An investigation into the first year english majors difficulties in efl listening comprehension and recommendations

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HANOI PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY Nº =====***===== NGUYEN THI THU HUYEN AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE FIRST-YEAR ENGLISH MAJORS’ DIFFICULTIES IN EFL LISTENING COMPREHENSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS (GRADUATION PAPER SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF ARTS IN ENGLISH) SUPERVISOR: TA THI THANH HOA, M.A Hanoi, May 2013 i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS For the completion of this thesis, I have received great assistance and support from many people without whom the work could not have been fulfilled First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere thanks to Mrs Ta Thi Thanh Hoa, M.A., my supervisor This thesis could have probably not completed without her patient, enthusiastic and instructive supervision and encouragement I also would like to show my profound gratitude to all the lecturers at Hanoi Hanoi Pedagogical University N0.2, especially the lecturers in the Foreign Language Faculty for tirelessly devoting time and efforts to enrich, broaden and deepen my knowledge over the past four years My special thanks go as well as to the Foreign Languages Department of Hanoi Pedagogical University N0.2 for giving me the opportunity and permission to implement this report I am particularly grateful to the first-year English majors coming from course 38 of Foreign Language Faculty, Hanoi Pedagogical University N0.2 who help me a lot in completing the survey so that I can get the data for my research I cannot help fully expressing my gratitude to all people that direct and indirect support me to accomplish my thesis in time My thesis may still have many shortcomings Last but not least, I owe a debt of gratitude to my beloved family, for their whole-hearted encouragement and endless support ii ABSTRACT Listening skill is one of the most important skills to the learners of English Apart from speaking skill, listening is key skill used in communication Therefore, it is a compulsory subject for the first three-year English majors at Hanoi Pedagogical University N0.2 (HPU2) However, listening comprehension has been considered the most difficult of the four language skills It requires a long training process As a result, many English majors have problems in listening comprehension, especially the first-year students It is often harder for the beginners to listen because they lack of experience and don’t have appropriate learning methods Therefore, this research entails studying difficulties in learning to listen to English faced by students as well as causes of these difficulties and conducting a survey for the reasons Based on the results of the survey, the difficulties and causes have been found Solutions to the problems have been suggested It is hoped that this study will make contribution to solving some of the existing problems of inadequate listening competence of the English majors at HPU2 iii STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP Title: An investigation into the first-year English majors’ difficulties in EFL listening comprehension and recommendations (Graduation paper submitted in partial fulfillment of The Degree of Bachelor of Arts in English) I certify that no part of this research has been copied or reproduced from any other person’s work without acknowledgements and that the report is originally written by me under strict guidance from my supervisor Dated submitted: May 2013 Student Supervisor Nguyen Thi Thu Huyen Ta Thi Thanh Hoa, M.A iv LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Students’ listening activities in classroom Table 2: Students’ pre-listening activities Table 3: Students’ ways to deal with new words Table 4: Problems from listeners Table 5: Problems from listening materials Table 6: Listening strategies to English of students at HPU2 Table 7: Students' expectation of their teachers' teaching techniques LIST OF CHARTS Chart and 2: Students’ attitudes towards listening skill Chart 3: Students’ pronunciation in listening Chart 4: Students’ attitudes towards speed of speakers Pie chart 1: Students’ habits of learning to listen outside class Pie chart 2: Students’ while listening activities Pie chart 3: Students' post-listening activities Pie chart 4: Students' vocabulary in listening Pie chart 5: Students' attitudes towards unfamiliar and various accents Pie chart 6: Effect of hesitation on students in listening Pie chart 7: Effect of features of spoken language on listening Pie chart 8: Students' attitudes towards noise in listening v LIST OF ABBREVIATION HPU2: Hanoi Pedagogical University Number EFL: English as Foreign Language vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i ABSTRACT iii STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP iv TABLE OF CONTENTS vi PART ONE: INTRODUCTION I RATIONALE II RESEARCH PRESUPPOSITION III RESEARCH OBJECTIVES IV RESEARCH SCOPE V RESEARCH TASKS VI RESEARCH METHODS VII SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PROPOSED RESEARCH VIII DESIGN OF THE RESEARCH WORK PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER ONE: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1 Literature review in brief 1.2 Theoretical background of listening comprehension 1.2.1 The general concepts of listening comprehension 1.2.2 Classification of listening comprehension 1.2.2.1 Real-life listening 10 1.2.2.1.1 Casual listening 11 1.2.2.1.2 Focused listening 12 1.2.2.2 Classroom listening 12 1.2.2.2.1 Intensive listening 12 1.2.2.2.2 Extensive listening 12 1.2.3 Process of listening comprehension 13 1.2.3.1 Bottom-up processing 13 1.2.3.2 Top-down processing 14 1.2.3.3 Interactive processing 14 1.2.4 Factors affecting listening comprehension 15 1.2.4.1 The listeners 16 1.2.4.1.1 The listeners’ background knowledge 16 vii 1.2.4.1.2 The listeners’ linguistic knowledge 17 1.2.4.1.3 Listeners’ ability to concentrate 18 1.2.4.2 The speakers 18 1.2.4.2.1 Different accents 18 1.2.4.2.2 Speed of speakers 19 1.2.4.2.3 Hesitations 19 1.2.4.3 Listening materials 19 1.2.4.4 Physical settings 20 1.2.4.5 Features of spoken language 20 1.2.5 Students’ listening activities 21 1.2.5.1 Students’ activities in pre-listening stage 21 1.2.5.2 Students’ activities in while-listening stage 22 1.2.5.3 Students’ activities in post-listening stage 23 1.2.6 Potential problems in learning to listen to English 24 CHAPTER TWO: INVESTIGATION INTO COMMON PROBLEMS OF LISTENING COMPREHENSION 26 2.1 Survey 26 2.1.1 Purpose of the survey 26 2.1.2 Participants 26 2.1.3 Setting of the survey 27 2.1.4 Type of the survey 27 2.1.5 Administration of the try-out 2.1.5.1 Preparations of the try-out 2.1.5.2 Try-out 2.1.6 Research methods 28 2.1.6.1 Data collection instruments 28 2.1.6.2 Data analysis methods 28 2.2 Data analysis 29 2.2.1 Students’ attitudes towards EFL listening 29 2.2.2 Students’ learning habit of listening outside classroom and in classroom 30 2.2.2.1 Outside classroom 30 2.2.2.2 In classroom 31 viii 2.2.3 Students’ activities in three stages of listening: pre, while and post listening 31 2.2.3.1 Students’ pre –listening activities 31 2.2.3.2 Students’ while listening activities 32 2.2.3.3 Students’ post-listening activities 32 2.2.4 Students’ problems in listening comprehension 33 2.2.4.1 Problems from the listeners 33 2.2.4.2 Problems from the speakers 38 2.2.4.4 Problems from listening materials 41 2.2.4.5 Problems from physical settings 42 2.2.5 Listening strategies of fresh students at HPU2 43 2.2.6 Students’ expectation of their teachers’ techniques 43 2.3 Discussion of major findings 44 2.3.1 Difficulties of the first year majors at HPU2 in learning to listen to English and causes 44 2.3.1.1 Students’ limited vocabulary 45 2.3.1.2 Students’ incorrect pronunciation 45 2.3.1.3 Lack of control of speaking speed 45 2.3.1.4 Listening unfamiliar and different accents 46 2.3.1.5 Other problems 46 CHAPTER THREE: MAJORS SOLUTIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS TO IMPROVE STUDENTS’ LISTENING COMPREHENSION 49 3.1 Improving the students’ linguistic knowledge 49 3.1.1 Enriching vocabulary 49 3.1.2 Improving Pronunciation 50 3.1.3 Getting used to different accents 51 3.2 Applying listening strategies 51 3.2.1 Using interactive model 3.2.2 Predicting the content of the spoken text by signals 52 3.2.3 Identifying main ideas based on signals 53 3.2.4 Taking notes of the main ideas 54 3.2.5 Guessing vocabulary based on context 56 3.2.6 Determining the relationships of ideas 57 ix 3.2.7 Mastering the features of spoken language PART THREE: CONCLUSION 59 III.1 The achievement of the study 59 III.2 Limitations of the research 59 REFERENCES 60 x combine both of models to make it easier to understand In other words, listening comprehension is not either top-down or bottom-up processing, but an interactive process in which listeners integrate their prior knowledge, experience and linguistic knowledge to comprehend the text This combination of two models will bring about success in listening comprehension 3.2.2 Predicting the content of the spoken text by signals According to the colleted result from the survey, a large number of students complain that they have difficulty in predicting what speaker is going to talk about, which make the listeners unable to clearly understand the content of the listening text According to Hasan(2000), the problem is believed to caused by the habit of listening to every word They not focus on any particular cues which help them predict what is going to be talked about Predicting the themes and vocabulary of a lecture before you listen can help to improve your comprehension of difficult listening segments Following signals is helpful for you to make predictions of what you are going to listen First, look at the title of the lecture and any other clues you have (photos, maps, charts, outlines, etc.) and think of specific questions you think might be answered in the lecture Next, think about possible answers to each of your questions Discuss the questions with a partner, if possible You can use this prediction strategy during the lecture as well That is, as often as you can, try to predict what kinds of information might come next Even if some of your predictions are incorrect, this strategy will help you stay focused and give you a better chance of general comprehension Creating predictions questions, as Berman (2003) thought would maintain the students’ focus on their tasks Furthermore, the answer to these prepared-questions in the pre-listening stage could be the actual main ideas of the listening task In this way, prediction question is such a useful way for comprehension improvement Second, try to predict vocabulary you may hear in the lecture To this, you can analyze the main words in the title of the lecture A dictionary will be very 52 helpful Or sometimes, you can guess the meaning of the unknown words based on the context of listening 3.2.3 Identifying main ideas based on signals Another difficulty the majors often meet is failure to identify the main ideas of the spoken text Most of students cannot recognize the main points in a listening because they concentrate too much on listening to word by word Thus, they cannot identify the main points of the text Some following techniques are provided to help you deal with this problem According to Michael Berman (2003), there are four keys to identifying main ideas in lectures and presentations First, a speaker may signal a main idea through discourse markers; that is, there are certain phrases that tell you a main idea is coming Here are some examples: The point I want to make/cover here is… The main point is… The important thing here is… What I’m trying to show is… What I’m going to talk about today is… The purpose of my remarks is … This afternoon I’d like to explain/focus on… Similarly, rhetorical questions are also used by speakers to signal main ideas, topics, and themes These are questions that the speaker asks out loud, and that the speaker plans to answer in his/her presentation In general, rhetorical questions will always be answered in the lecture or presentation Therefore, rhetorical questions are important discourse markers to pay attention to Repetition is supposed to be the signal of main points When a word or phrase is repeated for several times, possibly it covers the important points The speed of speakers also supplies cues for catching the main points As a matter of fact, the natural talk is very too fast to second language learners so it makes up some troubles to the non-native speaker Nevertheless, in the streaming of listening students would notice that sometimes the speaker speaks a bit slower 53 and clearer than he did before This is mostly the points of the listening It is the chance for students to capture the necessary information in a listening text Emphasis is a natural factor in speaking so speaker also emphasizes to signal the most significant ideas What students should is to pay attention to the speed and the intonation of the speaker and identify the main points As in his books “listening strategies guide” (Berman, 2003) assumed that: “Pace is the speed of speech Unimportant points or small details are usually spoken more quickly Important points, such as main ideas, are usually spoken more slowly and clearly” Finally, a lecturer’s visual aids, such as outlines, lists or drawings, often provide obvious clues to a speaker’s main point Brown (1992) also agreed with this view: “In our first language, we skim over parts of the message and pay attention to relevant parts only Thus sentences are not processed word by word and the focus is placed on the ideas behind these words and how these ideas are linked together to draw conclusion” Hedge (2000) also pointed out: “Instead of listening to every word in their first language, many language learners tend to integrate their linguistic competence, experience” 3.2.4 Taking notes of the main ideas The long listening text is supposed to be an obstacle to students in listening claimed by a number of students If the students the listening for a long time, they will be under pressure This will not bring out good result When the listening text is too long, the listener is required the skill of note-taking Or when the speed of speaker is too fast, note-taking is also an effective solution to help students keep up with the speaking speed The skill of note-taking seems to be the most useful way when students have to face a long task in listening This will help students to remember the main points or the precise information The question here is that how students can write down what they hear as quickly as they could so that they will not miss the other ideas It is supposed that students should write down the main points Besides, they should develop their own characters or symbols This is believed to be the most efficient 54 way when students face with a long listening text Berman (2003) said: “Effective note-taking requires that you records information quickly” To this, good note taker not write every word or try to take note in neat sentences, instead they write only key words and phrases In addition, good note taker use shorthand when they take note In other words, they use symbols to represent words or ideas Here are some of the symbols: > is more than w/ with < is less than w/o without = is equal to b/c because ≈ is approximately equal to K thousand (40K = 40,000) ≠ isn’t equal to out of (1/25 = per 25) Δ to change, a change +, & and ↑ to go up, increases ♀ woman, women ↓ to go down i.e for example @ each, at ♂ man, men → leading to, causing, therefore, ← to be caused by, as a result of consequently Your notes should reflect which the lecturer’s points main are points and which details are Sometimes the details are also broken down into smaller categories or sub details, and your notes must show this as well There are many effective ways to represent lecture organization in your notes One common technique is to write the main ideas close to the left margin of the page, the details below the main ideas and a little bit to the right, smaller details below and to the right of the larger ones, for example: 55 I MAIN IDEA 1 Detail of Main Idea 1.1 Supporting information for Detail 1.2 Supporting information for Detail Detail of Main Idea 2.1 Supporting information for Detail 2.2 Supporting information for Detail II MAIN IDEA 3.2.5 Guessing vocabulary based on the context Most of students stated that their vocabulary is not sufficient to completely understand the text When facing a new word, they tend to find out the meaning rather than infer it from the context (Hasan, 2000) The most basic solution to this problem is guessing vocabulary based on the context Guessing meaning from context is an important skill Even native speakers often hear unknown words in speech and must try to guess the meaning through context There are some strategies that will help you better guess the meanings of words you don’t know Firstly, use the words and phrases surrounding the unknown word to make quick guesses about its general meaning Secondly, the unknown word may be recognized when the speaker offers a definition or an explanation following the word In addition, speakers sometimes define words or phrases using appositives Here, an appositive is any word or phrase, a noun, pronoun, noun clause, infinitive phase, prepositional phrase, etc… which stands after another word or phrase without a grammatical link Another way is to pay attention to body language A speaker’s gestures will often provide obvious clues to the meaning of words or phrases Finally, try to build your vocabulary as quickly and broadly as possible, since the more words you already know, the easier it is to guess unknown words from context However, students have to make sure that they not spend too much time on guessing the unfamiliar words or they will miss the speaker’s next point 56 3.2.6 Determining the relationships of ideas A lecture is a series of smaller ideas which are put together in a particular way to form larger ideas In other words, lectures and other styles of communication are built upon the relationships of ideas Discourse markers, also called organizational cues or signposts, can help you determine these relationships In fact, these markers can help you figure out the meaning of many words or ideas which you would not have understood otherwise Here are some common discourse markers and the relationships of ideas they indicate: Markers of Addition Another point (reason, factor, explanation, etc.) is Furthermore, In addition, Moreover, Markers of Cause and Consequence Because, Because of, (Be) due to, The reason for this is, Indicate a cause of the previous action/idea As a result, Because of this, Consequently, Therefore, Markers of Comparison and Contrast In the same way, Like, Likewise, Similarly, Although/though, However, In contrast, 57 Nevertheless, On the other hand, Unlike _, Markers of Definition _ means We can define _ as What I mean by ? What is ? Markers of Exemplification An example of _ is For example, For instance, In fact, Markers of Sequence of Events How did this develop/occur/happen/come about? Next/Then/Later/After that, 3.2.7 Mastering basic features of spoken language From the collected data, the linguistics features are language barrier to learners The liaison and elision, as Yagang (1994) think, are difficulties which listener often face while listening These kinds of features often make students mistake for other words or fail to recognize the words Students should master basic principles such as weak form, contraction, elision, assimilation in spoken English such as wanna, gona, going to, doesn’t know, don’t you know, etc to avoid this difficulty to avoid this difficulty 58 PART THREE CONCLUSION III.1 The achievement of the study Listening, along with speaking, is considered the most difficult skills to achieve among four skills This, therefore, drove me to conduct this study This study is done with the aim at giving some suggestions and recommendations to develop listening skill for the English majored students at Hanoi Pedagogical University Number in general and the first-year English majored students in particular It is carried out with a view to finding out the answers to the three research questions: 1) What difficulties English majors at HPU2 often face in their listening lessons? 2) What are the possible causes of these students’ difficulties in acquiring listening skill in English? 3) What can be done to help these students overcome their difficulties? The study is based on the current situation of learning English listening skill in Hanoi Pedagogical University Number By reading, analyzing and summarizing materials and books relating to the thesis in combination with doing survey questionnaires, the answers to these questions have been found III.2 Limitations of the research In any research papers, limitations are unavoidable The study presented in this minor thesis is of no exception Firstly, the study has already dealt with the difficulties of learning listening skill of the first-year English majors at Hanoi Pedagogical University Number But there should be a research conducted to confirm what difficulties the teacher at this class has met in teaching listening skill Secondly, the study cannot cover all the factors affecting the students’ listening comprehension in listening lessons because the limitation of time and the author’s knowledge and experiences Shortcomings and mistakes are unavoidable so all comments and corrections are highly appreciated 59 REFERENCES Anderson, A & Lynch,T.(1988), Listening, Oxford University Press Berman, M (2003) Listening strategy guide Dye international Inc Brown, G & Yule, G Teaching the spoken language Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Brown, G (1992) Listening to spoken English London: Longman Press Buck, G (2001), Assessing Listening, Cambrige: Cambridge University Press Doff, A (1995), Language in Use Split Edition Immediate Classroom, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Flowerdew, J and Miller, L (1996), Student perceptions, problems and strategies in second language lecture comprehension RELC Journal 23 (2), 6080 Hasan, A (2000), Learners’ perceptions of listening comprehension problems Language, Culture and Curriculum, 13, 137-153 Hedge, T (2000) Teaching and learning in the language classroom Oxford University Press 10 Helgesen, M & Brown, S (2007), Practical English Language Teaching: Listening London: Longman 11 Higgins, J.M.D (1995), Facilitating listening in second language classrooms through the manipulation of termporal variables Unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Kent at Canterbury 12 O’ Malley, J.M., Chamot, A U., & Kupper, L (1989) Listening comprehension strategies in second language acquisition Applied linguistics 10, 418-437 13 Richards, J.C and R.Schmist (2002) Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics London, UK: Longman 14 Rixon, S (1986), Developing listening skills Macmillan, London 15 Rubin, J An Overview to “A Guide for the Teaching of Second Language Listening.” In D Mendelsohn and J Rubin 1995 A Guide for the teaching of Second Language Listening San Diego, CA: Dominie Press 60 16 Steil, L et al, (1983) Effective Listening, Mc Graw Hill, Inc 17 Underwood, M (1989), Teaching listening, Longman: Longman Press 18 Ur, P (1984), Teaching listening comprehension, Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press 19 Wardhaugh, R (1986) Introduction to Sociolinguistics, Basil Blackwell Ltd 20 Yagang, F (1994), “Listening: problems and solutions”, English Teaching Forum In Kral, Th (Ed.) Teacher Development, Making the Right Movies (pp.189-196), English Language Programs Division, United States Information Agency, Washington, D.C 61 Your name:…………………………… Class:………… Survey questionnaires I am doing a small project entitled “difficulties and strategies in listening comprehension” This aims at finding out the problems that most students face when listening Hopefully, the findings I get from this research may contribute to helping you with better listening I really appreciate if you spend your valuable time to fill in these questionnaires Question 1: Please rank the language skills according to the level difficulty in sequence Number them from the most difficult to the least difficult A Speaking B Writing C Listening D Reading Question 2: What is your opinion about listening? (Tick out the best answer) A Very important B Not very important D Boring E Interesting C Not important Question 3: How often you self-study listening at home? (Tick out the best answer) A Never B Rarely C Sometimes D Often E Everyday Question 4: How you often self-study at home? (You can tick more than one) A Listening to English songs B Listening to tapes or disks of the syllabus in university C Listening to news in English D Others Question 5: Which activities you take part in listening period? (Tick out the best answer) A.Getting involved in all the class activities B Only paying attention to the activities they like C Being tired of listening and get too bored to concentrate D.Not participating in any classroom activities E Doing other things instead 62 Question 6: What you often before listening? (You can tick more than one) A Discussing about the topic what you are listening B Looking up new words and phrases C Reading the task instructions D Doing nothing E Others Question 7: What you often while you are listening? (You can tick more than one) A Trying to hear and get every word B Taking note C Listening for detail information D Listening for the main ideas E Others Question 8: What you often after listening? (Tick out the best answer) A Discussing the text B Summarizing the text C Doing nothing D Others Question 9: Do you use any strategies for listening comprehension while you are listening? A Yes B No Question 10: What you think of your vocabulary in listening acquisition? (Tick out the best answer) A Sufficient B Not sufficient C Too poor Question 11: How to deal with new words in the listening? (Tick out the best answer) 63 A Asking the teacher for the meaning B Trying to guess the meaning base on the context C Ignoring the new words and keep on listening D Feeling depressed and don’t want to listen anymore E Others Question 12: What you think of your pronunciation in listening acquisition? (Tick out the best answer) A Not good B Good C Too poor Question 13: How often you encounter these following problems? (Put a tick in the appropriate column) Problems Never Sometimes Often Always Failure to Recognize familiar words or phrases Failure to making prediction what the speaker talks about Failure to recognize main points Lack of background knowledge Lack of concentration Question 14: What are your attitudes towards speed of speakers? (Tick out the best answer) A Too fast B A bit fast C Slow enough to understand Question 15: Why are you unable to catch up with what the speaker says? (You can tick more than one) A Listening to every word B Translating from English into Vietnamese 64 C The speaking speed is too fast D Difference in accent and pronunciation of speaker and teacher Question 16: What are your attitudes toward unfamiliar and various accents? (Tick out the best answer) A Being difficult to concentrate B Feeling nervous C Being confused Question 17: What are your attitudes towards hesitation in listening? (Tick out the best answer) A Being difficult to concentrate B Misunderstanding what speaker means C Having no pay much attention Question 18: What are your attitudes towards the linguistic features on listening? (Tick out the best answer) A Unable to concentrate B Mistake for other words C Fail to recognize word Question 19: How often you encounter these following problems? Problems Never Sometimes Often Always Unfamiliar topics Long listening text Ungrammatical sentences No visual aids Question 20: What are your attitudes towards outside noise while listening? (Tick out the best answer) A Distracting from listening B Feeling nervous C Being confused of what is listened 65 Question 21: Which strategies you apply in listening to English? (You can tick more than one) A Predicting about what you are going to listen B Listening for key words stressed or repeated for several times C Taking note the main ideas D Guessing the answer E Concentrating on key information F Guessing the meaning of the words based on the context of listening Question 22: Do you find it effective to use these above strategies to improve your listening comprehension and what is the most effective strategy? Question 23: What is the most effective strategies you want your teacher employ to help you overcome the problems in listening comprehension? (You can tick more than one) Present some background knowledge to you before listening Provide new words and structures Give some solutions for you to the task Introducing weak forms, contraction, elision and assimilation in spoken English Allowing students to work individually, in pairs or in groups 66 [...]... Classroom listening As suggested by Rixon (1986), there are two types of listening that can be applied in classroom: intensive listening and extensive listening 1.2.2.2.1 Intensive listening Intensive listening is careful and focused listening for detailed information, for example: listening to the announcement or listening to the weather forecast In some cases, intensive listening is very important if listeners... 1994) In listening (1988), Anne Anderson and Tony Lynch give an alternative view of listening: listening is not passive language skill, but active and the listener acts as active model builder In the book Language, culture and cirriculum, Hasan (2000) points out that the learner’s perception of their listening problems and strategies can affect their comprehension both positively and negatively According... process and stages in listening comprehension as well as factors affecting the process of listening comprehension 4 Chapter 2 is named An investigation into the first- year English majors difficulties in listening comprehension It has three sections Section one is devoted to the survey which focuses on the methods used to gather and analyze data and describes the current situation of students at HPU2 The. .. problems in recognition and in comprehension Another reason why listening to English is difficult is that the listeners are not used to the rhythm and intonation patterns of the English language Penny Ur (1984) agreed that the English system of intonation and rhythm can interfere with foreign listeners’ understanding of spoken English 1.2.5 Students’ listening activities Students’ activities in listening. .. parsing and utilization Coakley and Wolvin (1986) suggest that listening comprehension in a second language is the process of receiving, focusing attention on, and assigning meaning to aural stimuli It includes a listener, who brings prior knowledge of the topic, linguistic knowledge and cognitive process to the listening task, the aural text, and the interaction between the two 1.2.4 Factors affecting... difficulties in listening comprehension According to Yagang (1994), the problems in listening are accompanied with the four following factors: the listeners, the speakers, the messages and the physical settings Brown and Yule (1983) suggest that “there are four main groups of factors, which can cause difficulty in listening These are speakers (that includes the number of speakers, the speakers’ speech, and the. .. Recognizing the main points of listening helps us understand the content of the listening The extensive listening requires listeners to collect supporting details to find out the main idea The purpose of extensive listening is to develop the students’ skill in recognizing main points as well as the general meaning of spoken text Differ from intensive listening, extensive listening 12 is an activity in which... while -listening stage should follow two criteria Firstly, they should be interesting in order to motivate students in listening and related activities A successful while -listening stage depends mostly on the topic, the content and the length of the listening text as well as the 22 students’ interest The interesting activities in while -listening stage will be very helpful for the students in listening. .. 1.1 Literature review in brief The issues of teaching and learning the listening skill have been of great concern among a number of researchers There have been many researchers who studied listening over the world such as Anderson and Lynch, Mary Underwood, Flowerdew and Miller, Yagang, Penny Ur, and Hasan and so on Actually, listening plays an important role in second language instruction for several... listeners They are totally strange to the topic so it is hard to listen when the message is full of terminology On the contrary, if the topic is familiar with the listeners, they can integrate their background knowledge, experience and linguistic competence to understand the spoken text easier On the other hand, if the topic and the content of the passage are interesting, listeners will be interested in and ... of listening that can be applied in classroom: intensive listening and extensive listening 1.2.2.2.1 Intensive listening Intensive listening is careful and focused listening for detailed information,... experience and linguistic competence to understand the spoken text easier On the other hand, if the topic and the content of the passage are interesting, listeners will be interested in and encouraging... is to give the students the opportunity to consider the attitude and manner of the speaker of the listening text It also aims at expanding the topics and the language of the listening texts 23