Vietnamese EFL college students’ perceptions of listening comprehension problems a study at a university in vietnam

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES BÙI THÚY NGA VIETNAMESE EFL COLLEGE STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF LISTENING COMPREHENSION PROBLEMS: A STUDY AT A UNIVERSITY IN VIETNAM (Nhận thức sinh viên học tiếng Anh vấn đề ến An n n ứ n đ ọ n V N M.A MINOR THESIS Field : English Teaching Methodology Code : 8140231.01 Hanoi – 2021 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES BÙI THÚY NGA VIETNAMESE EFL COLLEGE STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF LISTENING COMPREHENSION PROBLEMS: A STUDY AT A UNIVERSITY IN VIETNAM (Nhận thức sinh viên học tiếng Anh vấn đề ến An n n ứ n đ ọ n V N M.A MINOR THESIS Field : English Teaching Methodology Code : 8140231.01 Supervisor : Assoc Prof Nguyen Thuy Nga Hanoi – 2021 DECLARATION This is to certify that this thesis is of my own research and has not been submitted to any other university or institution degree or other purposes Except where the reference is indicated, no other person‟s work has been used without due acknowledgement in text of the thesis I certify that the assistance received in preparing this thesis and sources have been acknowledged Hanoi, 2021 Bùi Thúy Nga i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis could not have been completed without the help and support from a number of people First and foremost, I would like to send my sincere thanks to my supervisor, Assoc.Prof Nguyễn Thúy Nga for her enthusiastic guidance, insightful comments, and valuable support throughout my research I would also like to thank all of the lecturers of the Department of Postgraduate Studies, Vietnam National University for their useful lectures and materials which are of great value to my thesis A special word of thanks goes to all of my fellow master students for their feedback, cooperation and of course friendship Last but not the least, I would like to thank my boyfriend and my family for supporting me spiritually throughout writing this thesis and my life in general ii ABSTRACT Listening skill is appreciated as a key skill in real-life communication as well as language acquisition Therefore, there have been numerous studies of this skill in different aspects This study attempts to investigate the perceived problems Vietnamese EFL college students commonly encounter when doing listening test and the relationship between these problems and students‟ actual performance Specifically, it involves the listening test scores and responses on listening problems of 43 EFL learners at a college in Hanoi Descriptive statistics reveals that the listening problems faced by students are mainly from context and input factors, followed by process and task factors However, as regression analysis points out, students‟ listening test scores have rather strong association with two factors namely affect and listener factors Based on these findings, pedagogical implications for teaching and learning listening skills are also discussed, such as planning listening lessons with memory and concentration activities and providing and gaining constructive feedback Key words: listening skills, listening problems, listening scores iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS EFL English as a Foreign Language CEFR Common European Framework of References IELTS International English Language Testing System HaUI Hanoi University of Industry DLPT Defense Language Proficiency Test GEPT General English Proficiency Test L1 First Language / Mother Tongue L2 Second Language iv LISTS OF FIGURES AND TABLES Table 3.1 Structure of the listening test 25 Table 4.1 Overview of the listening comprehension problems 28 Table 4.2 Top five problems encountered in listening comprehension test 29 Table 4.3 Listening problems related to process factor 32 Table 4.4 Listening problems related to listener factor 36 Table 4.5 Correlation between listening scores and different factors 38 Table 4.6 Model Summary Table 40 Table 4.7 ANOVA Table (test using alpha = 05) 40 Table 4.8 Coefficients Table (test each predictor at alpha = 05) 42 Table 4.9 Summary of Coefficients Table (test each predictor at alpha = 05) 42 v TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii ABSTRACT iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS iv LISTS OF FIGURES AND TABLES v CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1 Rationale Aims and objectives of the study Research questions Method and procedures Scope of the study Significance of the study Structure of the thesis CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Listening skill in English language teaching 2.2 Listening comprehension 10 2.2.1 Definitions of listening comprehension 10 2.2.2 The importance of listening comprehension 12 2.2.3 The process of listening comprehension 13 2.3 EFL learners‟ listening problems 15 2.4 The correlation between EFL learners‟ listening comprehension problems and their performance 18 2.4.1 Review of previous studies overseas 18 2.4.2 Review of previous studies in Vietnam 20 2.5 Framework for investigating listening problems 20 vi CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 23 3.1 The setting of the study and participants 23 3.2 Data collection instrument and procedure 24 3.3 Data analysis methods 26 CHAPTER 4: FINGDINGS 28 4.1 Problems frequently encountered by students while listening 28 4.2 The relationship between listening problems and listening scores 38 4.2.1 Interpretation of output from correlation analysis 38 4.2.2 Interpretation of output from multiple regression analysis 39 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 45 5.1 Recapitulation 45 5.2 Implications 47 5.3 Limitations and suggestions for further studies 48 REFERENCES 50 APPENDIX I vii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION Rationale Among four language skills, listening is believed to play a vital role in developing foreign language competence Nunan (1998) asserts that listening is the basic skill in language learning and over 50% of the time is actually spent on listening while learners are functioning in a foreign language Improvement in listening skill is also proved to have positive influence on the other three language skills (Pearson & Fielding, 1991), thus need to gain more attention in EFL classroom Despite being considered the most challenging skill to teach and learn (Field, 2008), listening skill is by far the least widely researched among the four language skills (Plonsky, 2011) Compared to the other receptive skill, listening to a foreign language is understudied, since its process is more difficult to observed and manipulated than reading skills (Osada, 2004) In English language teaching process, grammar, reading and vocabulary appear to gain more attention than listening skill The fact that it is neglected in teaching curricula, textbooks and teachers‟ lesson planning probably lead to serious problems that many EFL learners are exposed to in listening comprehension tasks (Gilakjani & Ahmadi, 2011) This same issue can also be found in Vietnam, where English is introduced to learners since third grade of primary school, and upon finishing secondary education (a.k.a lower-secondary and higher-secondary schools), students are expected to achieve B1 level of the Common European Framework of References for languages (CEFR), according to National Foreign Languages 2020 Project which has come into effect since 2008 However, this expectation is hardly met and when moving to post-secondary CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 5.1 Recapitulation The study was conducted to investigate the problems 43 EFL college students in Hanoi University of Industry, Vietnam commonly face when doing listening comprehension tasks and the relationship between these problems with their actual performance in the listening test A practice test whose format resembled the regular listening test designed by the school itself and a questionnaire detecting problems in listening were utilized to collect the data needed for the research The key findings can be summed up as follows: First, participants of this study came upon a diversity of listening problems in listening comprehension The most frequently encountered problems in listening comprehension were associated with context factor, followed by input factor, process factor, task factor, affect factor and listener factor It was found that in addition to problems related to poor testing conditions, low quality of the recording and lacking variety of task types, participants‟ listening performance was hindered by such internal problems as insufficient internal vocabulary knowledge, little exposure to real-life listening materials, failure to apply processing strategies, fear and pressure when taking a test, and poor attention as well as memory Second, the overall listening problems were found to have a fairly strong association to participants‟ listening performance since the group of problems accounted for a significant proportion of variance in listening scores However, among six factors being investigated, only two of them showed statistically significant relation to students‟ listening score, in which affect factor was the highest, followed by listener factor In other words, problems associated with anxiety and stress (affect factor), and poor short45 term memory and poor concentration ability (listener factor) were proven to have significant impact on students‟ test results Meanwhile, the most frequent problems identified from the questionnaire, such as poor quality of testing facilities, insufficient word repertoire, poor processing skills, and limited exposure to multiple task types, did not appear to have a predictive power over students‟ test outcomes Last, based on previous findings, some suggestions are proposed so that teachers may employ to help students overcome their challenges in listening comprehension tests First of all, in order to alleviate problems related to anxiety and stress before and during a test, it is recommended for teachers to constantly emanate gentle and assuring attitude throughout the test session, especially at the beginning Besides, providing a brief overview of the content of the listening tasks might be helpful to reduce students‟ fear of not being able to understand what they are going to listen to This might be conducted in the form of examiner‟s spoken instruction before the audio begins, or in the form of written instruction at the beginning of each task on the test paper Second of all, in order to tackle problems associated with listener factor, strategies for the betterment of short-term memory and concentration ability should be incorporated into the listening course that students are taking part in Some examples of short-term auditory memory strategies are verbal rehearsal (repetition), visualizing (relational strategies), chunking and „write and draw‟ These strategies involve using written instruction in class, applying multisensory reading programs, using visual supports to back up auditory memory or requiring students to recopy lecture notes, develop their own written notes or report back key information or instruction given by teachers In order to improve concentration in students, some tactics consist of 46 planning lessons with intervals, adding memory and thinking games, removing visual distractions in classroom, breaking down tasks into subtasks, or alternating between low-concentration and high-concentration activities For both problems, providing constructive feedback and gaining student feedback are essential as well With constructive feedback, students can be assisted in promoting error correction and heightening their confidence More importantly, students‟ course or activity evaluations should also be encouraged Formative and summative comments from students are useful in the way that it helps teachers to see how effective their practices are, how the learning environment is currently constructed, and what changes can or need to be made to the course or the activity Mader (2010) proposed that teachers should also encourage students to make detailed comments with specific reasons for their judgement of the course since these comments were more often formative, which helped teachers to see whether what the students were suggesting were to be kept or changed 5.2 Implications Some pedagogical implications can be drawn upon the findings above For educators, curriculum designers and English teachers in Vietnam, it is high time that listening skill gained more attention in English language teaching and learning The lack of practice, meaningful input and exposure to different sources of listening materials in secondary education has made acquiring listening skill much more difficult for college students It is highly recommended that together with vocabulary, grammar, reading and writing skills, teachers and learners should also put emphasis on developing listening skill 47 For English teachers in general and in Hanoi University of Industry in particular, it is advisable that methods to overcome distraction while listening, as well as better activate students‟ memory should be delivered to the students They should also attempt to provide constructive feedback and gain students‟ feedback Last but not least, since the factors that had strong influence on listening performance were found to be internal problems, college students should take responsibilities for their own development of listening skill Basing on each individual‟s specific difficulties, they should find suitable learning resources and methods to tackle these problems by themselves, for example adopting healthy diet and sleeping habits to improve concentration and memory, or finding out roots of their test anxiety and stress so that they can tackle them All in all, the researcher believes the thesis will be helpful to all stakeholders in Faculty of Foreign Languages at Hanoi University of Industry, as well as people who are researching into English as a Foreign Language Teaching field 5.3 Limitations and suggestions for further studies Despite the researcher‟s strong desire to investigate the subject matter, some problems encountered during research time led to a number of limitations The research only involved 43 participants in a particular setting, which made the findings not generalizable to the whole population of Vietnamese EFL college students Besides, more insights about the strategies to tackle those problems and to see what teachers have done and have not to alleviate the problems would have been gained if the researcher had had the chance to use another data collection instrument: interviews Finally, the study was concerned with listening skill, so the result of the study may not be useful to other language skills 48 The study‟s limitations give rise to numerous suggestions for further researches The issue can be studied on a larger scale by employing bigger number of participants from different colleges in various areas Another direction is investigating students‟ listening problems and test scores before and after some treatment, for instance the instruction of listening strategies Further studies can also be conducted to identify more difficulties encountered by students at different levels of proficiency It would be more profound if, in addition to higher education level, primary, secondary, and preparatory levels can also be investigated in order to get hold of a wellrounded understanding of the problems One more alternative approach to the topic of listening comprehension problems is through teachers‟ perception, which may offer new insights into the subject matter In addition, to increase the reliability of the research findings, the listening test used as one of the two main instruments could also be validated It is also hoped that the results of this study will be able to make significant impact on the betterment of listening comprehension teaching and learning in Hanoi University of Industry, in institutions in Vietnam or many other countries that are applicable 49 REFERENCES Anderson, A 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PERSONAL INFORMATION Full name: ……………………………… Major: ………………………………… Gender: Male / Female English proficiency level: Beginner / Intermediate / Advanced LISTENING PROBLEMS For each of the following statement, please rate your level of agreement (7-point Linkert scale) by putting a √ in one of the six boxes Strongly Moderately Slightly Neither disagree disagree disagree agree nor agree disagree I Slightly Moderately Strongly agree agree No Content Processing problem Before listening, it is difficult for me to predict what I will hear It is difficult for me to relate what I hear with something from an earlier part of the listening text While listening, I have problems making meaningful personal associations with the new information in the text During listening, I have difficulty checking whether I correctly understand the meaning of the whole chunks of the listening text I have difficulty with finding out what the main purpose of the listening task I am going to is When I listen to texts in English, I experience difficulty with listening for the main idea of the text I find it challenging to focus on the text when I have trouble understanding While listening, I find it difficult to guess the meaning of unknown words by linking them to already known words I find it difficult to make a summary in my mind of information gained through listening 10 While listening, I have difficulty to check my understanding of the text based on what I already know about the topic 11 I find it difficult to use the context to guess those parts of a listening text that I cannot hear clearly 12 After listening, I find it difficult to evaluate the overall accuracy of my comprehension Input problems 13 I find it difficult to understand listening texts in which there are too many unfamiliar words 14 I find it difficult to understand the meaning of words which are not pronounced clearly 15 I find it difficult to understand listening texts which II have difficult grammatical structures 16 I find it difficult to understand well when speakers speak too fast 17 Unfamiliar stress and intonation patterns of English interfere with my listening comprehension 18 I find it difficult to understand the listening text when speakers speak with varied accents 19 I find it difficult to understand the listening text when the speaker does not pause long enough 20 I find it difficult to interpret the meaning of a long listening text 21 I have difficulty understanding speakers with unfamiliar accents Listener problems 22 When thinking about meaning of unfamiliar words, I neglect the next part of the listening text 23 I am slow to recall the meaning of words that sound familiar 24 I find it difficult to quickly remember words or phrases I have just heard 25 During listening, although some words sound familiar, it is difficult for me to recall their meaning immediately 26 When I hear the new words, I forget the content which was mentioned before 27 I lose the flow of speech because I concentrate very hard on understanding every word or phrase I hear 28 I find it difficult to remember the meaning of a long listening text 29 I find it difficult to really concentrate on listening 30 I have difficulty comprehending the listening text because I don‟t know which strategy to use while listening 31 I have difficulty understanding a listening text because I cannot understand every single word I hear Task problems III 32 I find it difficult to listening tasks for which I need to draw on specific information from the text (such as filling in the blanks) 33 I find it difficult to listening tasks for which I need to combine information to make generalization while listening to the text 34 I find it difficult to answer Wh-questions in a listening task Affect problems 35 Before doing listening comprehension tasks, I fear that I cannot understand what I will hear 36 I find it difficult to reduce my anxiety before doing the listening task 37 I stop listening when I understanding a listening text 38 If I cannot totally understand the oral text, I feel disappointed have problems in Context problems 39 Unclear sounds resulting from a poor-quality CDplayer interfere with my listening comprehension 40 Unclear sounds resulting from poor acoustic conditions of the classroom interfere with my listening comprehension Do you have any other problems when doing listening test? Feel free to jot it down! ……………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………… IV .. .VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES BÙI THÚY NGA VIETNAMESE EFL COLLEGE STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF LISTENING COMPREHENSION. .. observed and manipulated than reading skills (Osada, 2004) In English language teaching process, grammar, reading and vocabulary appear to gain more attention than listening skill The fact that it... were facing in EFL listening while taking listening course and listening tests at Hanoi University of Industry 3.3 Data analysis methods After obtained from the listening comprehension test and