Some suggestions to improve listening sub skills for the third year students at faculty of english, HOU

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF ENGLISH GRADUATION PAPER B.A DEGREE IN ENGLISH Some suggestions to improve listening sub-skills for the third-year students at Faculty of English,HOU

HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF ENGLISH

GRADUATION PAPER

B.A DEGREE IN ENGLISH

Some suggestions to improve listening sub-skills for

the third-year students at Faculty of English,HOU

Supervisor : Nguyễn Thanh Bình M.A Student : Nguyễn Mạnh Trung Date of birth : 17-01-1993

Class : K18A1 (2011-1015)

Ha Noi – 2015

CODE: 29

ACKNOWLEDEGEMENTS

First of all, I would like to express my profound gratitude and indebtedness

to my supervisor- Mrs Nguyễn Thanh Bình, M.A, the lecture of English faculty, Hanoi Open University for her careful instructions, valuable advice, and supervision during the course of writing

I also would to express my special thanks to all teachers of Faculty of English, who have provided my with not only knowledge but also the study condition during my student life, as well as their useful advice in this graduation paper

I would also like to extend my thanks to 100 students of third-year students

of Faculty of English, Hanoi Open University for their aid in implementing survey

I would like to acknowledge my thanks to all the authors of the books and materials listed in the reference part for their ideas that have been reflected and developed in the study

Finally yet importantly, I am indebted to my family and friends who have encouraged and supported me so much in the completion of this paper If there had not been great help from the above people, the study could not been fulfilled

Hanoi, May 4th 2015

Nguyen Manh Trung

ABBREVIATION

Etc : Et cetera

HOU: Hanoi Open University

ESL: English as the Second Language

VOA: Voice of America

BBC: British Broadcasting Corporation

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART A: INTRODUCTION 1

1.Rationale 1

2.Aims and objectives of the study 1

3 Research questions……… ……2

4.Scope of the study 2

5.Methods of the study 2

6.Design of the study 2

PART B: DEVELOPMENT 4

CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

1.The definitions of listening 4

2.The importance of listening 6

3.What makes listening difficult 9

4.The listening skills 11

4.1.The definitions of listening sub-skills 11

4.2.The classification of listening sub-skills 12

4.2.1.Listening for stresses 12

4.2.2.Skimming 13

4.2.3.Scanning 14

4.2.4.Listening and note-taking 14

4.2.5.Guessing meaning of words or context 15

4.2.6.Listening for total comprehension 15

4.2.7 Predicting 16

4.2.8 Inferencing 16

4.2.9 Critical listening 17

5.Summary 18

CHAPTER II: FINDINGS,INTERPRETATIONS AND ANALYSES…… 20

1.Subject of the study 20

2.Data collection method 20

3.Data analysis and comments 20

4.Summary of the chapter 31

CHAPTER III:SOME SUGESSTIONS TO IMPROVE LISTENING SKILLS FOR THE THIRD YEAR STUDENTS AT FACULTY OF ENGLISH, H.O.U 33

1.Strategies for learning listening 33

1.1.Pre-listening activities 33

1.2.While-listening activities 34

1.3.Post-listening activities 36

2.Applying listening sub-skills 37

2.1.Improving pronunciation by using sound-crimination, sensing styles,intonation and stress 37

2.2.Improving Skimming sub-skill 40

2.3.Improving Scanning sub-skill 41

2.4.Improving Note-taking sub-skill 43

2.5.Improving Listening Total Comprehension sub-skill 46

2.6.Improving Predicting sub-skill 48

2.7.Improving Inferences sub-skill 50

2.8.Improving Critical listening sub-skill 51

3.Summary 53

PART C: CONCLUSION 54

REFERENCES 55

APPENDIX 57

Teaching listening skills is one of the most difficult tasks for any ESL teacher

In general, listening is a complicated process for learners It demands many skills along with and so hard to have specific methods for each particular learner So that is the reason why not few Vietnamese students of English, in general, an one at Faculty of English and Modern Languages , HOU in particular consider listening skills as their top challenges when they fail to understand what are being said in English in such an high pace In addition, they do not know how to lift up their skills and use it effectively

sub-As a student of English who have been trained nearly 4 years in Faculty of English, HOU, I would like to present the next generations my experience of learning English listening sub-skills and help them improve it Therefore, I decided

to choose the topic “How to improve listening sub-skills for third-year students at Hanoi Open University” as the subject for my graduation paper

2 Aims and objectives of the study

This study aims at finding exactly meaning, finding problems and understanding all of situations related to teaching and learning listening sub-skills of

third year students at HOU as well as recommending some suggestions and some applications could be used inside and outside classroom to improve their listening skills and extend their abilities to listen effectively in a variety of situations for different purposes

As mentioned above, the study aims to recommend some suggestions for the 3rd year students at Hanoi Open University, Faculty of English to improve their listening sub-skills, so it is a must to identify current situation and problems of students while listening

3 Research questions

The survey has been carried based on 2 questions:

- What difficulties do the third year students face in listening skills?

- What are some suggestions for students to improve their listening skills?

4 Scope of the study

Through the graduation paper, the study only focuses on issues involved in third year students at Faculty of English, HOU They have been taught English listening sub-skills for a considerable time and must have had knowledge some of typical sub-skills to some extent

5. Methods of the study

The main method used in this paper is studying books related In addition, the paper also refers to experienced teachers’ points of view and comments on the vital role of improving listening skills for foreign language students Furthermore, it is useful for the paper to use the survey questionnaire in order to collect specific or data for the study Finally, the paper will mention some suggestions some games concerning the improvement of listening sub-skills for students

6. Design of the study

The graduation paper is divided into three parts (and three chapters)

Part A: Introduction (Background of the research)

This part includes rational, aims, research questions, scope, methods and design

of the study

Part B: Development

This part contains three main parts:

Chapter 1 :Literature review / Theoretical background

Chapter 2 :Findings, interpretations and analyses

Chapter 3 :Some suggestions to improve listening skills for the third- year

students at Faculty of English,HOU(Application; Contributions and

Solutions)

Part C: Conclusion

This final part is to summarize or restate main points of the graduation paper

PART B: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

“Listening looks easy, but it’s not simple Every head is a world.”

Cuban proverb The importance of listening in communication is enormous When you are not listening, you are not learning When you are not listening, you are preventing opportunity The fact that you do not listen reveals the reality that your mind is closed When you are not listening, you are preventing intelligence When you are not listening there is nothing new, there are only your reactions If you wish to live life to its fullest, then listening is vital

Listening is the most used language skill in daily communication and educational process It is really a meaning gift, to listen to someone, and plays a vital role in our society

For almost learners of foreign languages, listening skill is considered the most difficult one It brings many problems through our student life In order to solve the problems, this study would provide an overview of listening issues to help students

be aware of the listening sub-skills more clearly

1.The definitions of listening

People can easily find many definitions of listening skills on Internet or books Although there are many definitions of listening in different ways, they have the same point of view about listening In general, listening is an invisible mental process, making it difficult to describe Listening is the process of making sense out

of what we hear Listening is an active process of receiving, processing, and interpreting aural stimuli Besides, listening involves taking in meaningful sounds and noises and in some ways, retaining and using them Just as we speak for different purposes, we also listen for different purposes We listen for enjoyment, information, and evaluation

Listening is a skill in a sense that it is a related but distinct process than

hearing which involves merely perceiving sound in a passive way while listening occupies an active and immediate analysis of the streams of sounds Communicating well isn’t just about talking, but listening –really trying to hear what the other person is saying Communication is a continuous process of taking time to hear each other

According to the website (www.ccsf.edu) ,“Listening is the absorption of the meanings of words and sentences by the brain Listening leads to the understanding

of facts and ideas, but listening takes attention or sticking to the task at hand in spite of distraction It requires concentration, which is the focusing of your thoughts

effectiveness, and on the quality of your relationships with others

Furthermore, it is said that:

“Listening is a part of the transactional process of communication The

receiver's responses have a direct impact on the direction of the conversation The key is to become active listeners rather than passive ones Active listening involves

listening relies as much on attitudes as well as knowledge and skill Listening is a habit that requires knowledge, skills and desires Knowledge plays a role similar to that of methods and theories by describing what to do and why to do it Skills

From the point of view of Lesley Baker, listening skills are essential in the workplace, the family and the community at large Careers in communications, management, planning, sales, and fund raising, to name a few, rely on good listening skills Listening, however, is more than just being able to hear and understand what someone else says Listening skills involve etiquette, asking for clarification, showing empathy and providing an appropriateresponse

In addition to the above concepts, Peter Senge (2002) added: “To listen fully

means to pay close attention to what is being said beneath the words You listen not only to the “music”, but to the essence of the person speaking You listening not

only for what someone knows, but you what he or she is, Ears operate at the speed

of sound, which is far slower than the speed of light the eyes take in Generative listening is the art of developing deeper silences in yourself, so you can slow our mind’s hearing to your ears’ natural speed, and hear beneath the words to the

Listening means you paid attention and understood what was said, even being motivated by what you hear

Furthermore, it is said that :

“Listening is about letting you talk, really talk It is about providing you with the

opportunity to understand your thoughts and feelings and to come up with your own solutions Taking, and being listened to, can itself be helpful Listening is simpler than counseling, and is therefore undertaken by trained lay people; this simplicity

Listening is the first language mode that learners acquire It provides a foundation for all aspects of language and cognitive development, and it plays a life-long role in the processes of learning and communication essential to productive participation in life

2.The importance of listening

In this paper, the importance of listening is considered in two aspects: communication, in general, and studying language in particular (English) In term of communication, listening plays an important role

According to Staiano(2006),the importance of listening in communication is

enormous People often focus on their speaking ability believing that good speaking equals good communication The ability to speak well is a necessary component to successful communication The ability to listen is equally as important.The importance of listening in communication is often well illustrated when we analyze our listening skills with those closest to us This is actually quite common and yet

we think we are good communicators In order to communicate effectively we have

to be able to hear what the other person is saying Not just hear because the acoustics are good or because the other person is speaking in a loud enough tone It

is important that we hear what the person is saying because we have taken the time

to actively listen.Listening takes work and when it comes to improving our communication, there is no getting around that When we are listening to music or watching T.V we can certainly let our minds wander If we want our communication skills to get stronger it is important that we not day dream in a conversation but instead concentrate fully on what the other person is saying.No doubt this can be difficult Not every conversation we are in is particularly interesting The importance of listening in communication is something worthwhile

to consider Good listeners are often some of the best speakers because they have taken the time to find out what people are truly interested in If you understand what

is important to people than you understand how to teach them

As for Paul T Rankin, nearly half of an adult’s communication time was listening A study by Wilt (1950), which found that people listen 45 percent of the time they spend communicating, is still widely cited ( e.g., Martin, 1987;Strother, 1987) Wilt found that 30 percent of communication time was spent speaking, 16 percent reading, and 9 percent writing That finding confirmed what Rankin had found in 1928 In the past, however, there was misconception that listening did not make any contribution in communication

To “communicate” defined by English Cambridge Dictionary is “to share information with others by speaking, writing, moving your body or using signals” Obviously, listening does not direct attend sharing information in communication activities, so that is the reason why people often ignore this little skill Many claimed we were born with listening and there was no need to “learn how to listen” Very often they did not realize the secret role of listening, which helps people understand one another, but viewed it superficially

As mentioned above, listening is not just” hearing what is being said” but understand or interpret what is being said” In other word, listening, a receptive skill

makes great contribution into conveying the information A fail in listening will lead to a fail in understanding the message in the speech Moreover, this will result

in interruption of communication or the end of communication

In term of studying a language, listening

Four skills exist in completely learning a language: speaking, reading, writing and listening Listening requires extensive concentration and practice Babies listen for a couple years before they are able to effectively communicate their language Listening is one of the most important skills you can possess in developing full English comprehension Throughout your learning experience, it`s important to remember why you are learning English This will increase your drive to succeed and improve your listening skills In term of studying a language, listening makes a great contribution Traditionally, Vietnamese education is believed to put much weigh on theory, so up to now grammar has been taking a key part in teaching and studying English Luckily, when the society is changing faster and faster with the global integration and international cooperation, more importance has been attached

to practical skills like listening and speaking Yet painfully, listening is often ranked second after speaking

“Listening is the Cinderella skill in second language learning All too often it

Paul T Rankin also once claimed that: “There are 4 arts in language learning

The two expressional ones are speaking and writing The two understanding ones are listening and reading Listening or the ability to understand spoken language is

As one of the so-called receptive skill, listening can prove to be rather difficult

or even stressful for students of language A reader may have a chance to read many times a text to clarify its meaning In writing, the author also is able to edit his sentences, words or the organization of the composition Speakers when making speech or conversation, they are allowed to have redundancy, hesitation Listeners, however, rarely have so many chances to listen again what is said, especially in

most listening contexts like TV programs, meetings, lectures when repeating only once is acceptable To make it worse, listeners often deal with problem right from speakers who can make mispronunciation, repetitions, which could lead them to seriously misunderstand Listeners are likely refineries to extract contents and let off all irrelevant trifles In addition, through listening, learners can have not only the message hiding in the speech but also know ledge and experience

Do not worried if your listening skill is not good because effective communication can be taught, practiced and improved

3.What makes listening difficult

Communication and language acquisition heavily depend on listening skills Just think: With poor listening ability, you can't participate or continue a conversation You can't follow instructions correctly Success at work, in a classroom, and elsewhere would be significantly more difficult to achieve

Unfortunately, it's easier to ask the question than to answer it A lot of research actually comes from native language development, as opposed to second language acquisition But we can still apply many of the findings to ESL EFL learning For example, spoken language contains colloquialisms and reduced forms like "donchya" for "don't you" in English There are steps that a listener goes through too, such as receiving the information, breaking it down, and identifying its purpose The listener's interest in the topic, the content, and any visual support (or lack of it) similarly affects listening These points are universally true for any spoken language.The first reason stems from the fact that the pace, choice of vocabulary, phrases, and grammar, and the inflection or intonation is completely determined by the speaker The listener has only one chance to catch the meaning of

a word or phrase This is quite similar to reading, as the writer similarly determines the language

In a series of experiments, Anderson and Lynch found that the difficulty of listening tasks was particularly by the following:

1 The organization of information ( text in which the order in which the information was presented matched its chronological sequence in real life were easier than texts in which the information was presented out of sequence)

2 The familiarity of the topic

3 The explicitness and sufficiency of the information

4 The type of referring expressions used (for example, use of pronouns rather than complete noun phrase referents made texts more difficult)

5 Whether the text described “static” relationship (for example, geometric, figures) or dynamic relationship (for example, a road accident)

The way these features were manipulated to produce texts which were similar generically but which were graded for difficulty can be illustrated by the task of

“trace the route” In the task, students listen to a description of the journey, route or tour and have to trace this route on a map The task designers systematically varied the type of map, the completeness of information, whether the start or end is given, the number of features and the congruence or otherwise of the information presented in the text and that displayed on the map These variations changed the difficult level of the task It was found that maps which were laid out in a rectangular fashion with all roads marked were easier than those in which the roads and paths were irregular; these were in turn easier than maps consisting of natural landmarks In terms of completeness of information, task became increasingly difficult according to the number of items mentioned in the text which were missing from the map Those in which the start and end of the route were indicated on the map were easier than those in which they were omitted As the number of features (buildings, natural marks, etc.) increased, so too did the difficulty Lastly, in terms

of referring expressions, it was found that reiterations were easier than synonyms The most difficult tasks were those in which there was contradictory information in the text and on the map In the next section we look in detail at the construction of a listening task which exploits these features

4.The listening skills

4.1The definitions of listening sub-skills

Listening is the ability to identify and understand what others are saying This involves understanding a speaker's accent or pronunciation, his grammar and his vocabulary, and grasping his meaning (Howatt and Dakin) An able listener is capable of doing these four things simultaneously Willis (1981:134) lists a series of

micro-skills of listening, which she calls enabling skills They are: (1) predicting

what people are going to talk about, (2) guessing at unknown words or phrases without panic, (3) using one's own knowledge of the subject to help one understand, (4) identifying relevant points; rejecting irrelevant information, (5) retaining relevant points (note-taking, summarizing), (6) recognizing discourse markers, e g., Well; Oh, another thing is; Now, finally; etc., (7) recognizing cohesive devices, e.g.,

understanding different intonation patterns and uses of stress, etc., which give clues

to meaning and social setting, (9) understanding inferred information, e g , speakers' attitude or intentions

Edurne Scott (2008) also points out that the sub-skills that can be emphasized

in a listening lesson include: (1) listening for specific information, (2) following topic shifts, (3) predicting, (4) recognizing transitions and sequence markers, (5) recognizing word boundaries, (6) identifying key words, (7) and taking notes According to Austin Shrope (1970), it is listening on the fourth level that primarily concerns us in our teaching Such listening may add an emotional and dramatic quality Radio and recordings highlight the importance of listening Listening is as active as speaking (the other productive skill), and in some ways even more difficult It well requires attention, thought, interpretation, and imagination To improve our learners' listening skills, they should be allowed to: (1) adopt a positive attitude, (2) be responsive, (3) shut out distractions, (4) listen for the speaker's purpose, (5) look for the signals of what is to come, (6) look for

summaries of what has gone before, (7) evaluate the supporting materials, (8) and look for non-verbal clues

Richards, J C (2005) also provides such skills taxonomy for developing students' listening skills as presented in Appendix P.xix

To sum up, as the focus of language teaching and learning has moved from centered approaches to more learner-centered ones, the focus of listening teaching and learning has also changed a lot That's why listening is now recognized as an active receptive skill (Anderson and Lynch: 1988) in which the listener activates previous or existing knowledge to integrate new knowledge

4.2 The classification of listening sub-skills

When students listen to foreign language, they should listen in a variety of ways Some of the skills involved in listening can help students overcome difficulties and improve there listening comprehension

4.2.1 Listening for stresses

English is considered a stressed language while many other languages are considered syllabic What does that mean? It means that, in English, we give stress

to certain words while other words are quickly spoken (some students say eaten!)

In other languages, such as French or Italian, each syllable receives equal importance (there is stress, but each syllable has its own length)

Many speakers of syllabic languages don't understand why we quickly speak,

or swallow, a number of words in a sentence In syllabic languages each syllable has equal importance, and therefore equal time is needed English however, spends more time on specific stressed words while quickly gliding over the other, less important, words

The same debates as mentioned above exists on whether languages really can

be divided into stress and syllable timed ones, but again we can at least say without any doubt that for teaching purposes this is a useful concept For example, Brazilian Portuguese is traditionally put into the syllable timed category of ratatat ratatat

ratatat languages along with Italian, whereas in Portugal the rhythm is more like the daDA dadiDAdaDAdadidadiDA rap-like rhythm of English, and this is reflected in the greater problems Brazilian students have with listening comprehension and pronunciation in English This is also one of the reasons some people find Indian English especially difficult to understand, as unlike most varieties of English it can

be classified as syllable timed Of course, for native speakers it is not difficult- in fact, stress actually helps native speakers understand each other So it is very important

4.2.2 Skimming

When listening, a person rarely needs to understand every word they hear But, it is important that they understand general understanding of the whole listening the main idea This skill is called skimming We skim when we are listening to a news broadcast and we only want to know the main events of the day When skimming, a listener asks, “What is the main idea of what I am hearing?” When you listen to the English language, you probably do not realize the processing that is taking place in your brain, because your listening skills are so advanced that they allow you to operate on "automatic pilot." When you begin to learn a foreign language, however, your listening skills are not developed enough for subconscious processing You need to pay attention to a lot of information at one time Under these circumstances, it probably will not be possible for you to understand everything, so you must "go with the flow" and not let yourself get hung

up on a single word or phrase.One way of speeding up your comprehension processes is to skim the passage to determine the main idea of the selection First, listen for a statement about a general topic; this usually occurs at the beginning of a monologue or conversation In the case of an oral presentation, you can use the titles of the talk as a clue, or any accompanying visuals such as charts, diagrams, or graphs When viewing a video, the visual cues are much more useful because they will help establish not only the setting but also the attitude of the speaker of

speakers Now, formulate one or two hypotheses about what type of information you think will be provided based upon your background knowledge For example, if the topic is financial aid, you would expect to hear about specific ways of obtaining grants and loans and eligibility; in a computer advertisement, you would expect to hear the name, component parts, price, and a few of the qualities of the machine Once you have determined what you believe to be the main idea, listen for cognates and other familiar words and phrases that you have learned Do these words and phrases support your theory? Did you successfully predict some of the information? Remember, successful listeners are able to report the gist of the message even if they do not recognize or understand all of the information

Sometimes in listening, the main idea is not even important The listeners may only need to look for specific information This skill is called scanning In a news broadcast, the weather man may discuss the temperatures for all of Asia But the Vietnamese listener would only scan for the temperatures of Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City Or, if a teacher is calling of a list of names, a listener will only listen for his or her own name It is not necessary to always comprehend every word or sentences when scanning

In general, you should scan for information, so that you can succeed in answering the questions Some questions depend on your general understanding of the text, and those are the ones you have probably answered in the first listening

Information presented in class often contains the central concepts of the course and the material most likely to be included on exams Yet, students frequently do not realize the importance of note-taking and listening

Learning to take notes is an important skill to master When taking notes, make sure the main idea and important details are written down Notes don't need to have small words like a, an, the and it The notes should be short, succinct, and easily understood days and weeks later To keep notes more organized the Cornell

method is an excellent choice and can help make studying the notes later on much easier

Taking notes is an important part of the life of every student There are two main reasons why note-taking is important:

When you are reading or listening, taking notes helps you concentrate In order to take notes - to write something sensible - you must understand the text As listening and reading are interactive tasks, taking notes help you make sense of the text Taking notes does not mean writing down every word you hear; you need to actively decide what is important and how is related to what you have already written

Notes help you to maintain a permanent record of what you have read or listened to This is useful when revising in the future for examinations or other reasons

Good notes should be accurate, clear and concise They should show the organization of the text, and this should show the relationship between the ideas

Context refers to the parts of a spoken (or written) message that surround a given word or phrase Context can provide clues to the meaning of unknown words and phrases Guessing from context helps the listeners (or reader) understands in situations when it would be either impossible or extremely time consuming to refer

to a dictionary When you hear a spoken message, guessing from context requires that you listen for familiar words and not get distracted by unknown words or phrases and that pay attention to the surrounding information or "context" in which the conversation is taking place

At certain times, it is important to listen for total comprehension Assume you are a visitor in town and you want to find the train situation before your train leaves

in half an hour You ask a kind man for directions and you listen carefully to what

he says If you do not understand something, you ask for clarification If you do not

understand everything he says You may go to the wrong place and miss your train

In this situation, you must listen for total comprehension

Listening for total comprehension is the traditional way of thinking about the nature of listening Indeed, in most methodology manuals listening and listening comprehension are synonymous This view of listening is based on the assumption that the main function of listening in second language learning is to facilitate understanding of spoken discourse We will examine this view of listening in some detail before considering a complementary view of listening – listening as acquisition This latter view of listening considers how listening can provide input that triggers the further development of second-language proficiency

Inference is an important skill, but one that's often left out of elementarylevel textbooks since it is considered a higher level of comprehension Thisis unfortunate because learners really do need to be able to "listen betweenthe lines" from the very beginning Indeed, beginners who lack extensivevocabularies and knowledge of language functions and grammar often needto infer a lot, just to compensate for what they don't understand Inference is neither magic nor pure imagination It is hearing meaning that is there, even when the words aren't.How do we let students know about the different listening types?Exercises like the one at the beginning of

this article (which is based on onefrom Active Listening from Cambridge University Press) are useful to create awareness By regularly pointing out the task types, teachers encourage learners to notice of their own listening goals.As useful as these three types of listening are both for learner awareness and as a checklist for teachers planning classes, it's important to remember that the skills are rarely used

in isolation At times, a specific word or two will give the clues that help learners understand the gist In some cases, global knowledge of a topic makes it easier to focus on specific information or to infer meaning The important thing is that students have experience with a variety of listening types and tasks.As important as these listening types are, they need to be considered within the overall framework the learners are using to make sense of what they hear

Critical listening is a form of listening that if usually not mentioned, since it involves analysis, critical thinking and judgment Making judgments during listening is often considered as a barrier to understand a person, and there's a lot of truth in that However, critical listening occurs when you still want to understand what the other person is saying, but also have some reasons or responsibility to evaluate what is being said to you and how it is being said (New York: Viking Penguin, 1992)

When seeking to do critical listening, it can help to understand the person and their context Many arguments do not stand alone and understanding why the person

is saying what they are saying can help in the understanding and consequently evaluation of their message

Especially for more advanced listeners, the skill of critical listening should be practiced and developed In this skill, the listener must decide whether what he or she is hearing is true or whether or not he/she agrees with what is being said

Critical listening is more than understanding words and sentences; it is

deciding whether they are true The listener must make a judgment of the text.While experts on learning and communication almost universally demean the importance and value of critical listening, when it comes to real life, listening critically is used every day

Summarizing

Similar to skimming is the skill of summarizing We summarize when we repeat the main ideas of a text When summarizing, the listener will try to repeat or reduce the main points into fewer words We might use this skill when reporting the main points of the news to a friend

Summarizing brings what was said together to find a main idea or key points This is how you show that you understand what the speaker was talking about, and what was important in what was said.Summarizing, or re-stating what the questioner said, aids the listening process by making sure there were no misunderstandings between what the questioner meant and what the listener heard Since all communication between people has to be interpreted (we can't download exact meanings to each other), misunderstandings are common Re-stating can help avoid misunderstanding and allow the questioner time to clarify

5 Summary

Listening is an active skill that includes the use of many sub-skills Listening sub-skills are effective tools used to effectively understand opinions, suggestions and ideas Emphasizing the listening sub-skills helps students develop a sense of why they listen and which skill to use to listen better Our learners’ success at understanding the content of what they hear largely depends on their expertise in their use of listening sub-skills

In conclusion, this chapter is designed to help learners to have generalknowledge on listening skill and now, the writer turns to chapter II for

analyzing survey learning listening of the third year students at Faculty of English, Hanoi Open University

CHAPTER II:FINDINGS,INTERPRETATIONSANDANALYSES

1 Subject of the study

This survey was carried out among 100 K19 students who are at upper-inter mediate in Faculty of English They have gotten familiar with English listening lessons and are all in need of upgrading their skills

2 Data collection

In order to get information about the problems of the third year students in listening skills, a questionnaire was work out in English 100 questionnaires were given to the 3rd year students and they were asked to answer them honestly to guarantee the accuracy and the reliability of the results

The questionnaire (see Appendix), consists of 12 questions attributed to help finding essential information of the overview of studying listening as well as challenges facing students Question 1 aims to explore the time the third year students have been learning English Question 2 aims to find out students’ attitudes toward listening skills Question 3 attempts to find out the difficulties that students often encounter in listening English Question 4 is to find out the teachers’ role in teaching English listening skills in class Question 5 is to find out what type of listening exercise students are interested in Question 6 looks for the listening techniques that students often use to listen in class Question 7 is to explore students’ listening result in their 3th term test Question 8 is to find out thinking of students about improving English thought games Question 9 finds out what way students prefer to do with the listening task in class Question 10 and question 11 aims to get the frequency of practicing listening at home Question 12 finds out what kind of materials students usually use to practice listening skills

3 Data analysis and discussion

In survey questionnaires, some questions are designed to find out the situation

of learning listening skills of the third year students at Faculty of English, Hanoi Open University The results are described as follow

Nowadays, English has become popular in Vietnam and it is one of the compulsory subjects at schools In question 1 of survey, many schools have taught English for students from grade 3 The number of students learnt English under 10 years is 60 percents (60%) Besides, there are many schools have taught English for students from grade 6 or grade 10 The percentage of students learnt English under

10 years is 40 percents (40%) However, they have been only taught the basic program such as grammar, vocabulary and languages structures Within 45 minutes, they have been taught the program above Listening skills has not been paid attention to in many schools

TABLE 1 : STUDENTS’ ATTITUDES TOWARD LISTENING SKILLS

Q2 How do you find listening skills? Answer %

if students wish to master it Therefore, students should recognize the importance of listening skills and pay more attention to these skills

TABLE 2: STUDENTS’ LISTENING PROBLEMS

Q3 Which factors affect you the most in

In this question, the writer gives out six problems that students often encounter

in listening skills Each problem will be analysed as follow:

Problem 1: New word

One of the problems met by the 3rd year students of English is the lack of vocabulary.Vocabulary is important when learning a language Any language, of course including English, has thousands and thousands of words In many cases, even those native speakers of the language do not know all the words of that language There are just too many to learn New words are usually considered as the obstacles in effective listening process to students The above research shows that 54% of the students lack vocabulary to deal with listening exercise Therefore, they feel confused and nervous; it really makes them hard to guess the meaning of the word.Besides, many of them complained an issue with reducing their accent, or not knowing the vocabulary or grammar to create a decent conversation or too much slangs and specialized words in the context, this lead to misunderstanding the speakers’ idea As a matter of fact, poor vocabulary causes a lot of difficulties to third year students So it is a need for the students to increase vocabulary and build

their lexicon in order to help them listen actively and make them understand the speakers easily

Problem 2: Grammar structures

The above table just shows that 7% of the third year students finds it difficult

to understand grammar structures in listening The number percent through survey

is not high Perhaps they know grammatical errors play an very important role in listening skills so they spent time to practicing so much with it or maybe they do not understand the difficult grammar structures in listening skills As a fact, a lot of students have their own listening habits Some of them often try to understand every word and every sentence For the third-year students, the challenge of listening poses particular demands because there are many sentences types that are complex and very different from their fist language Lack of grammatical knowledge can reduce English listening levels

Problem 3: Unconcentration

As it is presented on the table, there are 13% of the third year students who find hard to concentrate while listening In fact, they know how to get the important events, and that leads to unconcentration.They know listening key words and they won’t miss important ones As the result, they know that is redundant and necessary for them to do so

Problem 4: Different accents of speakers

35% of the students reported that their listening comprehension was affected

by the speaker’s accent The word “accent” here refers to the variety of spoken English, that is, whether it was British, American or others The students also used the word to include features of speech that they noticed as being different from the type of “standard” English they were familiar with In fact, the first accent affected students most is the one of their teachers They have got used to listening to their

teachers’ accents since they were at high school Consequently, they are quite confused when listening to other accents Especially, students listen to some popular accents such as American British and Australia English is easier than listening to Singaporean, Malaysian or Indian etc To sum up, third year students should get used to as many different accents as possible to improve their listening skill better

Problem 5: Listening speed

73% the third year students reported that listening speed make them find it difficult to catch up with the information As a result, students, thought having been familiar with such speed of speaking, still find themselves confronted by creatures traveling at the speed of rocket! Hardly do they catch up with the first sentence than the speaker begins the second ones, which cause them to miss the information continuously

Listening speed sometimes cause students’ unconcentration They cannot hear clearly and hence miss the information

Problem 6: Pronunciation

As reported in the above table, 45% of the third year students have problems

in pronunciation Which affect the student’s comprehensibility Moreover, pronunciation is the most important feature people notice in English Many learners

of English have got trouble in distinguishing between various sounds of the English language and it prevents them from listening clearly.When you hear or are trying to say the partially similar or totally different sounds, it's easy to make mistakes because you are used to hearing and making sounds in your mother tongue It is important therefore, to make yourself aware of how sounds in a different language are made and practice listening to them and saying them as much as possible It can

be very hard for any learner of English, including third year’s students to develop good listening skills when there are many variations in accent and

mispronunciations are so common among native British English speakers

TABLE 3: TEACHERS’ ROLE IN TEACHING LISTENING TECHNIQUES

Q4 Do your teachers give you some

techniques/advice for you to listen effectively?

TABLE 4 : STUDENTS’ FAVORITE LISTENING EXERCISES

Q5 What types of listening exercises do you find

E Finding and correcting mistakes 27%

This question aims to find out students’ favorite listening the exercise which improves their listening skills It is obvious that most the students prefer Gap filling (52%) True/false statement tasks seem to be less interesting to them (43%).It is also concluded that despite nearly 2 years of studying in university, the third year students still prefer kinds of exercises which are easier and no waste time to complete The rest of exercises such as: Answering comprehension questions, Finding and correcting mistakes (27%), so quite interesting when Prediction skill which exercises more difficult and require higher listening skills is 25% , Summarizing and Dictation and repetition just has 17% and 11%

It is necessary for the students practice various different types of listening exercises in order to broaden their minds and increase their creativities By doing this, students can improve their listening skills a lot

TABLE 5: LISTENING TECHNIQUES USED BY STUDENTS

Q6 Which sub-skills do you often use while

listening in class? ( choose more than one)

F Listening and note-taking 58%

It terms of scanning, skimming and summarizing, 28%, 23% and 22% of the third year students use it to support their listening Besides, 17% of them use Listening for total comprehension, 15% uses Sensing styles and tones in their listening processes All of different techniques are under 10% includes: Sound discrimination and comprehending structure (8%), Critical listening (6%), Inferencing (5%) Through this data, we can see these are important listening technique that students need to learn in order to understand and how to use them effectively