10th graders’ perceptions of learning listening skills difficulties and strategies

PART 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale for the study Nowadays English has become an international language because it is widely used in many parts of the world It has become the most popular language of communication among countries and the demand for English speaking proficiency among people especially students is on the rise than ever before In fact, large numbers of students are being required to learn it through compulsory programs in schools and universities Therefore, the teaching and learning of English at all levels especially at high schools has been given a lot of special attention in recent years In order to use English effectively, students need to develop communicative competence Accordingly, students should be helped to develop four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing Of all these four skills, listening skill is considered to be one of the most difficult skills to teach and to learn Listening is essential not only as a receptive skill but also to the development of spoken language proficiency As an English teacher, with my own knowledge and experience in teaching, I find interested in studying the difficulties in learning the listening skill in English I would like to present the initiative titled “10th graders’ perceptions of learning listening skills: difficulties and strategies" 1.2 The aims of the study The purpose of the study is to investigate on 10th graders’ perceptions of difficulties and strategies in learning listening skill Tho Xuan High School Therefore, the specific aims are: To find out kinds of listening comprehension problems encountered by th 10 graders at Tho Xuan high school To find out factors causing their difficulties in listening comprehension To provide some suggestions on strategies to help students overcome their listening problems 1.3 Research questions The thesis mainly focuses on answering the three following research questions: What are the students’ main difficulties in learning English listening ? Why the students find it difficult to learn listening to English ? What strategies should the students use to improve the listening skill ? 1.4 The scope of the study The participants of this study were selected on the basis of convenience The subjects of the study were 100 students coming from three different 10 th form classes at Tho Xuan High School All of them were born in 2006 and they are both boys and girls and live around the school All of them basically finished the English program for the secondary system Most of them are not good at using language skills and they not have a good English learning environment Only in the classroom can they learn and use the language They not have other places to practice the knowledge they have learnt from school and have no chance to expose to the target language In addition, their lack of awareness on the importance of English as well as motivation make them not interested in learning English Although most of them have already learnt English for at least four years at lower secondary school, their knowledge of English is still poor and limited Hardly can they say a complete sentence in the target language However, tenth grade students are at the age of sixteen years old They exhibit variety of appearances and characteristics as well as levels of English abilties At the beginning of the youth, they are energic, ambitious and curious The trend of making new friends and opening their worldview is a great demand that English lessons sometime satisfy 1.5 Methods of the study To fulfill the above aims, the study was carried out with quantitative method of data collection: A questionnaire designed for students focuses on listening comprehension problems formulated from learners’ perceptions of listening comprehension problems is based on the model advocated by Ali S Hasan (Hasan, 2000) to find out kinds of their listening comprehension problems and factors affecting their difficulties and the strategies the students use to improve the listening skill PART2: DEVELOPMENT 2.1 Literature Review 2.1.1 The importance of the listening skill In daily life, people spend much time listening: students listen to their teachers, children listen to their parents, and adults listen to the news on TV and radio Therefore, listening is said to be the most common communicative activity in daily life: “we can expect to listen twice as much as we speak, four times more than we read, and five times more than we write” (Morley, 1991: 82) In language use, the listening skill plays an integral part It consists of various types of listener’s knowledge: knowledge of phonology, vocabulary, and semantics of the language in use, culture of its people, his life experience in the topic, his ability to predict and respond It decides his understanding, content and attitudes towards the speaker’s saying or utterance as well As a result, we will fail to communicate with others if we are bad at listening as Mathews, Spratt and Dangerfield concludes “communication cannot successfully take place unless what is spoken is also understood” (1990:61) What is more, we cannot develop speaking skills unless we also develop listening skills; to have a successful conversation, students must understand what is said to them Later, the ability to understand spoken English may become very important for listening to the radio, understanding foreign visitors, studying and so on In order to develop this ability, students need a lot of practice in listening to English spoken at a normal speed That is because students can acquire the language of “picking up” structures and vocabulary through listening to spoken English We should give students as much opportunity to listen to spoken English as possible because they not have the language environment outside the classroom Harmer (2000) argues that apart from their teacher’s accents and varieties, the learners should be prepared to hear different ones for the real world listening such as telephone conversations, speeches, broadcast news, announcement, advertisement, etc In reality, students’ poor listening ability can cause communication breakdown Listening skill, thus, is an indispensable part in EFL learning environment in Vietnam today In the current high school curriculum, listening is an essential language skill that takes up 20% of the lesson’s content in English textbooks In summary, listening provides the aural input that serves as the basis for second language acquisition and enables learners to interact in spoken communication 2.1.2 Listening skill problems There are ten problems that learners often meet: The learners are trying to understand every words The learners get left behind trying to work out what a previous word mean The learners just not know the most important words The learners not recognise the words that they know The learners have problems with different accents The learners lack listening stamina/ they get tired The learners have a mental block The learners are distracted by background noise The learners can not cope with not having images 10 The learners have hearing problems 2.1.3 Other difficulties It is unequal to blame all the problems on the learners and the language themselves In fact, there are many factors which affect to learning the listening skill in a foreign language such as society, language teaching method, and listening materials, etc 2.2 Factors affecting learners’s learning English listening skills 2.2.1 Low motivation Learner motivation is one of five main categories of learner characteristics (motivation, aptitude, personality, intelligence and learner preference) indicated by Lightbown and Spada (1999) Motivation, in general, is “the factors that determine a person’s desire to something” (Richards, 1985) There has been a great deal of research on the role of motivation in foreign language learning Motivation in foreign language learning is a complicated phenomenon which is not easy to define Thus, according to Gardner and Lambert (1972), “motivation can be defined in terms of two factors: learners’ communicative need and their attitudes towards the second language community” When learners need to speak the language in a wide range of social situations or to fulfill professional ambitions, they will perceive the communicative value of the language, therefore they will be motivated to acquire proficiency in the language Likewise, if learners have favorable attitudes towards the speakers of the language, they will desire more contact with them Motivation has been found that it is strongly related to achievement in language learning in various studies (Gardner,1980) However, they have not specified which the cause is and which is the result? In other words, does success in language learning breed own motivation or does previous motivation lead to success? There is no conclusive research-based evidence is whether motivation is more, or less important than a natural attitude for learning languages, though at least one well-known study tends towards the claim that motivation is ultimately more important The research gives out a significant message that is the sheer importance of the factor of learner motivation in successful language learning Motivation is not measurable, and even language aptitude is probably unanswerable, so the uncertainty of the question, motivation or success which comes first, does not entail any particular problems for teaching Therefore, the teacher’s job is to encourage the development of ability and enhance motivation, on the understanding that each will contribute to other 2.2.2 Lack of background knowledge Lack of appropriate schema or background knowledge has also been proved to be an obstacle to L2 listeners’ comprehension of authentic texts According to Rubin (1994: 210) listening is a top-down and bottom-up interactive process and listeners’ background knowledge plays a significant role in comprehension Existing knowledge interacts with new knowledge in comprehending a text Following Long, D.R.(1989), a number of studies have aimed at demonstrating the importance of background knowledge in L2 listening Some studies find that a match between background knowledge presupposed by the text and that possessed by the listeners leads to a better comprehension than a mismatch Providing students with background knowledge facilitates learning and understanding of unfamiliar texts (Cele-Murcia, 2001) Long (1990) found that both background knowledge and language proficiency affect L2 listening and he further claims that background knowledge is more significantly beneficial to low proficiency learners than high proficiency learners He adds that background knowledge is less important than language proficiency in L2 2.2.3 Listening materials The features of the text such as length, linguistic complexity, coherence, cohesion, text content and discourse pattern also affect the quality of comprehension as indicated by many researchers Learner level is an important factor in selecting authentic listening materials According to Driven (1981), spontaneously spoken language is too complex to be introduced in the classroom in the first stage of foreign language learning, but in the second or intermediate stage of foreign language learning, all the factors of the spontaneously spoken language come into action So for the lower level learners, we should provide easier materials such as the short headline type reports, audio and radio advertising, or short news broadcasts or children’s songs For the intermediate levels, there is a wider range of choices Four or five minutes TV or radio news reports, the slightly adopted movies, or even whole TV programs can be included As for the advanced level students, they have learned the target language for years and have the ability of dealing with the possible difficulties with their linguistic competence and world knowledge Teachers now can choose some political speeches, ceremonial formulae, gossip, family quarrels etc as the teaching materials These materials are either very formal (ceremonial formulae, political speeches) or fairly informal (gossip, family quarrels), which are considered very difficult for foreign language learners It is the advantages that attract us to accept and use authentic materials in foreign language classroom, but when using them, it’s inevitable that we’ll face some problems For most students, the challenges are that authentic materials may be “too culturally based” and often contain “difficult language, unneeded vocabulary items and complex language structures (Richard, 2001) So students are required to have sufficient cultural background knowledge and a large amount of vocabulary and a good command of grammar knowledge Therefore, lower-level students are easily de-motivated when confronted with this kind of materials Authentic materials often create problems to teachers too Since the language of authentic listening materials is difficult, teachers need to special preparation before class that is often time consuming These disadvantages can be avoided in selecting and lesson planning Actually if used appropriately, the disadvantages can be turned into advantages PART 3: CONCLUSION This chapter focuses on the analysis of data collected mainly from the questionnaires to students The findings are presented systematically along with the researcher's explanations and evaluation aiming at exploring students' problems in learning listening skill and what strategies the students use to improve their listening skill 3.1 Discussion of the mainfindings 3.1.1 Students’ attitudes towards learning English listening In the questionnaire, the first five items were designed to explore the students’ perception to English listening skill The students were asked to rate on four-point scale ( is “strongly agree”, is “agree”, is “disagree” and is “strongly disagree”) The responses were then calculated in term of the percentage (%) (Table 3.1) Items Strong agree Agree Disagree Strong disagree I am more aware of the 65% 30% 5% 0% perceived importance of English listening skill I find that listening 60% 32% 8% 0% comprehension is difficult I find that listening 30% 36% 34% 0% comprehension is boring and not interesting I find that listening 0% 20% 35% 45% comprehension is exciting Table 3.1 Students’ attitudes towards learning English listening skill As we can see from the table, on responding item 1, most of the students were aware of the importance of listening comprehension (65% SA & 25% A) However, there were still a number (5% D) of students who did not highly evaluate the role of listening skill None of them chose the “strongly disagree” answer This could result from the fact that the participants needed to be able to listen to English related to other skills When asked about the difficulty of the listening comprehension, 60% of the students remark that listening comprehension is difficult In addition to that, a small number of students (30%) find that listening comprehension is boring and not interesting Only 20% of students find that listening comprehension is exciting This is in line with a common problem that most students are unable to comprehend spoken English required at their beginning level In reality, by observing the listening classes, the author realized that many students did not pay much attention to the lessons although they understood the importance of listening periods They were too tired to hear the long and difficult passage They neglected the listening lessons and showed their negative attitude to this language skill Interestingly, no students rejected the necessity of this skill That indicated that a majority of the teachers at Nguyen Cong Tru high school considered listening skills to be very essential in their language learning process When being asked about their opinions of the listening skill, a large number of students think that it is difficult (92%) while 8% of them disagreed with this question None of them chose “strongly disagree”, in other words English listening seems not to be easy to them at all The results of item show that the students have different attitudes towards English listening Generally, the majority of students had positive attitude towards ESP (66% including 30%SA and 36%A) and 34% did not like English listening There might have been several reasons to explain the students’ responses Firstly, although most of the students had studied English for years, many of them have not had enough knowledge of General English and their average marks on GE were not good (some even got mark below 5.0) This might had a bad infuence on their English listening learning, which explained why they lost interest in learning listening Moreover, through the discussions between the researcher and the students, some of the students explained that there was no evaluation standard or examination on such skill, so they thought it was unnecessary for them to pay much attention to this skill It is obvious that most of the students at Nguyen Cong Tru high school had positive attitudes towards learning listening skills and high awareness of learning these skills; however, English listening seems a difficult skill for students to learn 3.1.2 Students' perceptions of English listening difficulties Listening difficulties perceived by the students are classified in terms of vocabulary, grammar, discourse, reading skills, and subject background knowledge A four-point scale was used with point for “Very difficult”, point for “Difficult”, point for “Normal” and point for “ Easy” The responses were then calculated in terms of the percentage 3.1.2.1 Difficulties with Vocabulary In item 5, the participants were asked to point out their difficulties with English vocabulary The results are presented in Table 3.2 The table indicates that the majority of the students considered listening to the speakers' pronunciation the most difficult in listening English which account for 95% (including 68% VD and 27% D), only 5% perceived it to be “easy” No student considered it “very easy” (see Table 3.2) Items Very difficult Difficult Normal Easy 5a I find it difficult to listen to the 68% 27% 5% speakers’ pronunciations 5b I find it difficult to understand 31% 51% 16% the words in the contexts 5c I find it difficult to memorize the 19% 40% 34% key words 5d I have troubles in using the 24% 59% 15% synonyms( such as: "house" for "home", “big” for “large” ) 5e I have troubles in using the 28% 42% 23% homophones( such as: see and sea, poor and pour ) Table 3.2 The difficulties in terms of English vocabulary 0% 2% 5% 2% 7% Item 5c (I find it difficult to memorize the key words) had the highest percentage in easy scale 39% ( including 41% E and 5% VE), which shows that the keywords seemed to be taught carefully in the pre listening The results getting from items 5b, 5d and 5e suggested that students also encountered some difficulties with vocabulary including: understanding the words in contexts, using the synonyms, and using the homophones 82% of the students found understanding the words in the contexts difficult, 83% of the students had difficulties in using the synonyms and 70% of the students had troubles in using homophones.(See Table 3.2) 3.1.2.2 Difficulties related to Lack of Background Knowledge Items investigated the problems in terms of subject background knowledge that the students encountered The results are presented in Table 3.3 Items 7a I find it difficult to understand listening texts when the topic is unfamiliar 7b I use my experience and background knowledge of the topic to understand the text Very difficul t Difficul t 24% 48% 20% 8% 31% 50% 16% 3% Norma Easy l 7c I find the listening passage 21% 55% 19% 5% difficult to understand Table 3.3 The difficulties related to lack of background knowledge As you can see from the table, the responses to item spread all over the four scales with different percentages Item 7b had the highest rate of the three items 81% of the students agreed that it was “difficult” in which up to 31% confirmed that it was “very difficult” and the rest considered it “difficult” This finding is not surprising because many studies in second language learning had confirmed that having knowledge plays a significant role in comprehension (Bacon ,1989; Long, 1990; Rubin, 1994), they have studied the effects of background knowledge in listening, understanding and recalling of text in second language learners and finds that the learners’ ability to recall is enhanced when they are presented with one of the three components of background knowledge, context, transparency, and familiarity These results also recommended that in order to understand thoroughly a matter in their specialization, the students must have certain background knowledge about their subject and combine this knowledge when listening a text Therefore, it would be better to equip students with better specific background knowledge before dealing with a matter in English listening It is needed for the participants to improve their professional knowledge by listening materials related to their professional knowledge Items 7a and 7c had a fairly high rate of difficulty (72% and 76% respectively) It was found from the discussion and talks with the teachers in our school that they considered unfamiliar professional topics the most difficult, therefore through the consultation with the students and other subject teachers, the topics in the course book are suitably chosen for the students to study 3.1.2.3 Difficulties due to lack of listening skills Item explored the difficulties in terms of listening skills/strategies The results are shown in Table 3.4 Very Difficul Norma Items difficul Easy t l t 8a I find it difficult to find out the 17% 41% 35% 7% key words of the text 8b I find it difficult to find out the 16% 45% 33% 6% main ideas of the text 8c I find it difficult to summarize 37% 45% 15% 3% the mains ideas of a listening text 8d I don’t know how to answer 15% 42% 38% 5% comprehension questions of a listening text 8e I find it difficult to concentrate 16% 36% 39% 9% 10 on the listening text 8f I have difficulties in catching 70% 23% 7% up with the speed and the accent of the native speakers Table 3.4 The difficulties due to lack of listening skills 0% As we can see, the responses in this question spread from ‘very difficult” to “very easy” scale for all items, except for item 8f with no one choosing the very easy response A majority of students (93%) agreed that the speed and the accent of the native speakers is the most difficult skill 70% of the students confirmed that it is very difficult and none of then found it very easy Following this item was item 8c (I find it difficult to summarize the mains ideas of a listening text) For this item, 82% of the students had difficulties in summarizing the mains ideas of the listening texts This was partly because of their difficulties with syntax (as seen in the grammar area) Many studies have shown that the efficient listener uses syntax and sentence structure to predict oncoming text or that knowledge of syntax appears to help listeners predict and listen more quickly Item 8e (I find it difficult to concentrate on the listening text ) produced the most responses on easy and very easy scales, which suggests that this item was not really difficult for the students (48% rated it as “easy” and “very easy”) In fact, many students know that listening is one of the most important skills so they tried to concentrate on the listening lessons From the data of the remaining items 8a (I find it difficult to find out the key words of the text), 8b (I find it difficult to find out the main ideas of the text) and 8d ( I don’t know how to answer comprehension questions of a listening text) showed that these items caused them a lot of troubles The percentages of the students considered them difficult are rather high (58%, 61% and 57% respectively) However, many of the students said that these items did not give them as many problems as other listening skills (see Table 3.4) 3.1.3 Students’ perceptions of teacher’s teaching strategies Teacher’s teaching strategies is always vital in teaching and learning situation Thus, it is essential to take a close look at what the students think about the actual teaching strategies that teachers utilized during the teaching process of listening skill Option Teacher encourages you to activate your previous knowledge into listening texts Teacher creates comfortable environment for you to exchange information before listening Teacher offers you as many chances for you to listen again as you Result 38% 65% 40% 11 expect Teacher provides you with certain key words 63% Teacher explains clearly about the listening contexts 54% Teacher suggests you essential listening strategies needed for each 42% kind of listening tasks Teacher adapts the listening materials suitable to your listening 20% ability and your interest Other things that teachers have done 0% Table 3.5 Students’ perceptions of teacher’s teaching strategies When discussing the question: “What strategies have teachers used to help you listen better or more effectively?”, the result showed that teachers had used a variety of strategies to help students listen more effectively Notably and interestingly, the most favorable way the teacher used was that they had tried to create a comfortable learning environment for students to discuss and exchange information, which was admitted by 65% of students being asked This indicated that teachers always desired to make students feel comfortable and free to learn at their best through sharing thoughts and experience with their partners 63% of the students acknowledged that their teacher had provided with certain key words With selecting certain key words to be explained, teachers can help students understand the text with less confusion Surprisingly, the teachers had suggested essential listening strategies needed for each kind of listening tasks (42%) Moreover, the students reported that teachers had explained clearly about the listening contexts, which may satisfy their needs (54%) However, 40% of them claimed that their teachers had offered them as many chances to listen as they expected This style of teaching leads students to focus on the language word by word, to work out the meaning of single word and its structure, and then to decide on its meaning (Underwood, M, 1989) In listening, this method does not work Besides, only 38% of all students stated that their teachers encourage them to activate previous knowledge into listening texts It should be noted that this method makes students aware of the knowledge they already have, and it will enable them to connect what they are going to listen with what they have already known This may be attributed to the fact that learners have difficulties in prediction tasks Accordingly, teachers should think more about the ways to activate their students’ schemata in listening comprehension Furthermore, from the percentages shown in the table above, teachers should adapt the listening materials suitable to students’ listening ability and interest 3.1.4 The expectations of the students towards teachers of listening skill The students in this present study were assumed to have certain difficulties in learning listening Thus, when they were asked “What you expect your teachers of listening skill to to help you overcome the difficulties you encounter in listening comprehension and improve your listening skill?” they responded as follows: 12 Option Result I expect the teacher to provide us with certain amount of words 56% needed for listening activities I want the teacher to guide and instruct us how to listen and 58% the task, emphasize the purposes or key words( equip with necessary strategies in listening) I expect the teacher to design listening tasks being more suitable 90% to students’ listening levels and interests I expect the teacher to recommend other supplementary listening 65% materials beside classroom activities I expect the teacher to explain clearly about the listening contexts 89% I expect the teacher to be flexible in organizing listening 69% activities Table 3.6 The expectations of the students towards teachers of listening skill As can be seen from the table, the majority of all students wished to listening tasks more suitable to their interests and levels (90%) and to explain more clearly about the listening context (89%) 65% of the all students desired their teachers to recommend other supplementary listening materials beside classroom activities and 56% wished to acquire new words needed for listening tasks, it made them feel easier to get the spoken input Besides, 58% of the students wanted the teacher to guide and instruct them how to listen and the task This proves the students find listening strategies necessary because they were lack of good listening strategies Students also hoped that teachers were more flexible in teaching techniques (69%) so that they could help students overcome difficulties in language learning, especially in learning listening From the data collected, it can be agreed that students wished to get a great deal of support from their teachers to overcome difficulties in learning listening Accordingly, teaching styles should be varied and modified or adapted in order to suit the students’ different learning styles and interests 3.1.5 Summary From the above analysis, the following conclusions about the difficulties in English listening and the causes of them can be arrived at Firstly, listening is a very important skill in learning English Based on the results of the questionnaire as well as small talks and discussions, it can be seen that when learning English listening the students encounter a lot of difficulties in all four aspects of language The most common difficulties are in terms of vocabulary and subject background knowledge The grammar aspect appears to be the least difficult of all The skills are perceived as equally difficult areas Secondly, as perceived by the students, listening difficulties might come from different sources Many are caused by general factors, the objective factors, the subjective factors, the materials, or by the physical settings, 13 Thirdly, the students demonstrated an extensive awareness of learning strategies, both for assisting comprehension and developing their listening They used top-down and bottom-up processing strategies Although the listening strategies werenot used effectively, the students tried to apply them as much as possible Finally, the students suggested that in order to improve the teaching and learning of English listening, the listening materials should be modified simpler and more motivating with a limited number of new words in each text Besides, the teaching methods should be tailored to suit the level of the students and especially allow more communicative activities in listening lessons 3.2 Recommendation 3.2.1 Recommendations for improvement of the efficiency of teaching and learning of the students at Tho Xuan High School The study has shown that the mastery of listening skill was a problem for many students at Tho Xuan high school The listening difficulties fell into three categories: language problem, listening skill problem and subject background knowledge problem The major causes include the students’ limited linguistic and background knowledge, and unsuitable teaching methodology This part suggests some possible ways to reduce the students’ difficulties in listening lessons and improve the quality of teaching and learning English listening skill 3.2.1.1 Recommendations for teachers of English Based on the findings of the study, a number of suggestions on strategies for alleviating listening comprehension problems were given to teachers of English They will be presented in details as follows 3.2.1.1.1 Adapting and improving listening materials It is obvious that students differ in their learning styles and ability, therefore, teachers should adopt and adapt listening materials that match their students’ interest and background since the listening materials only become stimulating and motivating them when they are slightly challenging to what they have already known and suit their interest 3.2.1.1.2 Increasing students’ listening interest and motivation According to the results of the research, one of the causes of English listening difficulties is that a considerable number of students in our school have negative, low interest and motivation in learning listening Therefore, to reduce the difficulties in listening, the teachers should arouse students’ passion for listening by making English listening lessons more interesting and useful • Making English listening interesting As we have found from the questionnaire and from the small talks with the students, listening lessons turned out to be boring and not motivating enough for students This is because the lessons contain long texts with too many new words and about unfamiliar professional topics Therefore, it is necessary for the teachers to make the materials interesting enough to draw the students’ attention 14 Firstly, teachers should provide easy listening lessons by simplifying, adapting the materials to suit the students’ level of proficiency so that the students can find themselves at ease and listen to Then, teachers should have a well-prepared pre-listening stage because this stage plays an important role and affects largely the effectiveness of the learning process In this stage, the teachers can utilize different techniques, for example: pictures, real objects, charts and diagrams, flash cards to stimulate the students After that, teachers can apply other various techniques to help students deal the listening tasks, for instance: pair work, group work, discussion, role play, interview Finally, teachers should create different activities or tasks in each lesson so that the students can avoid boredom Teachers can utilize a variety of techniques to draw students’ interest, the techniques are discussed herebelow • Using visual aids in teaching listening Visual aids not only are very helpful in motivating students but also so help students to understand the meanings of words clearly and memorize them quickly, especially in the vocabulary Most vocabulary are terminologies which are highly specialized, therefore it is advisable for teachers to use visual aids in teaching vocabulary Visual aids can be: pictures, real objects, flash cards, charts, maps, diagrams, blackboard… Visual aids are better than any other explanations when introducing a word because it can give what exactly what students need to know without translating into their mother tongue 3.2.1.1.3 Teaching students different listening strategies Listening strategies are techniques or activities that support the listening comprehension by providing how the listening input is processed by the listeners Researchers have categorized them into two types of strategies such as bottom-up processing and top-down processing Bottom-up technique is text based The listeners catch the meaning based on the language in the message such as the combination of sounds, words and grammar According to Rubin (1994: 210), the listeners make use of “his knowledge of words, syntax, and grammar to work on form” This process is in the close relation with the listeners’ linguistic knowledge Therefore, we can ask students to listen for specific details, recognize cognates or recognize word order patterns Listening for exact phrases or words, individual grammatical structures or sentence structures would be considered a bottom-up listening However, bottom-up technique has its own weakness To understand the text, the listeners must have an interactive process between their previous knowledge and the text Top-down processing is listener based The listeners use the knowledge inside the head which is not directly encoded in words While few English learners would have little trouble in comprehending the sounds, words and clauses in the given messages, it is unlikely that they can demonstrate comprehension by listening to the text and writing a précis or providing a verbal 15 account If we apply this technique, we can ask students to listen for the main idea, predict what is happening, draw inferences and summarize Top-down processing requires listeners’ background knowledge about the text However, the listeners may fail to understand unfamiliar information unless they only depend on their background knowledge They need the linguistic knowledge in listening comprehension Top-down processing refers to how we use our world knowledge to attribute meaning to language input; how our knowledge of social convention helps us understand meaning To deal with the disadvantages of both processes, the interactive processing that is a combination of both techniques has been given out since the early 1980s In this process, listeners use both their background knowledge information, contextual information and linguistic information to create comprehension and interpretation The listeners will employ the background knowledge to make predictions when the content of the material is familiar to them Otherwise, if they are unfamiliar with the content of the listening text and lack of language proficiency, they are able to make sense of information based on their linguistic knowledge especially the lexical and syntactical knowledge Besides, students can have a chance to interact with each other before and after listening to share the knowledge 3.2.1.1.4 Encouraging students to develop extensive listening habit As shown in the study, most of the students reported that the most difficult part in listening is vocabulary This means that they lacked necessary vocabulary related to the subject matter and limited knowledge of the subject So, teacher should encourage the students to form the positive and extensive listening habit Listening extensively outside the classroom can help them enrich their vocabulary and knowledge of the subject matter Teacher should provide students with the materials related to the topics they are learning, the source of these materials (from some books, websites ) and the way to listen effectively 3.2.1.2.Recommendations for students There are many ways for students to tackle their listening comprehension problems which will be discussed in detail below 3.2.1.2.1 Improving English proficiency To tackle listening difficulties, students themselves must try to improve their English If their language proficiency is improved, they are likely to overcome the difficulties such as variety of accents, speech rate, native speakers’ pronunciation, and vocabulary In class, students should participate actively in the lesson and get involved in extracurricular activities like joining an English club, talking with foreigners and working with a tutor Moreover, students can get access to authentic sources of communication themselves by watching T.V, listening to the radio and logging on the Internet By doing so, they could get used to the lively contexts in which spoken language is used 3.2.1.2.2 Improving the usage of listening strategies 16 When students know how to use appropriate listening strategies, they will be able to improve their listening practices and overcome listening difficulties Below are some of the most important individual strategies, which should be employed more by the students while engaging in a listening task - Listening for main ideas: students focus on the meanings, not just words While listening, students note down main points and key words to work out the gist of the talkhich should be employed by the students while engaging in a listening task - Skimming: not all words or even all ideas are essential to understand a message They should skim over parts of the message and pay attention to relevant parts only Thus sentences are not processed word by word and the focus is placed on the ideas behind these words and how these ideas are linked together to draw conclusions Guessing from the context: guess the meaning of unfamiliar words or phrases by looking at the context of the word (the surrounding words/ideas) and using logic and knowledge of the world to figure out what the word might mean - Making inferences: students can learn to compensate for their lack of background knowledge by learning to reply on the visual or auditory cues By paying attention to maps, charts, photographs, illustrations, or the background noise, they will be able to interpret the verbal messages more successfully and draw logical conclusion - Predicting: Use clues from context and prior knowledge to predict general content before listening and predict what speakers are going to say - Taking note: write down important content words This helps students overcome memory problems, especially when listening to a long spoken text - Cooperating with peers: they can work jointly with their classmates to comprehend spoken text and then benefit each other by sharing the strategies they employed during the listening 3.3 Limitation Teaching the listening skill in English is always considered as a controversial topic for many teachers of English because of its importance and its difficulties Under her own experiences in teaching English in the high school, the writer found that listening is important and teaching the listening skill to students is really necessary in teaching languages Additionally, learning the listening skill is a big problem due to various reasons In this thesis, the author has tried and done her best to offered findings, time limit, also the subjective and objective reasons, the limitations of this research are unavoidable The first limitation is the data taken for the research are not fully informative The participants were shorted in 100 students in Tho Xuan High School If there were more time and conditions, the investigation could be more persuasive and better in quality 17 The second limitation is the data in the study might be limited to some extent by the participants’ enthusiasm to give the honest responses, their individual ability to reflect accurate information concerning the author’s research Finally, the last limitation is the lack of experience in doing a research, also the lack of reference in the studied issue During the progress of studying, the researcher had to seek all reference related to the topic of the studies including reference books, textbooks, articles, thesis and so on However, the sources and materials have not mostly fulfilled because of the time limit and the novice experience So, the researcher might have some mistakes in carrying out the research The research got many supporting ideas and recommendations from the readers, teachers and colleagues for doing the research, also the warm contribution from the students The researcher hopes that the findings and the suggestions in the thesis could be useful and practical for the teaching and learning English listening in Tho Xuan high school in particular and high schools in general 3.4 Suggestion for further study As it has been shown, the topic about listening skill in English has a large scope for study because the problems and solutions for teaching and learning this difficult skill are really various On the other hand, the study of teaching and learning the listening skill is a vital duty in improving the quality of teaching and learning English in high schools in general and in Tho Xuan high school in particular Nevertheless, owing to the limitation of the author’s knowledge and experiences in teaching this skill, the thesis cannot cover all the matters relating to the topic In fact, there are so many difficulties, factors leading the difficulties as well as solutions to them Besides, there are also strategies to help the students to improve their listening skill Thus, it is necessary to have newer and newer discoveries in teaching this skill so as to solve update problems The author expects to see that the other continues to explore this topic and find more useful and realistic solutions and activities for teaching and learning the listening skill better and better Signature of Principle Thanh Hoa, May 12th, 2021 Hereby, I certify that this study is the result of my own experience and has not been submitted by any others Writer Ngô Thị Cảnh 18 REFERENCES A Vietnamese Authors: Nguyễn Thị Vân Lam & Ngô Đình Phương (2006), English Teaching Methodology Vinh University Phùng Thị Hoài Thu (2008), Listening Difficulties Perceived by Teachers and Students in Using the New English Textbook for Grade 10 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Foreign Language Annals, 29, 331-342 Underwood, M (1989), Teaching Listening London: Longman Ur, P (1996), A course in Language Teaching Practice and Theory Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Wenden, A L & J Rubin (Eds.) (1987) Learner strategies in language learning Oxford: Oxford University Press 20 ... obvious that most of the students at Nguyen Cong Tru high school had positive attitudes towards learning listening skills and high awareness of learning these skills; however, English listening seems... Students' perceptions of English listening difficulties Listening difficulties perceived by the students are classified in terms of vocabulary, grammar, discourse, reading skills, and subject... suitably chosen for the students to study 3.1.2.3 Difficulties due to lack of listening skills Item explored the difficulties in terms of listening skills/ strategies The results are shown in Table 3.4