, but might also have Indian or otherEnglish speaking countries thrown in

6 The learners lack listening stamina/ they get tired

This is especially when English is not their first language: listening toEnglish for several hours causes their brain to reach saturation point and from then

on nothing goes in until they escape to the toilet for 15 minutes

7 The learners have a mental block

This could be not just a case of a student having struggled with badly gradedlistening texts in school, exams or self-study materials, but even of a whole nationalmyth that people from their country find listening to English difficult

8 The learners are distracted by background noise

Being able to cope with background noise is another skill that does not easilytransfer from L1 and builds up along with students' listening and general languageskills

9 The learners can not cope with not having images

Young people nowadays, they just can't cope without multimedia! Althoughhaving students who are not used to listening to the radio in their own languagecan't help, most students find not having body language and other cues to help aparticular difficulty in a foreign language

10 The learners have hearing problems

As well as people such as older students who have general difficulty inhearing and need to be sat close to the cassette, we might also have students whohave problems hearing particular frequencies or who have particular problems withbackground noise

2.2.2.3 Other difficulties

It is unequal to blame all the problems on the learners and the languagethemselves In fact, there are many factors which affect to learning the listeningskill in a foreign language such as society, language teaching method, andlistening materials, etc.

As it is known that “we cannot teach a language for long without coming face

to face with social context factors which have bearing on language and languagelearning” (Stern, 1983, p.191) In order to learn a language people first must studyits society and culture to understand the roots of that language If people learnEnglish, they have to have definite background knowledge on English speakingcountries On the other hand, language only can live when people use it In thecountries, where English is learnt as a foreign language, learning English isemerging dramatically However, the results of teaching and learning have notbeen heterogeneous because in some places people have not chances to use itregularly in the real life like in Vietnam

Another problem is language teaching method Language teaching has beendefined as “the activities which are intended to bring about language learning”(Stern, 1983, p.21) And foreign language teaching methodology can be defined as

“the activities, tasks and learning experiences used by the teachers within thelanguage teaching and learning process” (Richards, 1990, p.35) Teaching method

is necessary to motivate the learners to learn the language It should be appropriatefor each group of learners, who have different characteristics, and for differentskills Thus, teaching method should always be appreciated in teaching In otherwords, language teachers with their teaching methods, styles, accents andintelligence play important roles in instructing their students to learn a newlanguage item

Listening materials and learning equipment are also taken for granted inlearning the listening skill Listening materials are what learners use to listen andpractice listening They should be interesting and realistic and appropriate with thelearners’ proficiency of English so that it can stimulate their passion in listening

In order that students are interested in learning the listening skill, it cannot denythe assistance of the learning equipment If it is equipped well, it will facilitatelistening and vice-versa if it is poor, the listening activities will be hindered

2.2.3 Causes of difficulties in L2 listening

2.2.3.1 Low motivation

Learner motivation is one of five main categories of learner characteristics(motivation, aptitude, personality, intelligence and learner preference) indicated byLightbown and Spada (1999)

Motivation, in general, is “the factors that determine a person’s desire to dosomething” (Richards, 1985)

There has been a great deal of research on the role of motivation in foreignlanguage learning Motivation in foreign language learning is a complicatedphenomenon which is not easy to define Thus, according to Gardner and Lambert(1972), “motivation can be defined in terms of two factors: learners’communicative need and their attitudes towards the second language community”.When learners need to speak the language in a wide range of social situations or tofulfill professional ambitions, they will perceive the communicative value of thelanguage, therefore they will be motivated to acquire proficiency in the language.Likewise, if learners have favorable attitudes towards the speakers of the language,they will desire more contact with them

Motivation has been found that it is strongly related to achievement inlanguage learning in various studies (Gardner,1980) However, they have notspecified which the cause is and which is the result? In other words, does success

in language learning breed own motivation or does previous motivation lead tosuccess? There is no conclusive research-based evidence is whether motivation ismore, or less important than a natural attitude for learning languages, though atleast one well-known study tends towards the claim that motivation is ultimatelymore important

The research gives out a significant message that is the sheer importance ofthe factor of learner motivation in successful language learning Motivation is notmeasurable, and even language aptitude is probably unanswerable, so theuncertainty of the question, motivation or success which comes first, does notentail any particular problems for teaching Therefore, the teacher’s job is toencourage the development of ability and enhance motivation, on theunderstanding that each will contribute to other

2.2.3.2 Insufficient listening skill

There is a close relationship between students’ listening ability and listeningstrategies It is very important for students to choose a proper listening strategy inorder to improve their listening efficiency

Although a number of studies have attempted to conceptualize the notion ofstrategies used by language learners, Oxford (1990) particularly offers a useful andcomprehensive classification scheme of the various strategies used by learners Hesees the aim of language learning strategies as being oriented towards thedevelopment of communicative competence (Oxford,1990:9) and divides languagelearning strategies into two main classes, direct and indirect, which are furthersubdivided into 6 groups In Oxford's system, metacognitive strategies help learners

to regulate their learning Affective strategies are concerned with the learner'semotional requirements such as confidence, while social strategies lead to increasedinteraction with the target language Cognitive strategies are the mental strategieslearners use to make sense of their learning, memory strategies are those used forstorage of information, and compensation strategies help learners to overcomeknowledge gaps to continue the communication Oxford's (1990:17) taxonomy oflanguage learning strategies is shown in the following :

Direct strategies

Memory strategies:

- Creating mental linkages

- Applying images and sounds

- Reviewing well

- Employing action

Cognitive strategies:

- Practising

- Receiving and sending messages strategies

- Analysing and reasoning

- Centering your learning

- Arranging and planning your learning

- Evaluating your learning

- Cooperating with others

- Emphasizing with others

Techniques that help the learner to remember and retrieve information are

referred to as memory strategies These include creating mental images through

grouping and associating, semantic mapping, using keywords, employing wordassociations, and placing new words into a context

Cognitive strategies are used by learners to transform or manipulate the

language In more specific terms, these might include note taking, formal practice

with the specific aspects of the target language such as sounds and sentencestructure, summarizing, paraphrasing, predicting, analyzing and using context clues.

Compensation strategies include skills such as interferring, guessing while

listening, or using reference materials such as dictionaries

Metacognitive strategies are behaviors undertaken by the learners to plan,

arrange, and evaluate their own learning Such strategies include directed attentionand self-evaluation, orga nization, setting goals and objectives, seeking practiceopportunities, and so forth In the context of listening, selfmonitoring and correction

of errors are further examples of metacognitive strategies

Learners also use affective strategies, such as self-encouraging behavior, to

lower anxiety and encouraging learning It might also include the ability to dealwith difficult texts soberly and without any sign of panic

Lastly, social strategies are those that involve other individuals in the learning

process and refer to cooperation with peers, questioning, asking for correction, andfeedback; for example, while listening a student may ask another individual forfeedback about his/her listening reponses

It is important to recognize that the above strategies can be used to facilitatelearning, or can be used to facilitate comprehension For example, a learner canemploy the memory strategy of grouping in order to learn vocabulary words morequickly and more effectively Similarly, grouping can also be used to faciliate the understanding and meaning of words Furthermore, such strategies will varydepending on the language area or skill to be mastered In other words, taskrequirements help determine strategy choice; leaners would not use the samestrategy for writing an essay as they would for engaging in informal conversation in

a sencond language

2.2.3.3 Lack of background knowledge

Lack of appropriate schema or background knowledge has also been proved to

be an obstacle to L2 listeners’ comprehension of authentic texts According toRubin (1994: 210) listening is a top-down and bottom-up interactive process and

listeners’ background knowledge plays a significant role in comprehension.Existing knowledge interacts with new knowledge in comprehending a text.Following Long,D.R.(1989), a number of studies have aimed at demonstrating theimportance of background knowledge in L2 listening Some studies find that amatch between background knowledge presupposed by the text and that possessed

by the listeners leads to a better comprehension than a mismatch Providing studentswith background knowledge facilitates learning and understanding of unfamiliartexts (Cele-Murcia, 2001) Long (1990) found that both background knowledge andlanguage proficiency affect L2 listening and he further claims that backgroundknowledge is more significantly beneficial to low proficiency learners than highproficiency learners He adds that background knowledge is less important thanlanguage proficiency in L2

2.2.3.4 Listening material

The features of the text such as length, linguistic complexity, coherence,cohesion, text content and discourse pattern also affect the quality ofcomprehension as indicated by many researchers

Learner level is an important factor in selecting authentic listening materials.According to Driven (1981), spontaneously spoken language is too complex to beintroduced in the classroom in the first stage of foreign language learning, but in thesecond or intermediate stage of foreign language learning, all the factors of thespontaneously spoken language come into action So for the lower level learners,

we should provide easier materials such as the short headline type reports, audioand radio advertising, or short news broadcasts or children’s songs

For the intermediate levels, there is a wider range of choices Four or fiveminutes TV or radio news reports, the slightly adopted movies, or even whole TVprograms can be included As for the advanced level students, they have learned thetarget language for years and have the ability of dealing with the possibledifficulties with their linguistic competence and world knowledge Teachers nowcan choose some political speeches, ceremonial formulae, gossip, family quarrels

etc as the teaching materials These materials are either very formal (ceremonialformulae, political speeches) or fairly informal (gossip, family quarrels), which areconsidered very difficult for foreign language learners

It is the advantages that attract us to accept and use authentic materials inforeign language classroom, but when using them, it’s inevitable that we’ll facesome problems For most students, the challenges are that authentic materials may

be “too culturally based” and often contain “difficult language, unneededvocabulary items and complex language structures (Richard, 2001) So students arerequired to have sufficient cultural background knowledge and a large amount ofvocabulary and a good command of grammar knowledge Therefore, lower-levelstudents are easily de-motivated when confronted with this kind of materials.Authentic materials often create problems to teachers too Since the language ofauthentic listening materials is difficult, teachers need to do special preparationbefore class that is often time consuming These disadvantages can be avoided inselecting and lesson planning Actually if used appropriately, the disadvantages can

be turned into advantages

2.2.3.5 Teaching methods

Listening, one of the most important English listening activities, concerns thetwo-way relation between teaching and learning The success of an English learnerdepends on his/her own efforts and objective conditions However, without theteacher’s guidance, it is unlikely for a student to achieve great success Teachers notonly teach students language knowledge and listening skills, but also help students

to grasp correct learning methods, stimulate students’ interest and develop students’potential talents orderly and scientifically

Motivation plays a central role in learning Longing for success can strengthenlistening activities When a student gets the experience of success more frequently,they are likely to be more successful afterwards As a result, the teacher shouldprovide more chances to let the students enjoy more experience of being successful

It is also beneficial to students’ listening mentality Many students are afraid of

failure and they will lose their confidence in listening It is of critical importance toprovide learners with an enjoyable experience and help break the vicious circle Iflearners listen more and faster, they will get more interested in listening.

As a result, the teacher should help students to select suitable texts to work onand design suitable tasks and activities to develop students’ skills, making sureeveryone in the class works productively and get successful experience to a certainextent

2.2.3.6 Heterogeneous classes

A ‘heterogeneous’ class is one that has different kinds of learners in it Infact, every class which has more than one student is a heterogeneous class becausethere are not two similar students Thus, for more particular, the term should bedefined as ‘classes whose members are particularly, or unusually, heterogeneous’and which therefore present special problems for both learners and teacher

The learners in a heterogeneous class vary in many ways Penny Ur (1996)pointed out those differences as follows: language-learning ability, languageknowledge, cultural background, learning style, attitude to the language, mothertongue, intelligence, world knowledge, learning experience, knowledge of otherlanguages, age and maturity, gender, personality, confidence, motivation, interest,independence, self-discipline educational level and so on (Cambridge UniversityPress 1996)

A heterogeneous class really produces various problems for both teachingand learning, especially learning listening skill Teaching problems inheterogeneous classes that are indicated by Penny Ur (1996) are effective learningfor all, materials, participation, interest, discipline, individual awareness andcorrecting written assignment However, these are more problematic in a largeclass

On the other hand, a heterogeneous class has its advantages as well, andsome of them can be used to help solve the problems The following advantageouscharacteristics of this kind of class are shown by Penny Ur (1996):

Firstly, such classes provide a much richer pool of human resources than doless mixed classes The individuals have more life experience and knowledge,more varied opinions, more interests and ideas all of which can be used inclassroom interaction.

Next, there is educational value in the actual contact between very differentkinds of people-co-students get to know each other’s values, personalities andperhaps cultures, and thereby increase their own knowledge and awareness ofothers as well as tolerance and understanding

Moreover, the fact that the teacher is very much less able to attend to everyindividual in the class means that in order for the class to function well thestudents themselves must help by teaching each other and working together: peer-teaching and collaboration are likely to be fairly common, fostering an atmosphere

of cooperation

Finally, another helpful feature of these classes is their much more challengesand interests to teach, and provide greater opportunity for creativity, innovationand general professional development

2.2.4 Overview of the “Tieng Anh 11” Textbook

2.2.4.1 General Description

Unlike the traditional textbooks where language input was presented in terms

of linguistic structures, the “Tieng Anh 11” textbook follows a theme-basedapproach to the production of language input Lessons are organized according totopics which are true to life, and familiar to upper-secondary students The textbook

is relevant to their needs and thereby stimulating their interests The purpose of thetextbook is to develop students’ communicative language skills including listening,speaking, reading and writing through various interesting and well-designed units

The “Tieng Anh 11” textbook comprises sixteen units; each unit presents a

theme that is updated to many fields of daily life such as friendship, personal experiences, a party, volunteer work, illiteracy, competitions, world population, celebrations, the post office, nature in danger, sources of energy, the Asian Games,

hobbies, recreation, space conquest, the wonders of the world With the aim of

improving students’ communicative skills and systematizing important linguisticcomponents, those themes are introduced through five sections: reading, speaking,listening, writing and language focus

Reading is chosen as the first section in every unit on purpose Reading textand tasks that focus on developing different reading skills motivate and familiarizestudents with the theme and useful information and language items Each section isdivided into three stages to obtain different language skills and knowledge

2.2.4.2 Objectives and Approaches to the Textbook Development

The “Tieng Anh 11” textbook has the following specific objectives:

 Listening: comprehending main and specific information of the text ordialogue; improving basic listening skills

 Speaking: asking-answering, presenting the given topics; using dailycommunication such as asking and giving opinions, asking for and givinginformation, making requests, expressing agreements and disagreementsand so on

 Reading: comprehending texts via different reading skills such asskimming, scanning, and so on; enlarging vocabulary and structures

 Writing: writing informal/ formal letters of invitation, letters of reply, achart description, a biography, etc

In my opinion, the objectives of the “Tieng Anh 11” textbook are correct,relevant, practical and appropriate to the upper-secondary school context inVietnam The ultimate goal is to enable students to acquire the target languageknowledge and communication skills in practice

A theme-based approach is used throughout the textbook instead of a structuralapproach of the old textbooks in which structures were selected, presented andgraded, and students practiced various meaningless and uncommunicative drills

In order to stimulate students, the textbook authors select a great deal of topicswhich suit students’ interests and needs in life The themes are split into a variety oftopics to both attract students and guarantee the systematicity of the content.

2.2.4.3 Teaching Approaches of the “Tieng Anh 11” Textbook

With a great emphasis on students’ communicative ability, the textbookauthors utilized communicative and learner-centered approaches where oral andaural skills and language for practical use are focused Nunan (1994: 194) points outthat in communicative language teaching, language is a system for the expression ofmeaning The learners are negotiators and integrators whereas the teacher’s role isjust a facilitator of the communicative process The students are responsible fortheir own learning and the teachers pay more attention to their plan and assessment

on the students’ needs and abilities

The students are not only memorizing information but also working withand use the information individually or with partners They are given more choicesand opportunities to express their own ideas or opinions about the topics assigned.McCombs and Whistler (1997) states that “learners are treated as co-creators in thelearning process, as individuals with ideas and issues that deserve attention andconsideration”

While the teacher-centeredness where the teacher taught, used the textbook,and promoted discussion, the learner-centered approach allows students to workindependently, in pairs or in groups on specific assignments The teachers function

as monitors and advisers who control the class and help their students whennecessary

In short, in order to better the teaching process, the “Tieng Anh 11” textbookrequires teachers to develop new skills and techniques related to the newmethodology Teachers should learn new teaching skills and improve theirproficiency and ability to meet the pedagogical requirements

2.2.5 Summary

In conclusion, this chapter mainly summarizes the theories, ideas, opinions orhypothesis related to teaching and learning listening skills for beginners who are atthe age of adults

First, the writer introduces some definitions of listening and listening skills.Listening skill is also considered as the most difficult as well as the most crucialskill of four language skills (listening, speaking, reading and writing) There aresome types of listening in the real life such as casual listening or focused listening,but in classroom, learners mainly learn focused listening skills

Next, the reasons for difficulties in learning listening skills are pointed out.The objective reasons are spoken language characteristics They are, in fact, verydifficult to learn, especially for beginners who first get to know a foreignlanguage Another reason is the problems that come from learners themselves.Additionally, this thesis discusses the difficulties of learning English listeningskill, thus the sub-skills that involve in listening are showed They are extremelyimportant and useful for learners in learning listening

Finally, the main factors that affect learners’ learning English listening skillsare presented Those factors are learners’ motivation, learners’ age and thecharacteristics of heterogeneous classes

Chapter 3 METHODOLOGY

This chapter deals with the method that was employed for the achievement

of the aims and objectives of the study It also provides some information about thecurrent situation of teaching and learning English listening skills at Tan Ky highschool Data were obtained by means of a survey questionnaire Besides, the surveydata, additional data were gathered by other instruments such as informal discussionwith the teachers and small talks with the students to provide more in-depthinformation This chapter also presents the findings of the survey based on theresults of the questionnaire and some discussions

3.1 Research questions

As it has been stated, this study was carried out to gain insights into the areas

of difficulties in listening skills encountered by the 11th grades at Tan Ky highschool and the causes of their unsuccessful listening comprehension Thus, it wasdesigned in an attempt to seek answers to the following questions:

1 What are the students’ difficulties in learning English listening at Tan Ky highschool?

2 What are the causes of those difficulties ?

3 What are the possible pedagogical implications that can help to reduce thosedifficulties ?

3.2 The setting of the study

3.2.1 The institution

This research is implemented at Tan ky High school located in a moutainouswestern district of Nghe An province The public school is a nearly 50 years oldexperienced one with a lot of enthusiastic veteran and young potential teachers,and in the trend of more and more development Coming from mostly poor peasantfamilies, students here are obedient and thirsty for knowledge In spite of variouspotogragh, they implement school’s disciplines seriously However, their lowliving standard leads to the shortage of good conditions to study They lack

learning facilities and must do some works to help their family in their free time.Their lives are much harder than those in other areas Moreover, there are 42classes which are crowded with 40- 45 students and poorly equipped which makelessons more difficult at this school Although English has been compulsory formany years, students there have not paid much attention to it Consequently, theirEnglish learning is really bad If some students at this school invest time to studythe subject, it is just because of the exams they have to take They tend toconcentrate on English with the hope to pass GCSE Thus, English teaching andlearning in this area focus much on grammar, a little on other skills It is obviousthat new teaching method and new English textbooks have improved their learningresults Students feel more willing to learn this challenging subject.

3.2.2 The students

Coming from mostly poor peasant families, students here are obedient andthirsty for knowledge In spite of various potogragh, they implement school’sdisciplines seriously .However, their low living standard leads to the shortage ofgood conditions to study.They lack learning facilities and must do some works tohelp their family in their free time Their lives are much harder than those in otherareas Moreover, classes at this school are crowded with 40-45 students and poorlyequipped which make lessons more difficult Although English has beencompulsory for many years, students there have not paid much attention to it.Consequently, their learning English is really bad If some students at this schoolinvest time to study the subject, it is just because of the exams they have to take.They tend to concentrate on English with the hope to pass GCSE

3.2.3 The teachers

There are 11 teachers of English whose ages range from 23 to 59, two malesand nine females Most of them have got the University Bachelor’ Degree inEnglish, one finished the in-service training course in English fifteen years agobecause she used to be a teacher of primary school These teachers have a greatdeal of teaching experience, but they are familiar with the Grammar-Translation