How to improve english listening skill of k52 english faculty students at TMU

ABSTRACT It has been acknowledged that English has been used all over the world It means that English is a means of communication that is used internationally by people to communicate with others to transfer ideas, thoughts, feelings, attitudes, or messages Nowadays, people need to be able to use English due to globalization In English, There are four skills in learning language: listening, speaking, reading and writing Naturally, the process of learning is started from listening speaking-reading and the last is writing Human cannot speak before listen Wallace (2004:13) wrote that listening skill is very important skill because this skill may human acquire perception, knowledge, information and success in communicating with others However, listening is not simple process One is able to listen means she/he can differentiate between sounds, comprehend and understand vocabulary and grammar, interpret intonation and meaning, consider everything in the same time, and also adjust to the social cultural context from utterances that are listened (Vandergrift, 2012).Therefore, the present study attempts to investigate the English listening problems encountered by a group of third year English major students at Thuong Mai University and suggests solutions so as to improve their English language listening skill Survey questionnaires and interview questions are used to collect data I administered a questionnaire to 200 third- year English major students at Thuong Mai University This study included chapters Firstly, chapter showed the overview of the study This chapter provided general information about rationale, previous, scope, aims, research methodology and organization of the study Secondly chapter was literature review related to research topic Thirdly, reseach methodology was chapter which included participants and instruments Next, chapter was most essential chapter of this study, named Research Findings Data is analyzed quantitatively using descriptive statistics and qualitatively using content analysis Chapter is recommendations and suggestions The results of this study may also be useful for those who are interested in this field 1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Nguyen Khac Nghia, for his professional guidance, intelligent advice, caring, patience, and continuous support in all stages of this thesis I have been extremely lucky to have a supervisor who cared so much about my work, and who responded to my questions and queries so promptly Without his invaluable supervision and words of encouragement, this thesis would not have been possible I am also thankful to 200 participants in this study for their patience and cooperation This study would not have been successful without their assistance Finally, I am also grateful to my family and English major students who have enthusiastically helped and encouraged me during the time I conducted this work Thank you so much! Hanoi, 23, March, 2019 Phuong Nguyen Thi Phuong 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS 3 LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES No 4.1 4.1 4.1 4.1 4.1 4.2 4.2 4.2 4.2 4.3 List of tables and charts List of tables Students’ feeling about the English listening lesson List of charts Profiles of students Page 19 20 Attitude of students towards the position of listening skill Students Self-assessment in English listening skills The highlighted skill in the previous Problems related the listeners 21 22 22 23 Problems related to the listening materials Listening problems related to Linguistic feature Others factors affecting to the listening process Solutions for overcoming to improve English listening skill for 3rd year students 4 25 27 28 29 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS No Abbreviations TMU Etc CDs EL EFL English meaning Thuongmai University et cetera Compact discs English language English as a Foreign Language 5 CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY 1.1 Reason of the study Nowadays, explosive science and technology and globalization, proficient English is extremely necessary No one denies the importance of English language in the present time as global language It is clear that English has become more and more dominant around the world Actually, in some countries it is used as the mother tongue and others countries learn it as second language in their school There is no doubt that English is language of communication between the people from different cultures Therefore, learning English plays an important role in education and the development of the country The four language skills are listening, speaking, reading and writing that all language learners are supposed to acquire If learning English is like building a house, English listening is building a foundation for the house Listening is believed to be the most challenging due to the complex and subtle nature of listening comprehension in a second or foreign language In fact, there are a variety of learners who cannot communicate English fluently after many years of foreign language studying To speak English fluently, you must listen to English well We just can exchange information each other when understanding what are partner saying Consequently, bad listening will affect to the conversation All these reason, offered the researchers a chance to conduct a study on “How to improve English listening skill of K52 English faculty students at TMU” The researcher hopes that the research will provide learners a relatively view about how to improve listening skill 1.2 Research questions The goal of the study is to find out actual situation of English listening for K52 students in English faculty, detect factors affecting the listening and give some possible in order to help student improve listening skill To reach the target, the researcher set up the following questions: What difficulties K52 students face when listening to English? What are some possible solutions to improve their English listening skill? 6 1.3 Research scope The study is about learning listening skill for K52 students of English department at TMU The research shows the current situation of English Listening skill of K52 students and dealt with the problems that students usually met in Listening Besides, the study also suggested some possible solutions to improve their listening skill Because of the limitation of time and knowledge; the shortage of reference materials, this study cannot cover the whole issues of listening skill Moreover, the study cannot touch upon all students at English Department, it is confused to the K52 students in the faculty at TMU 1.4 Method Nowadays, both quantitative and qualitative methods are commonly used for the researchers to report the study Consequently, this study was implemented in both quantitative and qualitative Documents and scientific research of scholars and domestic and foreign researchers help the researcher build theoretical framework for the study The data was collected by means of questionnaires and interviews at TMU The main method is quantitative survey questionnaire In addition, so as to fulfill the set goals, some information is collected by the researcher based on her informal interviews qualitative method to assume the value and accuracy of the study 1.5 Aims of the study This study attempts to explore of how students overcome listening difficulties English This study aims the following Firstly, this research is to identify the students’ perception to the significance of the English listening Secondly, finding out kinds of listening problems encountered by English major students at TMU is one of the aims These challenges make students feel uninterested in learning English in class as well as at home Finally, we provide the potential suggestions, to help students overcome difficulties Meanwhile, these solutions will help student be excited in English listening lesson Listening level is better and better 7 1.6 Organization of the study The research is divided into following chapter: Chapter (Overview): some main information about the research Chapter (Literature review): comprising relevant definitions, difficulties and methods to improve that skill Chapter 3(Research method): give reasons for choosing and describing research methods Chapter (Research findings): collecting, analyzing, processing the data and presenting the results Chapter 5(Recommendations and suggestions): summarizing the study, making suggestions, presenting the limitations and research future “References” of the study which listed all the materials and sources of the information used in the study and the “Appendix” in which the questionnaires and interview questions designed for students were mentioned 8 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Overview of listening 2.1.1 Definition of listening and listening comprehension Listening is considered as one of the most important skill and in acquiring both a native language and a second on foreign language It is being paid more and more attention to So far, there have been a number of definitions of listening by different linguists such as Howatt and Dalkin (1974), Wolvin and Coakley (1982), Pearson (1983), Hirsch (1986), Scarcella and Oxford (1992), Bentley and Bacon (1996), Brown (2001), Gary Buck (2001), Scott Shelton (2008) and among other Howatt and Dalkin (1974) defined listening as the ability to identify and understand what others are saying This involves understanding a speaker’s accent or pronunciation, his grammar, his vocabulary, his grasping and his meaning Wolvin and Coakley (1982) regarded listening “the process of receiving, attending to and assigning meaning to aural stimuli Pearson (1983) stated that “listening involves the simultaneous organization and combination of skills in phonology, syntax, semantics and knowledge of the textual structure, all of which seem to be controlled by cognitive process Thus, it can be said that thought not fully realized the listening skill is essential in acquiring language proficiency” Hirsch (1986) gave another definition: “listening as an aspect of skill involving neurological response and interpretations of sounds to understand and to give meaning by reacting, selecting meaning, remembering, attending, analyzing and including previous experience” Bentley and Bacon (1996) stated that listening , an important part of the second language learning process, has also been defined as an active process during which the listeners constructs meaning from oral input According to Brown (2001), listening is “not merely the process of unidirectional receiving of audible symbols He supposed that one aspect s of listening comprehension transmitting nerve impulses to the brain” Hence, listening comprises of three elements: the sender, the message, and the listener 9 Gary Buck (2001), for example, points out that “listening comprehension is an active process of constructing meaning and this is done by applying knowledge to the incomings sound” in which a number of different types of knowledge are involved both linguistic knowledge and non-linguistic knowledge.” Scott Shelton (2008) thinks that listening effectively is a demanding and involving process One must be able to deal with different accents or pronunciation, unfamiliar lexical items and syntactic structures, competing background noise and also make a conscious effort to not switch off or become distracted while listening All of this must be achieved and dealt with more or less simultaneously in order to identify and understand the meaning in any given message According to Hasan, “listening” is one process that listeners receive information This process takes place one way which completely doesn’t require any explanation or interaction with text listening According to Richard (1983), O’Malley and Chamot (1990), listening is an activity and a complex process in which listeners focus on aspects selected for listening From the listened sound, they find the meaning of information and combine what they hear with their knowledge In conclusion, listening is a process of identifying and understanding what the speakers say, which includes understanding a speaker’s pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary All of definitions are given with a view to clarifying the nature of the listening skill which is necessary in the process of acquire a native language or a foreign one Listening comprehension There are different definitions of the term “listening comprehension.” Listening comprehension is the different processes of understanding the spoken language These include knowing speech sounds, comprehending the meaning of individual words, and understanding the syntax of sentences (Nadig, 2013 as cited in Pourhosein Gilakjani &Sabouri, 2016) According to Hamouda (2013), listening comprehension refers to the understanding of what the listener has heard and it is his/her ability to repeat the text despite the fact that the listener may repeat the sounds without real comprehension 10 10 Chart 4.2.1: Problems related to the listeners According to the chart, the difficulties above offered by the researcher constrain the students at Thuongmai University These problems are the objective causes at the same time Students agree that shortage of vocabulary is the biggest obstacle in listening comprehension This is clear in the comment of the interviewed students: “My vocabulary is poor; it is very difficult for me to understand what the conversation is, especially when the word that I don’t know is a key word Though I have tried to look it up in the dictionary, it’s sometimes useless I guess it’s because my pronunciation is not good enough, too.” “I am weak in listening because if there is a vocabulary I don’t understand then I miss many main points” Many students share that they want to teacher or someone who can teach them methods to learn vocabulary more than That is reason why they can’t catch the all information in listening text Consequently, their mark weren’t high in listening test As the chart show, bad pronunciation is the second challenge which more than a third students meet Their ability is not good enough to recognize the vocabulary in the oral text They just learn pronunciation themselves to improve it Support for this finding is also found in the researcher’s interviews that “Sometimes consonants and syllables get lost or become almost inaudible, especially the auxiliaries can’t be noticed”.“ When I listen to native speakers, I feel that sounds change or blend with each other.” “In class, we pronounce the words one by one The pronunciation is strong but, within a sentence, the words change and it becomes impossible to hear them.” Another difficulty that one in ten percent students are poor knowledge of grammar In fact, most of the students learnt English at high school but they can’t listen well Their grammar is not great enough In the interview, interviewee said that: "I don't think ‘knowing a lot of vocabulary’ only is useful ability for me My ability to listen for complex sentences is too bad, and also I know my English grammar is as terrible as my ability to English conversation." Similarly, another Interviewee states: "My grammar is poor so my English isn't good They (listening, reading, and writing) all need grammar, vocabulary, and so on In the listening class, I feel this way, too." 27 27 Also, 10% of the students’ responses show that they need listen to more than three times to get the key information If listening only one time, most of them can’t listen anything in listening text They usually watch the subtitles in the final page of book Besides, the semester tests are usually grammar, so they feel that Listening is not important In addition these problems, psychology (4%) affect quite much to listeners It is indicated that a person feels nervous or anxious he or she may not be concentrated Some students also said that whenever their attention was diverted from the input, they would miss a lot of information Some interviewee answered that “I am fear that I can’t understand what I will hear” “I always feel nervous and worried in listening lessons” Therefore, boredom and frustration are other barriers to listening comprehension A very small number of students evaluate that lack of background knowledge affect to their listening ability as well as trying to listen to every word Some students answered that “they often try to listen every words in to understand the meaning of words in the audio but stopping listening or losing the concentration when meeting the unknown words” For instance, “they have no enough culture knowledge of American or others countries, mostly they didn’t understand what is the main content” Via the interviews, students said they were always passive in expanding knowledge especially in economy, politic, socialization, etc 4.2.1.2 Objective problems cause difficulties students Factors causing students listening comprehension problems are categorized into different sources including problems related to the listening material, basic linguistic and psychological characteristics which will be discussed in detail below  Problems related to the listening materials Chart 4.2.2: Problems related to the listening materials The listening material may deal with almost any area of life It might include street gossip, proverbs, everyday conversation, new products, and situations unfamiliar to the student Also, in a spontaneous conversation speakers frequently change topics According to the students’ responses, more than two fifth point out 28 28 that when the speaker speaks at a rapid speed, it is difficult for them to comprehend what is being said, even if the words spoken are the ones they are familiar with Via the interview, some students answered that “native speakers speak too fast Sometimes I hear all the words as a single unit.” In addition to the fast speed and the difficulty of grammatical structures, the length of the listening text (10%) was one of the reasons why the students can’t understand most of the talk Learners often feel tired trying to understand the unfamiliar sounds, lexis and syntax for long stretches of time Sometimes, this problem causes the loose concentration The students may be weak at paying attention to the sequence of words in long sentence From the above result, it seems reasonable to generalize that unfamiliar topic hinders the listening of the majority of the students Interviewed students complained “The speaker use long sentences, so it is so difficult to listen to long talk in English” The chart indicates that 20% students find it difficult to understand the listening text when the topic is unfamiliar In general, the above results indicate that the listening text itself can be the main source of listening comprehension problems In particular, unfamiliar words, complex grammatical structures, long spoken text, a topic that cannot generate interest to listeners, complexity of sentences and unfamiliar topic pose listening difficulties to EFL learners  Basic linguistic problems perceived by learners Linguistic challenges are those that result from the English language itself Several linguistic sources which make listening difficult such as the use of colloquial language and slang, the use of reduced forms, signal words and so on Chart 4.2.3: Listening problems related to Linguistic feature Obviously, as you can see the chart There are 45% students revealed that colloquial and slang is a special challenge in English language In fact, what they study being the formal sentences These are not the same the reality life of native speaker Some students shared that “it is a big challenges for us to familiar and understand clearly” 29 29 The second big problem related to reduced forms Students agree that they are less attention to this aspect Meanwhile, several students didn’t know what reduced form is Another difficulty comes from the fact that in spoken English, as in all languages, people use signal words Signal words help them to grasp the thread of thought in the material Twelfth percent of student claim that they may fail to recognize the signals which indicate that the speaker is moving from one point to another, giving an example, or repeating a point As shown in the chart, there is about 17% students confirmed that the use of “prosodic features” related their incomprehension Stress, rhythm and intonation are “prosodic features” Some students complained that “there are words the speaker only speak its stress, rhythm and intonation fluctuate in always, up-down I can’t hear what the meaning word is It is really uneasy” 4.2.2 Factors affecting to students in listening to English Chart 4.2.4: Factors affecting to the listening process The pie chart shows that student’s motivation factor has the biggest impact on learning of students Students have the aware of and high motivation, their listening ability is improved than low motivation one Noise, Awkward seating positions and temperature are another environmental barrier to comprehension Thirty-two percent of students admitted this Several interviewees stated that “Noise, including both background noises on the recording and environmental noises, can take my mind off the content of the listening passage With the noise coming from corridors and other classes some of us experience difficulty in listening to the teachers’ voices.” Climate was a common factor reported by the students to impede comprehension “When the weather is hot I can’t follow the lecture.” The third factor is quality of the recorded material It can be drawn from the above figures that eighteen percent students reflected that sometimes the unclear sound system make them lose concentration in listening Obviously, a small minority students confirm that the class atmosphere also affect to them In the interview, students revealed that “we like learning in the funny 30 30 atmosphere We felt comfortable and excited” According to the collected information of the interview, when asked “how to create happy lessons?” Four of them wished teachers organize the games related to the topic, choosing the correct answer and ticking off The other student share “I am interested in playing games It is very useful to improve vocabulary” 4.3 Suggestions for student to improve English listening skill Following the survey questionnaires, the data of suggested solutions to improve English listening skill for third- year English major students at Thuongmai University were illustrated in the chart below: Chart 4.3.1: Solutions for overcoming to improve English listening skill for 3rd year students Information obtained from the survey reveals that the largest proportions of the participants spent much time to practice on the Internet, practicing listening more conversation/ video on the Internet or on BBC, VOA, etc, accounted for 100% of third- year English major students “When listening, I cannot know the meaning of the new words, clearly listen pronunciation So, I think that I can learn more new words to expand my vocabulary and practice to the pronunciation at the same time” They practice due to the fact that it was very necessary and useful for their further study and future jobs, create the basic student background to developed four English skills Besides, paying attention to listening skill made up to 48% which included predictive ability, associative words perception and combining intensive listening with extensive listening In addition, thirty-two percent students agree that teacher should use visual aids listening lessons at classroom Interviewee said that “teacher exploit visual aids or draw pictures and diagrams related to the listening topics to aid students to guess and imagine actively Visual aids draw our attentions, increase our motivation on the topic and help us relate to content of the spoken text, thus we overcome difficulties such as unknown words, minimal pairs of words After all, it's almost effortless and it feels like entertainment, rather than a "lesson" 31 31 Besides, thanks to make use of the internet, 27% students improve English listening by watching foreign films, reality shows TV and listening to English music “This method helps us both entertainment and learning foreign language”, students said “All suggestions require students to practice regularly as well as practises long-term to get the goals Therefore, persistence factor is very important This factor is lacking in many students, so this is problems which prevents students from practicing it” 4.3.1 Solution1: Consolidating language foundation English, also as all different languages, there are many fields such as life, economy, politics, society, etc, so vocabulary is very various In the listening process, you should listen and take note unknown words English uses stress heavily When you use the wrong stress, it's hard for English listeners to understand what words are It can even change the meaning You should definitely spend some time focusing on it Using an audios or videos player, trying pushing "play" and then stopping it again really quickly, so that you only hear parts of words instead of the whole word Try to repeat the specific sound that you heard When you listen to full words and sentences, your brain changes the sounds to match what you expect to hear By playing just part of a word, you can hear the actual sounds more clearly "Active" listening is a lot more effective than "passive" listening When you try to imagine part of the conversation, your mind is more active 32 32 4.3.2 Solution 2: Listen and repeat stories or anything you like in English and practice By listening stories or any topics you love in English and practice, you're preparing yourself to listen for differences It's a good way to notice if you're pronouncing a word wrong, or if your intonation is strange Listen to a short clip of someone speaking Play it again and again After listening a few times, try to repeat what the speaker is saying immediately after they say it Keep practicing until you're saying the same thing at the same time The key factor is the perseverance You ought to practice to listen every day 4.3.3 Solution 3: Always creating an talk environment by English anytime anywhere There is no better than speaking with native speaker You ought to go to Hoan Kiem Lake or anywhere foreigners live in free time so as to have an opportunity to enhance your listening ability At classroom, you speak English with your friends completely Joining English club at university also can make the environment Mostly important, you must work hard and always give yourself a strong motivation to practice your English listening skills 33 33 CHAPTER 5: RECOMMENDATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS 5.1 Summary of the study This research was presented with the aims to investigate current situation, difficulties in learning English listening and recommend suggestions for improve English listening skill The research was based on the survey questionnaires and interviews The results of the research have made it possible to come to the following conclusion It is found that all the students frequently spend much time on practising and the others because suggestions help them clearly listen English conversation and their listening level is improved better However, students at TMU also have to cope with many problems when using possible solutions Regarding the difficulties, the four biggest challenges to all students are lack of vocabulary, bad pronunciation, lack of persevere and fast speaking speed in recorded material Based on the findings of the study, suggestions to each problem were given by teachers and students at TMU All things considered, these methods are reasonable for third year English major students at TMU in learning Most of the students are more interested in and more attentive to learning English because they perceive the significance of listening skill and know how to improve their listening skill It is hoped that the study may be useful for students in learning English to third year English major students at TMU in particular and to any groups of students of English in general 5.2 Research implications With all the findings and discussions presented in the previous sections, the study presents the contribution in theories and reality In theories, the research will provide the documents related to the difficulties in English listening and suggest some potential solutions to improve the skill Whereby, students can identify what difficult they meet and choose suitable methods with them In reality, this study can help English learners in general and English major students at TMU in particular enhance listening skill in a higher level The final result can speak with foreigner fluently with good rhythm, pronunciation and intonation 34 34 5.3 Recommendation The writer would like to present some recommendations related to the students’ problems in listening comprehension The recommendations are follows:  The students need to improve their listening skill by practicing more listening exercise and listening to English talks as many as possible an expanding their knowledge on register in various field of study  The students also should motivate themselves to enrich their listening skill  Besides, the students also should learn more about the strategies that can be useful in listening comprehension especially in facing comprehension problems  The teachers should have a better understanding of their students’ listening difficulties and evaluate their own teaching methods to improve students’ listening comprehension 5.4 Limitations of the study In general, the study has certain strong points such as collection methods, namely interviews, survey questionnaires for students, etc however, due to lack of source, limited time, the researcher’s ability and other unexpected factors, the data was only collected through one main instrument, with questionnaire, the data was only collected through one main instrument, with questionnaire Therefore the result of this study may only reflect a part of situation of using this method on improving speaking English There are many things that need considering and investigating thoroughly It is obvious that mistakes and shortcomings are unavoidable so any comments or extra contributions are welcome 5.5 Suggestions for future research Other researchers can also focus on how to overcome the difficulties or problems of listening comprehension faced by the students Researcher ought to pay attention to the combination between practice more and using listening strategies so as to bring the most highest result Moreover, to get a better result, the researcher should invite more participants and data collection methods Together with questionnaire and interview, observation is also necessary to get more persuasive conclusions Further research needs to be conducted with more comprehensive samples including 35 35 the primary, secondary, and preparatory levels in order to get a complete picture of the problem CONCLUSIONS Listening is vital not only in language learning but also in daily communication As also a student in English major, I can clearly see the situation of teaching and learning English Listening comprehension seems to be the weakest skill and students encounter various kinds of listening problems This study is done in the hope of finding out the factors causing their listening comprehension problems and contributing some recommended strategies for teachers and students employ in improving the effectiveness of teaching and learning listening comprehension It is found that the first- year English major students needed to spend much time on listening to English on a daily life Based on the findings of the study, solutions to each problem were given by third- year English major students at TMU All of them strongly agreed with three main solutions: consolidate vocabulary, pronunciation, background knowledge and finding effective method It is hoped that the results of this study will contribute to improving the teaching and learning in the field of English listening of third-year English department students at TMU 36 36 REFERENCES Hoàng Văn Vân, Nguyễn Thị Chinh & Hoàng Thị Xuân Hoa (2006), Đổi phương pháp dạy tiếng Anh trung học phổ thông Việt Nam, Nhà xuất Giáo dục Việt Nam Nguyễn Bàng & Nguyễn Bá Ngọc (2002), A Course in TEFL Theory & Practice II, Đại học Ngoại ngữ - ĐHQGHN Nguyễn Thị Vân Lam & Ngơ Đình Phương (2006), English teaching Methodology, Vinh University Brown H.D (2001), Teaching by Principle: An interactive Approach to Language Pedagogy, Second Edition Essex: Longman Bentley, S., & Bacon, S (1996), The all new, state-of-the-art ILA definition of listening: Now that we have it, what we with it? Listening Post, 56, 1-5 Bashir, M., Azeem, M., & Dogar, A H (2011) Factor Effecting Students’ English Speaking Skills British Journal of Arts and Social Sciences, 2(1), 34-50 Boonkit, K (2010) Celce-Murcia, M 2001, Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language, 3rd ed, Boston, MA: Von Hoffmann Graphics Gary Buck (2001), Assessing Listening 10 Howatt, A & J Dakin (1974), Language Laboratory materials, ed J.P.B Allen, and S.P Conder 11 Hutchison T., Carol T., Jeny Q., and Kate E (2007), English for life – beginner, Teacher’s book, Oxford: Oxford University Press 12 Helgesen, M (2003), “Teaching listening”, In D Nunan (Ed.) Practical English Language Teaching, New York: McGraw-Hill 13 Hasan, A S (2000), Learners’ perceptions oflistening comprehension problems, Language, Culture and Curriculum 13(2), 137-153 14 O’Malley, J M., & Chamot, A U (1990), Learning strategies in second language acquisition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 15 Richards, J C (1983), Listening Comprehension: Approach, Design, Procedure, TESOL Quarterly, 17, 219-240 16 Richards, J C & Schmidt, R (2002), Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics (Third edition), London, UK: Pearson Education Ltd 17 Underwood M (1989), Teaching listening, New York, US: Longman 18 Devito, J.A 2000, The elements of public speaking (7thed), Newyork, NY:Longman) 37 38 APPENDICES Appendix 1: Survey questionnaire Appendix 2: Interview questions APPENDIX SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE Dear third-year students English Department at Thuongmai University, the following questionnaire is designed for my research on “How to improve English Listening skill for third- year English major students (K52) at Thuong Mai university by using Listening and repeat method” All information you provided is only used in this study and not to be used for any personal purposes Thank you so much for fulfilling this questionnaire and assisting me to complete my research Please answer the questions below: Full name: Class: How long have you learned English? A Never B Under year C – years D – years E Over years How you perceive to the importance of listening skill? A Very important B Important C Normal D Unimportant Which level is your listening skill? A Excellent B Good C Average D Poor Which skill was emphasized in the previous? A Listening B Speaking C Reading D Writing How you feel when learning English listening lessons at class? a I find that listening is difficult b I find that listening is boring and not interesting c There is far exciting in listening lessons What are difficulties you have? a Shortage of vocabulary b Poor grammar 39 c Bad pronunciation d Lack of background knowledge e Need to listen again and again f Psychological characteristics Which problems related to the listening material you meet? a Fast speaking speed b Long spoken text with many jargon and idioms c The use of complex grammatical structures d Unfamiliar topics Which problems related to basic linguistic you have in the following? a The use of colloquial and slang expressions b Difficulty in understanding reduced forms c Difficulty in recognizing signal words d The use of "prosodic features" in English language such as stress, rhythm and intonation, etc Which factors you meet in listening to English in the following? a Students’ motivation b Noise, Awkward seating positions and temperature c Quality of the recorded material d The class atmosphere 10 What you suggest possible solutions to improve English listening skill for third-year students? a Improve vocabulary and grammar and practice the pronunciation b Spend more time on practice c Pay attention to the listening skill d Using visual aids listening lesson at classroom e Watching foreign films and reality shows TV f Others Thank a lot for your help! 40 APPENDIX INTERVIEW QUESTIONS STUDENTS Which level is your listening skill? What difficulties you meet when listening to English? How to improve your English listening skill? 41 ... related to the listening materials Listening problems related to Linguistic feature Others factors affecting to the listening process Solutions for overcoming to improve English listening skill. .. listening skill? 6 1.3 Research scope The study is about learning listening skill for K52 students of English department at TMU The research shows the current situation of English Listening skill. .. skill of K52 English faculty students at TMU The researcher hopes that the research will provide learners a relatively view about how to improve listening skill 1.2 Research questions The goal of