A study of difficulties in learning english listening skill for beginners in the asemlink of intrernational languages center and some suggested solutions

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING VINH UNIVERSITY -------  ------- PHAN HUONG GIANG A STUDY OF DIFFICULTIES IN LEARNING ENGLISH LISTENING SKILL FOR BEGINNERS IN THE ASEMLINK OF INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGES CENTER AND SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS (NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN TRONG VIỆC HỌC KỸ NĂNG NGHE TIẾNG ANH ĐỐI VỚI NHỮNG NGƯỜI MỚI BẮT ĐẦU TẠI TRUNG TÂM ANH NGỮ QUỐC TẾ ASEMLINK VÀ MỘT VÀI GIẢI PHÁP GỢI Ý) MASTER THESIS IN EDUCATION VINH, 2011 MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING VINH UNIVERSITY -------  ------- PHAN HUONG GIANG A STUDY OF DIFFICULTIES IN LEARNING ENGLISH LISTENING SKILL FOR BEGINNERS IN THE ASEMLINK OF INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGES CENTER And SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS (NGHIÊN CỨU VỀ NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN TRONG VIỆC HỌC KỸ NĂNG NGHE TIẾNG ANH ĐỐI VỚI NHỮNG NGƯỜI MỚI BẮT ĐẦU TẠI TRUNG TÂM ANH NGỮ QUỐC TẾ ASEMLINK VÀ MỘT VÀI GIẢI PHÁP GỢI Ý) Field: Theory and methodology of english language teaching Code: 60.14.10 MASTER THESIS IN EDUCATION Supervisor: Dr. NGO HUU HOANG VINH, 2011 STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP Honestly, the thesis has been resulted from my own interest as well as my difficulties in teaching English to beginners in the Asemlink center. I did observation in English listening class for beginners. I directly distributed the questionnaires to the right beginner learners who are at the age of adults. Also I interviewed five of my colleagues who have been teaching beginner level classes. Therefore, all the statistic given must be realiable. Moreover, all the refferent information was quoted or summaried with the clear original sources which have been shown in the references part. I truthfully assure that the thesis has been completed by myself. ABSTRACT Listening skill is one of the most necessary skills to communicate in the real life. In learning a foreign language, it is more and more important to learn this skill. Everybody knows that in order to listen to a message is not as simple as hearing it, so the listener has to understand the message and responde in the right manner. Realizing the problems from teaching experiences, the author would like to do a research titled A Study of Difficulties in Learning English Listening Skill for beginners in the Asemlink of International Languages Center and Some Suggested Solutions. The thesis will study the subjective and objective difficulties of the beginning learners in learning the listening skill. Then, it would like to find out the reasons for those problems and the sollutions for both teachers and learners in teaching and learning the listening skill. Therefore, the author applied the qualitative and quantitative methods and descriptive methods to do the research. So the collecting data instruments like questionnaires, interviews and observation were used to do the study. The results of the research will point out the difficulties that beginners meet when they learn the listening skill in the Asemlink center. More importantly, it helps the author find out the causes of those difficulties so that she can work out the right solutions to the problems. With the hope of improving beginner learners’ listening competence, the author has tried her best to do this thesis by her own experiences and knowledge in English teaching methodology. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My MA graduation thesis has been completed with a lot of encouragement and support from my teachers, colleagues and family. First of all, I would like to express my deep great thank to my supervisor, Dr. Ngo Huu Hoang, for his indispensable and useful advice, suggestions and support for this thesis. And I wish to thank many teachers for having taught me the subjects in the MA TESOL course carefully and given me lots of useful advice so that I could get more background knowledge to complete this thesis. In addition, I am grateful to all my friends in this MA TESOL class, who have encouraged me a lot to finish the thesis and shared me useful information. Moreover, it is my pleasure to acknowledge my director who permitted me to do the survey on his center. I wish also to thank all my colleagues who answered all my interviews and let me observe their classes. My thanks are also given to the fifty learners who willingly completed the questionnaires. Finally, I am happy to acknowledge my family members, who always approved and encouraged me during doing the thesis. Vinh, October 20 th , 2011 Phan Huong Giang TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS .1 LIST OF FIGURES 5 CHAPTER 1 - INTRODUCTION 6 1.1. Rationale .6 1.2. 7 The aim of the study 7 Research questions 8 The scope of the study 8 1.5. The method of the study 9 1.6. The organization of the study 9 CHAPTER 2 - LITERATURE REVIEW .11 2.1. What are listening and the listening skill? 11 Definitions .11 The importance of the listening skill 12 Types of listening .13 Sub-skills involved in the listening 15 Difficulties in learning the listening skill 16 2.2.1. What makes listening difficult? 16 Factors affecting learners’ English learning skills .19 Learner age 23 CHAPTER 3 - METHODOLOGY AND FINDINGS 29 Research methodology .29 3.1.1. Participants .29 3.1.2. Data collection instruments .29 1 CHAPTER 4 - SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS TO TEACH ENGLISH LISTENING SKILL TO BEGINNERS IN THE ASEMLINK CENTER .57 Introduction .57 4.2. Background knowledge in teaching the listening skill .57 4.2.1. Principles in teaching the listening skill .57 4.2.1.1. Principles of teaching English listening skill 57 Some suggestions for beginners to learn the listening skill in the Asemlink center .66 4.3.1. Suggested solutions to solve difficulties in learning the listening skill .66 As it has been shown in the finding and discussion part, the beginners found difficult in learning the listening skill since their own problems such as habits of listening, background knowledge, etc.; the teaching methods of the teachers; and the equipment in the center. Hence, in order to solve those problems the writer would like to present some suggestions for the learners, the teachers and the center as follows 66 First, the learners want to learn the listening better, they themselves ought to try their best to change their bad habits of listening and to improve their background knowledge. According to the survey, most students had habits of listening to every word in the recording so they soon got tired and frustrated of listening. As a consequence, they answered the listening tasks mainly by guessing but not by understanding the text. It is not necessary for learners to understand every word in order to understand the information they need from the recording. Therefore, learners should learn to focus on the message. When listening, the learners should summarize the ideas they listen to and take notes. They had better not translate the listening text into the mother tongue, but try to understand it in the target language. Moreover, outside the listening class, students have to practice regularly such as listening to English songs, watching foreign channels so as to get acquainted with the native accent in normal speech. In addition, they must enrich 2 themselves with general knowledge of the English speaking countries, English language, and social and cultural knowledge. Lack of socio cultural, factual, and contextual knowledge of the target language can present an obstacle to comprehension because language is used to express its culture (Anderson and Lynch, 1988) 66 Second, teachers play a crucial part in improving learners’ listening skill. Teaching methods was the most considered factor that the learners mentioned in the survey. In teaching the listening skill to the beginners, the teachers have to pay attention to the following elements. The beginner learners are not linguistically equipped to produce verbal answers with much confidence and without losing their self-esteem. It is therefore, important for teachers to design techniques in such a way that students’ responses indicate whether their comprehension has been correct. Some different ways to check listeners’ comprehension without requiring them to produce lengthy spoken or written answers include: listen and draw; listen and color; listen and reorder the scrambled pictures; listen and marking worksheets; listen and trace the route on the map; listen and perform physical actions; etc. Additionally, teachers should provide more interesting topics for further listening. The authentic listening material is usually interesting because the listeners are exposed to the real life. With the listening text in the text book, the teachers can create more exciting activities to motivate students to take part in. Meanwhile, to help the learners omit their bad habits; they should be encouraged not to panic when they miss a piece of information. The criterion for success in listening is not whether they have understood every word, but whether they have constructed enough of the message in order to satisfy their own communicative purpose (www 3). On the other hand, teachers have responsibility for providing necessary background knowledge which relates to the listening texts for the learners before they listen. In addition, teachers can warm up by 3 exciting games which introduce more about the culture, society and countries in the world. The requirement should be clear and also given before listening so that the learners can draw a clear purpose to listen. It is easier for them to catch the message they need. In teaching, teachers should require the learners to obey some regulations. For example, let students listen in a certain number of times, then ask them to express their own ideas with evidence and let students discuss together before giving confirmation. When checking their answers, teachers should not be led by some strong students, but all of them must be asked and get information. Because of the various differences in the learners, teachers should upgrade the level of the listening tasks in order to encourage them. Moreover, the learners should be tested in the listening skill regularly so as to put them in a definite pressure so that they express their effort. However, teachers should not let them lose heart by using the task which is just within their abilities. It should be challenging, but achievable. The sense of achievement in finishing a task would be great 67 4.3.3. A sample of listening lesson plan .73 REFERENCES 80 Appendix 1 .83 4 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 3.1. Purposes to learn English in the Asemlink center .39 Figure 3.2. The learners' assessment of learning the listening skill .39 5