Những vấn đề gặp phải trong việc dạy và học kỹ năng nghe hiểu tiếng Anh của Giảng viên và Sinh viên năm thứ nhất không chuyên tại trường Đại học Sao Đỏ và một số giải pháp khắc phục

Nghiên cứu này được thực hiện nhằm chỉ ra những khó khăn gặp phải của sinh viên năm nhất không chuyên Anh và giảng viên tại Đại học Sao Đỏ trong quá trình học tập và giảng dạy kĩ năng nghe hiểu đồng thời nêu lên các nhân tố ảnh hưởng, trực tiếp hay gián tiếp gây ra những khó khăn này. Phương pháp nghiên cứu sử dụng chủ yếu là phương pháp định lượng dựa chủ yếu vào dữ liệu thu thập được bằng câu hỏi khảo sát cho giáo viên và sinh viên. Ngoài ra phương pháp định tính dưới hình thức phỏng vấn giáo viên và quan sát lớp học cũng được tác giả áp dụng nhằm tăng độ tin cậy của kết quả nghiên cứu. Kết quả nghiên cứu cho thấy sinh viên năm nhất không chuyên Anh và giảng viên của trường Đại học Sao Đỏ gặp rất nhiều khó khăn trong việc dạy và học kĩ năng nghe hiểu tiếng Anh. Những khó khăn đó được sắp thành 4 nhóm: trình độ ngôn ngữ, tài liệu nghe, nhân tố người nghe, nhân tố người nói...Từ kết quả trên, một số giải pháp sư phạm đã được đưa ra nhằm cải thiện chất lượng dạy và học kĩ năng nghe hiểu tiếng Anh của sinh viên và giảng viên Đại học Sao Đỏ.

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

MỘT SỐ GIẢI PHÁP KHẮC PHỤC)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 6014.0111

HANOI – 2013

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

MỘT SỐ GIẢI PHÁP KHẮC PHỤC)

M.A MINOR THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology Code: 6014.0111

Supervisor: Dr Duong Thi Nu

HANOI – 2013

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

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

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

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

of difficulty and frustration

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

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART I: INTRODUCTION 1

1 Rationale 1

2 Aims of the study 1

3 Research Question 2

4 Scope of the study 2

5 Significance of the study 2

6 Methods of the study 3

7 Design of the study 3

PART II: THE DEVELOPMENT 5 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5 1.1 Theoretical background of listening 5

1.2 Potential problems in learning and teaching listening 8

1.3 Previous studies on listening difficulties in Vietnam 12

1.4 Summary 13

CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 15 2.1 The setting of the study 15

2.2 Participants 15

2.3 Data collection instruments 16

CHAPTER 3: THE STUDY 18 3.1 Survey questionaires 18

3.2 Interview 28

3.3 Class observation 30

CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDTATIONS 32

4.1 Findings 324.2 Recommendation 35

PART III: CONCLUSION 40REFERENCE 42APPENDICES IAPPENDIX 1 I

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

Chart 2a Learners’ perceptions of their linguistic difficulties in learning listeningChart 2b Learners’ perceptions of learning difficulties related to listeners

Chart 3: Learners’ perceptions of their listening difficulties related to the speakersChart 4 Learners’ perceptions of their listening difficulties related to the listeningenvironment

Chart 5 Teachers’ assessment of listening task in the textbook

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

Chart 7 Learners’ expectations towards their teachers and teachers’ opinions abouthow can help their students

PART I: INTRODUCTION

1 Rationale

It cannot be denied that learning and teaching English in Vietnam has gained aconsiderable improvement recently especially after Vietnam‘s participation intoWTO The demand for English communicative proficiency is rising compared tothat in the past While learning grammar and vocabulary were prioritized in the past,

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

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

a research on the topic: “The Problems faced by teachers and first year

non-English major students at Sao Do University in teaching and learning non-English listening skills and some solutions” with the hope to make a small contribution

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

2 Aims of the study

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

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

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

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

in teaching listening skills

- To provide some suggested solutions to help students and teachers overcomethese difficulties, improve the quality of teaching and learning listeningcomprehension at SDU

3 Research Question

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

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

2 What factors cause these difficulties to students and teachers?

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

The study; therefore, focuses on seeking the answers for aforementionedquestions

4 Scope of the study

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

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

5 Significance of the study

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

teachers, they will be able to improve their listening competence Learning fromproblems is really a good way in second language acquisition

As for teachers, the study provides them with teaching guidelines which havebeen inferred after careful observation and practical investigation to their teachingproblems The result of this study may also be used as the reference for teachers ofother university who share the similar context

6 Methods of the study

This study will be conducted in quantitative methods Survey questionnaires will

be employed to collect data for reliable result with the participation of 100 first yearnon English - major students and 15 English teachers at SDU In addition, informalinterviews and class observation will also be exploited to collect furtherinformation The data will be processed and analyzed carefully in order to draw outthe final conclusions

7 Design of the study

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

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

significance, the methods and the design of the study

- Part II: Development - consists of 4 chapters:

Chapter 1: Literature review - provides some theoretical background about

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

by second language learners in Vietnam context

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

including research questions, data collection instruments are presented

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

presents the data analysis result from survey questionnaires, interviews and classobservation

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

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

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

of the study and some suggestions for further research

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

1.1.1 Definition of listening comprehension

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

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

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

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

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

unidirectional receiving of audible symbols, but an interactive process (Brown,2001).

1.1.2 Stage of listening

1.1.2.1 Pre-listening

It is very difficult for students if the pre- listening activities are not exploited byteachers The pre – listening activities will give students a brief overview on whatare they going to hear such as: topic, related vocabulary and some necessaryinformation Helgesen & Brown (2007) emphasize the importance of pre – listeningactivities: “Just like we need to stress our muscles before exercising, students need

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

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

1.1.2.2 While-listening

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

The While-listening activities should be interesting, so that the students canbecome interested in listening The origin of interest partly comes from the topicand the content of what was said Thus, the listening text should be carefully chosenwith the concern of the possibilities for varying the levels of difficulty and theinconvenience of carrying out activities as well as the type of listening learning:

self- studying or class learning as Underwood (1989, 74-78) states In addition,Davis (2000, 78) suggests some while - listening activities as follows:

- Identify the exact topic, or an aspect of it

- Note two to four pieces of information

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

stages and some relate only loosely to the listening text itself

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

- Give opinions

- Relate similar experiences

- Role-play a similar interaction

- Write a brief report

- Write a similar text

- Debate the topic

1.1.3 Strategies of listening comprehension

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

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

knowledge of the topic, the situation or context, the type of text, and the language.This background knowledge activates a set of expectations that help the listener tointerpret what is heard and anticipate what will come next Top-down strategies

include: listening for the main idea, predicting, drawing inferences, andsummarizing.

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

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

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

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

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

to be more challenging compared to that of other skills

1.2 Potential problems in learning and teaching listening

1.2.1 Situational problems

1.2.1.1 Size of the class and teaching facilities

The normal class size in Vietnam especially the class of non – foreign languagemajors is really a problem for foreign language learning The averagenumber/quantity of students in one class at tertiary level ranges from 47 to 54students, too much bigger than that of an ideal foreign language class of 15 ~ 20.This also affects the teaching and learning results Another situational problemoriginates from teaching facilities How can we have a successful listening lesson ifthe teaching facilities don’t agree with you? The lack of listening materials, orlistening files of poor quality, old – fashioned cassette players, out of datetextbooks… can result in teaching and learning problems

1.2.2 Listening materials problems

1.2.2.1 Familiarity of the topic

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

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

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

someone with a minimal grasp of a foreign language can follow a conversation or atalk on a subject that is familiar to him as he has familiar concepts and ideas aboutthat topic in his mind already, so he can fill in any gaps in comprehension Incontrast, someone with a good command of a language may experience difficultywhen listening to something that is new or strange to him Even native speakers cansuffer from this” For this reason, unfamiliar topic may be considered as the mosttroublesome factor to the learning listening

1.2.2.2 Strange sounds and different accents

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

English sounds such as the ‘θ’sound There are some English sounds which do not

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

or joining sounds) Listeners’ lack of phonological knowledge might lead toreduced comprehension (Buck, 2001)

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

‘native speakers’ pronunciation’ It is so clear to notice that many learners canrecognize English words quite well in written form, but they fail to understand them

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

He also confirms that “unfamiliar accents can make comprehension almost

impossible for listeners” Thus, it is the role of teachers to support students withvaluable instructions and flexible teaching method in order to overcome thesedifficulties.

1.2.2.3 Speech rate

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

is to show them how to identify the important words that they need to listen out forand it belongs to teachers’ role

1.2.3 Learners’ potential problems

1.2.3.1 Learners’ bad learning habit

One of the bad learning habits of second language learners is trying tounderstand every word during listening They don’t have the habit to focus on thekey words for comprehension This is one aspect of the problem above that allsecond language learners have experienced at one time or another This oftenhappens when they concentrate too much on finding the meaning of a word,therefore they may lose the thread of what is being said by the time they rememberwhat it means Sometimes, students are easy to be distracted by outsideenvironment As a teacher, we can reduce this problem with pre – listeningactivities and by getting students to talk about the same topic first to bring therelevant vocabulary for that topic Besides, we instruct listening strategies For the

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

1.2.3.2 Low English proficiency

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

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

1.2.3.3 Lack of vocabulary and grammar structures

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

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

1.2.3.4 Low motivation

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

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

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

1.2.3.5 Fatigue and concentration

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

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

1.3 Previous studies on listening difficulties in Vietnam

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next, some previous studies related to listening problems are introduced

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

of teaching and learning listening comprehension

CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

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

2.1 The setting of the study

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

2.2 Participants

2.2.1 Teachers

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

2.2.2 Students

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

to 21 They come from different provinces in the North of Vietnam These studentswere chosen randomly from about 2000 first year students The study wasconducted when they were in their first semester of the first year at SDU Most ofstudents have studied English at high school; however, their English proficiency isnot the same Besides, some of them only consider English as the sub – subject, soonly little attention has been paid to English learning Some of them even feel afraid

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

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

2.3 Data collection instruments

As aforementioned, quantitative method in form of survey questionnaires aremainly employed in this study to find out listening comprehension problemsexperienced by first-year students and teachers at Sao Do University Thisinstrument was applied to both students and teachers

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

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

2.3.1 Survey questionnaires

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

of years they had been learning English as well as their major Part two wasdesigned to investigate the difficulties they encounter during learning listening andtheir expectation from teachers would be presented for selection in part three.Unlike the students’ questionnaire, the teachers’ are all in English withouttranslation It aimed to find out the difficulties the teachers faced during teaching,their comments on current textbooks and their own solutions for them

2.3.2 Interviews

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

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

15 teachers took part in this informal interview In this step, the writer needed thehelp of audio and video recorder

2.3.3 Classroom observation

The last data gathering instrument employed in this study was classroomobservation This instrument helps the writer to collect the necessary informationabout the existing learning and teaching listening condition at SDU, to double checkhow the teaching – learning process of listening going on In addition, all datacollected after issuing questionnaires and conducting interviews would be doublechecked the accuracy before being taken in serious consideration and analysis

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

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

CHAPTER 3: THE STUDY

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

3.1 Survey questionnaires

3.1.1 Questionnaire for students

The purpose of this study was to identify the listening problems faced by teachersand first year non – English major students of Sao Do University in teaching andlearning listening The combination of questionnaires, interviews; classroomobservation helped the researcher gather the essential and useful information whichwas analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively, then, divided into four maincategories: listening text, speaker, and listener (learner) and studying environment.However, we cannot deny the fact that it is a very complicated job to distinguishthese categories because of their interrelation to each other The learners may claimthat because of too many new words in listening text, they cannot tell what it isabout; hence, it is the listening text that interferes with their listeningcomprehension Meanwhile, it can be learner’s problem that make the listening textincomprehensive because of their lack of vocabulary and grammar structure Beingaware of this complication, and in order to make the analysis reliable, the researcherfollowed Yagang and Rubin (1994) to divide the data into four categories namely:text, listener, speaker and environment For the sake of readability, the options werearranged in that aforementioned order accordingly

3.1.1.1Problems related to listening text

The listening text itself may be the main source of listening comprehensionproblems due to unfamiliar topics, complicated vocabulary and grammaticalstructures, lengthy speech The chart below shows how the listening text challengesstudents of SDU

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

Chart 1 reveals the students’ perceptions of listening difficulties relating to thelistening text in response to the first four options in the students’ questionnaire It isnot a surprise that the majority of the students admitted that they had troubles withvocabulary in listening (46% often, 20% always) Students at Sao Do University, ingeneral, are lazy in learning new words and in fact their vocabulary is very poor Interm of topic, the rate is 40% often and 19% always, while the number of studentsresponded to often have the trouble with grammar and length is 35% and 30%respectively From the result obtained above, it seems reasonable to state thatunfamiliar topics and words interfere with the listening comprehension of greatmajority of students It seems to be a little surprised to me that complexgrammatical structure only ranks the third in the overall result However, the gapbetween the most and the least difficult factor (vocabulary and length) is not muchand all of four mentioned factors share the high “often” percentage This resultreconfirms the fact that vocabulary, grammar, length and topic all have a biginfluence on SDU students’ listening comprehension process

3.1.1.2 Problems related to listeners

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

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

Chart 2b Learners’ perceptions of learning difficulties related to listeners

From chart 2a, we can easily find that most of the students admitted that they hadtroubles with vocabulary in listening (43% often, 30% always) In terms of sound,the chart shows that 43% of the students often could not recognize familiar wordswhen they were in spoken form More than half of the students found it difficult torecognize key words in the listening texts while it is so surprised to find out that16% students did not have any trouble with background knowledge The resultseems to be on contrary to the findings above on the importance of the topic inlistening text This matter will be taken in detailed discussion in the part of classobservation and teacher interview

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

A large number of students also confessed that they didn’t have much interest inlistening lessons 30% of students claimed that they often felt unmotivated inlistening while the rate of “sometimes” and “always” of this category also account

for high percentage of 27% and 17% respectively Hence, motivation is alsoimportant factor interfering students’ listening comprehension.

In short, in term of the factors related to the listener, all the factors of tirednessand anxiety, concentration, motivation as well as linguistic proficiency in thelistening text have influence on the listening comprehension process of the students

3.1.1.3 Problems related to speakers

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

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

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

A large number of students (42% often) responded that they could not listeneffectively when the accent in the recording was unfamiliar with them 43 studentsout of 100 students admitted that they always or sometimes found it difficult torecognize the word they knew because of the speakers’ pronunciation These figuresmake it possible to rank “accent” the second troublesome speaker – related factor Meanwhile, the matter of number of speakers deserves to be ranked the thirdinterfering listening comprehension problem when 14% of students never had anydifficulties in listening to the recordings of many speakers The number of studentsalways found it problematic only accounts for 16% equivalent to the minority ofparticipants

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

to find the solutions for the listening problems

3.1.1.4 Problems related to listening environment

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