An investigation on difficulties in learning english listening of grade 6 students at lien au my english center (LEA)

THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES ************* GRADUATE PAPER TITLE: AN INVESTIGATION ON DIFFICULTIES IN LEARNING ENGLISH LISTENING OF GRADE STUDENTS AT LIEN AU MY ENGLISH CENTER (LEA) Student name: Phan Thi Thuy Hang Student code: 1722202010086 Class: D17AVGD01 Course: 2017-2021 Major: English Language Lecturer: Mrs Nguyen Ngoc Thao Binh Duong, October 2020 THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES ************* GRADUATE PAPER TITLE: AN INVESTIGATION ON DIFFICULTIES IN LEARNING ENGLISH LISTENING OF GRADE STUDENTS AT LIEN AU MY ENGLISH CENTER (LEA) Student name: Phan Thi Thuy Hang Student code: 1722202010086 Class: D17AVGD01 Course: 2017-2021 Major: English Language Lecturer: Mrs Nguyen Ngoc Thao Binh Duong, October 2020 i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP Student full name: Phan Thi Thuy Hang Student ID: 1722202010086 Title paper: AN INVESTIGATION ON DIFFICULTIES IN LEARNING ENGLISH LISTENING OF GRADE STUDENTS AT LIEN AU MY ENGLISH CENTER (LEA) I hereby confirm that I am the sole author of the paper presented Where the work of others has been consulted, this is duly acknowledged in the paper’s bibliography I have also not consulted any other unnamed online sources All verbatim or referential use of the sources named in the bibliography has been specifically indicated in the text Binh Duong, October 2020 PHAN THI THUY HANG ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT In order to complete this graduation paper, I have received many necessary assistances, precious and timely encouragements from my English language teachers at Thu Dau Mot University, all the people at my practice place during the whole last time, Lien Au My English Center, family and friends Therefore, here are the most sincere and profound thanks I would like to send them At the beginning, I would like to say thanks to Thu Dau Mot University where I have been attached for years for creating favorable conditions and connecting with the agency where I practice so that I have the opportunity to experience real with the major that I have been pursuing for a long time Next, I would like to send my most sincere thanks to my lecturer, Mrs Nguyen Ngoc Thao who has always been willing to give me valuable advices and suggestions in order that I can complete successfully this study In addition, it is impossible not to send deep thanks to the place I practiced during the past time, Lien Au My English Center The first person I would like to thank is Mrs Do Thi Kim Thuy who gave me the opportunity to practice teaching English to the lovely children and gave me the valuable teaching and life experiences It is followed by a thanks to the students who have cooperated with me, gave me moments to experience with a new role as an English teacher and at the same time helped me the survey so that I had complete information for this study The last thanks is that I want to send to my parents and friends They are the ones who always encourage and help me whenever I have a hard time even when I have negative thoughts Thanks to them, I have had a relatively successful study like this one One more time, I would like to express my profoundest thankfulness to all the people who have helped me in the process of my study iii ABSTRACT Today, more and more people are devoting time to learning English as a second language Many countries incorporate English into their school curriculum and children start learning English at a young age, including Vietnam Since then, many English Centers have been formed and developed to meet the English learning needs of everyone In which, listening is an important skill that allows people to receive, understand and evaluate information that is communicated to them When students listen to English language, they face a lot of listening difficulties Everyone 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 respond in the right manner The research studies aims at exploring the English listening difficulties encountered by grade students at Lien Au My English Center (LEA) Besides, this study also wants to find out the reasons that cause difficulties in learning English listening skills of students Consequently, I applied the qualitative and quantitative methods to the research Therefore, the collecting data instruments such as questionnaires and interviews were used to conduct the research The results of the research will point out the difficulties that students meet when they learn the listening skills More importantly, the study helps me find out the causes of those difficulties so that I will have the basis to find the appropriate solutions to completely solve those difficulties for students at Lien Au My English Center (LEA) where I am practicing and will continue to teach, in the shortest time With the desire to find out problems in 6th grade students’ listening skills in particular and the students of Lien Au My English Center in general, I have tried my best to perform this research title well based on my own experiences and the knowledge in English teaching methodology I have acquired during the past time iv TABLE OF CONTENTS TITLE i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENT iii ABSTRACT iv TABLE OF CONTENTS v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vii LIST OF TABLES viii LIST OF FIGURES ix CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 RATIONALE OF THE STUDY 1.2 THE AIMS OF THE STUDY 1.3 THE SCOPE OF THE STUDY 1.4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS 1.5 THE METHOD OF THE STUDY 1.6 THE ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 OVERVIEW OF LISTENING 2.1.1 Definition of listening 2.1.2 The importance of listening skills 2.2 DIFFICULTIES IN LEARNING ENGLISH LISTENING 2.2.1 What problems students have with listening? 2.2.2 What makes listening so difficult? CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 10 3.1 RESEARCH METHOD 10 3.2 PARTICIPANTS 10 3.3 DATA COLLECT INSTRUMENTS 10 3.3.1 The survey questionnaire 10 v 3.3.2 The interview 11 3.4 DATA ANALYSIS 11 3.4.1 Identification 11 3.4.2 Classification 12 3.4.3 Description 12 3.4.4 Explanation 12 CHAPTER 4: RESULT AND DISCUSSION 13 4.1 STUDENTS’ OPINIONS ON LEARNING ENGLISH LISTENING 13 4.1.1 The assessment of English listening skills 13 4.1.2 The interest in learning English listening 14 4.1.3 The importance of English listening 15 4.1.4 The problem in listening skills 17 4.2 THE DIFFICULTIES THAT STUDENTS OFTEN HAVE WHEN LEARNING ENGLISH LISTENING 18 4.3 THE REASONS CAUSE DIFFICULTIES FOR STUDENTS IN LEARNING ENGLISH LISTENING 23 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 29 5.1 SUMMARY OF THE STUDY 29 5.2 LIMITATION OF THE STUDY 29 5.3 SUGGESTIONS FOR THE FURTHER STUDY 29 REFERENCES 30 APPENDIX x APPENDIX 1: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRES FOR STUDENTS x APPENDIX 2: INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR STUDENTS xiv vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS LEA: Link between Europe and America (Lien Au My) L2: Lateral type (Second language) ESL: English as Second Language vii LIST OF TABLES Table 4.1: The students’ interest in learning English listening 15 Table 4.2: The interview result of difficulties that students often have when learning English listening 22 Table 4.3: The reasons cause difficulties for students in learning English listening 24 viii LIST OF FIGURES Chart 4.1: The students’ assessment of English listening skills 13 Chart 4.2: The interview result of students’ assessment of English listening skills 14 Chart 4.3: The students’ attitudes toward the importance of English listening 16 Chart 4.4: The frequency of students having problems in learning English listening 17 Chart 4.5: The difficulties that students often have when learning English listening 18 Chart 4.6: The interview result of reasons cause difficulties for students in learning English listening 27 ix some students with a special ability when they not need to listen too many times, the result shows that 17% of students disagree and 10% of them disagree completely, but these figures are insignificant compared to the number of students facing this difficulty In short, listening to the same content over and over again and still not understanding is a big obstacle for students, students gradually feel headache, depressed and want to give up Cannot predict the next information In the process of listening to English, not only listening to the content the speaker is referring to, but also the listeners need to guess the upcoming information In fact, the prediction brings about a number of advantages to students in their listening comprehension, they will limit the subject and content, and then their listening will be more effective However, this is the limit for 6th graders, up to 37% of students agree completely, 23% of students agree and 13% of them choose to be neutral with their failure to predict information the speaker is about to say Besides, only a handful of students, about 27% of them think they can guess the next information According to Hasan (2000), the problem is believed to cause by the habit of listening to word by word Listeners not focus on any particular cues which help them predict what is going to be talked about Conversely, in every listening task, cues are provided indirectly that well-trained or experienced listener could recognize it naturally Do not have enough vocabulary and grammar More or less vocabulary and grammar also affect the students’ ability to listen English Most students find it difficult to listen to English because they not have enough vocabulary and grammar, it is clear that about 47% of students agree that their vocabulary and grammar are limited In addition, 23% of the students choose to be neutral, 20% disagree and 10% disagree completely In general, this problem is not about the amount of vocabulary and structure that students have, but on how many words they can remember and use it in real communication situations The way of learning traditional vocabulary and structures by repeatedly recording the words or structures they want to learn with the Vietnamese meaning has limited their ability to memorize for a long time and easily make them “lost” in the maze of words they created 21 Have to understand all the words in order to understand the content of the listening text Looking at the result in the chart above, obviously this is not the common difficulty that many students are facing when learning English listening Because only 17% of students agree completely, 20% of them agree and only 10% are neutral with the fact that they need to listen to all the words to understand the content of the listening text However, up to 53% of students think that they not have this difficulty when listening This is quite a feasible result because having to understand all the words in the listening lesson will take a lot of time and nobody can wait for the listener to translate all the words into Vietnamese before continuing to speak In fact, sometimes listeners may not need to know all the words and still listen to the other person through key words and body language Below is the result of interviewing 10 students about their difficulties in learning English listening From there, the researcher finds out how difficult they are in particular Question 4: What you think you are having difficulty in learning English listening? Numbers (%) Feel tired and unfocused (20%) Do not recognize English sounds (20%) Do not keep up with the speed of the speech (30%) Cannot catch the main information (30%) Table 4.2: The interview result of difficulties that students often have when learning English listening Table is a summary of the students’ answers about difficulties in learning English listening, the answers that coincide with the difficulties posed by the researcher in the survey questionnaire The specific result is as follows: students (20%) feel tired and unfocused, students (20%) not recognize English sounds, students (30%) not keep up with the speed of the speech, and students (30%) cannot catch the main information When asked specifically how students are facing those difficulties, the 22 students enthusiastically cooperated and responded The answers are summarized as follows: Feel tired and unfocused One student replied that his lack of experience in listening caused him to find it increasingly difficult to focus on the listening text Another student thought that due to his poor health, he always feels tired when learning English listening Do not recognize English sounds One student said that this difficulty is due to his inability to distinguish homophones, especially words that have the same pronunciation Another student said that he did not realize that the main information to listen to was due to some features of connected speech in English such as elision, weak form in pronunciation, assimilation phenomenon, phenomenon of shortening of words (contraction), phenomenon of linking sound (linking) Do not keep up with the speed of the speech All three students said that they rarely catch the speed of the speaker, which makes them always slow and error a lot Cannot catch the main information One student said that it is difficult for him to grasp the main point of the listening because he does not know what is the important information to listen to The other two students said that the fact that they could not deduce the main content of the listening lesson from the key words made them not grasp the main idea when listening In conclusion, the common difficulties that 6th graders are facing in learning English listening at LEA English Center are Do not recognize English sounds; Do not keep up with the speed of the speech; Cannot catch the main information; Feel tired and unfocused; Need to listen many times to understand; Cannot predict the next information and Do not have enough vocabulary and grammar 4.3 THE REASONS CAUSE DIFFICULTIES FOR STUDENTS IN LEARNING ENGLISH LISTENING: Through the results collected in the above data, it can be known that students have many difficulties in learning English listening Therefore, the final survey question is designed with the aim of finding out the reasons causing students to those difficulties Here is the result obtained from the survey of 6th graders 23 Percentage of students’ choices Contents SA A N D SD (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) Limited practice time at class 40% 27% 23% 10% 0% Unfamiliar content listening text 30% 23% 27% 13% 7% Poor-quality CDs and CD players 33% 30% 20% 10% 7% Fast speed speaking 47% 30% 23% 0% 0% Many hesitations (“er”, “uhm”), false starts, pauses, and corrections 27% 33% 20% 17% 3% Appearance of colloquial language: reduced forms, idioms, slang,… 37% 23% 20% 13% 7% Background noise 50% 30% 20% 0% 0% Others 0% 0% 7% 40% 53% Table 4.3: The reasons cause difficulties for students in learning English listening Based on the result in table 3, it shows that the levels of agreeing and disagreeing for given reasons are quite different Considering the sum of values at the levels of “strong agreement”, “agreement” and “neutral”, the researcher obtained the order of agreed difficulties as follows: firstly, “Fast speed speaking” and “Background noise” with 100% absolute, 2nd is “Limited practice time at class” at 90%, 3rd is “Poorquality CDs and CD players” with 83%, 4th includes “Unfamiliar content listening text”, “Many hesitations, false starts, pauses, and corrections” and 24 “Appearance of colloquial language” with the same value 80%, and finally is “Others” with 7% This result shows that the fast speaker’s speed and background noise are the reasons why students have difficulty learning English listening To get more about the level of agreement and disagreement with each of the above reasons, the researcher goes into depth to analyze each data of each reason obtained from the 6th grade students The result is detailed below Fast speed speaking The fast speed of speakers is a major obstacle to 6th graders’ English listening because up to 47% of students choose “strong agreement”, 30% of them choose “agreement” and 23% choose “neutral” It is astonishing that no student ever denies that the fast speed make it difficult to learn English listening In fact, during the course of teaching listening skills to grade students, the researcher also found that for each listening lesson at a faster rate than usual, most of the students were confused because they did not know what they were listening to and what they need to next According to Underwood (1989), speed can make listening passage difficult If the speakers speak too fast, students may have serious problems to understand L2 words In this situation, listeners are not able to control the speed of speakers and this can create critical problems with listening comprehension Background noise Being able to clearly discern background noise is indeed one outstanding reason why students have so much difficulty learning to listen Based on the result in table 3, it is quite clear that up to 50% of the students strongly agree and 30% of them agree that the surrounding noises can make them unable to listen effectively Besides, only 20% of students are on the neutral side because partly they also realize that noise is hindering their listening In general, if the listening task is carried out with noises around, it is for sure students will not have a good result in listening First, they are distracted by the noise no matter how hard they try to focus on the task Otherwise, the noise makes a complex of sounds instead of the solo recording being played This interrupts the students from hearing and focusing on the task Limited practice time at class There are quite a few students (40%) strongly agree, (27%) agree and (23%) choose neutral because they find this can be the main reason for difficulties in listening Besides, only 10% of students 25 disagree, this number is not too significant When learning English skills in general and listening skills in particular, a lot of practice will make learners’ results highly effective The students believe that not being practiced much or in another way is being practiced but not properly, it really makes it difficult for the students to learn to listen Because they cannot formulate proper listening strategies and sequences, listening skills are increasingly difficult for them Poor-quality CDs and CD players Most students listen to on the CDs, and whether or not any information in the audio is transmitted clearly depends largely on the quality of the discs and players That is why a large number of students (63%) agree that the poor quality of discs and players can make their English listening learning difficult Also 20% of the students choose “neutral” and 17% of them disagreed, because maybe they think their listening is not good, not mainly due to the quality of the disc In fact, the cassette may be recorded while there are noises around or the cassette is used for such a long time so the quality is worn out and the poor cassette recorders or CD players can make listening difficult for students Unfamiliar content listening text Table shows that unfamiliar content listening text sometimes interferes with students’ learning English listening 30% (strong agreement) and 23% (agreement) of the students have problems with content listening texts which are unfamiliar to them Listening material can cover many different areas of life and society For example, it could be a daily conversation, or views on how someone is dressed and that confuses the listeners These conversations may include words, phrases, or terms that are unfamiliar to the listeners They are totally strange to them so it is such a hard job to listen Many hesitations, false starts, pauses, and corrections In informal talk, difficulties stern from the message is spoken with much hesitation As a result, about 53% of students agree that a speaker’s hesitancy causes confusion while listening, 20% of students are neutral and 20% of them disagree because their listening is rarely distracted by it Briefly, whether it is a habit or not, adding something or removing something to sentences seems to confuse students Yagang (1994) also find that in conversation, non-grammatical structures are used due to speaker’s anxiety and hesitation The speaker can either omit parts of 26 the sentence or add something extra Hence, this limits the listener’s understanding Appearance of colloquial language Colloquial language is issue that can interfere with listeners in real life as they are accustomed to standard written language Therefore, up to 60% of students agree and 20% are neutral because colloquial language makes them difficult to listen to English In addition, students at LEA English Center mostly learn English with teachers who are not native speakers Regarding that, if students listen to an informal conversation, it is certainly much harder than listening to a formal conversation used mainly in English classrooms Unlike recordings in an ESL classroom, the informal conversation includes a number of words that sound strange to students Hence, they don not know what they are listening to Real language consists of colloquialisms, expressions, and even slang which absolutely hardly bring the students any concepts about them McCarthy (1990) points out that it takes native speakers years to acquire an acceptable knowledge of collocation On the other hand, Heron and Seavy (1991) highlight the importance of authentic material for their great improvement in listening comprehension since authentic material related closely to the lives and language variety In order to get more about the reasons students think these are the causes of difficulty in learning English listening, the researcher also asked the 5th question to interview the students “What reason you think caused difficulties for you in learning English listening?” Below is the result summarizing the students’ responses from the interview 20% Limited practice time at class 10% 30% Unfamiliar content listening text Fast speed speaking 40% Background noise Chart 4.6: The interview result of reasons cause difficulties for students in learning English listening 27 Chart shows reasons why 6th graders have difficulty learning to listen and the number of students thinking about those opinions First, student (10%) said that the reason is the limited practice time Second, students (30%) think that the content of the listening text is not familiar Third, up to students (40%) answered that speaking speed is fast The rest, of them (20%) felt that the background noise really made their listening difficult When asked about why students think those reasons are causing their listening difficulties, responses are presented in the following summary format: Limited practice time at class One student said that he felt that his listening practice time in class was not enough for him to improve and develop his listening skills Therefore, when taking the listening test, he still has not enough experience and strategy to achieve high listening score Unfamiliar content listening text All students said that when they encounter topics or content that are not within their interests and research, they would find it difficult to recognize the vocabulary as well as the pronunciation of those words Fast speed speaking Students considered that in many of the listening lessons in the book, the speaker spoke very quickly They had not recognized the words in the listening text, the speaker had changed to another idea Therefore, the speaker’s speed is really a hindrance to their listening Background noise Both students responded that during their listening to English, if there are any strange outside sounds such as the voices of their friends around, the sound of cars passing can make them distract and forget the content listening text To conclude, the reasons that make 6th grade students at LEA English Center difficult to learn English listening include Fast speed speaking; Background noise; Unfamiliar content listening text; Limited practice time at class; Poorquality CDs and CD players; Many hesitations, false starts, pauses, and corrections; and Appearance of colloquial language 28 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION 5.1 SUMMARY OF THE STUDY: To achieve what the author aimed for in this study is to investigate on difficulties in learning English listening of grade students at LEA English Center, the research is divided into five chapters with their own purposes The first chapter introduces the general information about the thesis The second chapter reviews some of the theories as well as previous studies that relate to the research The third chapter presents the research methodology The fourth chapter is an analysis of the results of survey questionnaires as well as interviews with students and it helps the authors find the answers for three research questions that stated in the introduction The last chapter briefly summarizes what the thesis has done, evaluates the results of the study and gives some recommendations for future researches 5.2 LIMITATION OF THE STUDY: Even though the research has certain strengths such as collection methods, specifically survey questionnaires and interviews for students, due to limited time, the researcher’s capacity and other unpredicted factors, it is clear that the study has some weaknesses Firstly, due to the limited time and in-depth experience, it is not possible for the researcher to use other methods of collecting information such as directly observing all classrooms to can make the results more reliable Secondly, due to the limited scope of the research, the researcher can only focus on 6th graders and the small number of students at LEA English Center Hence, the study results cannot be most general and the researcher cannot cover every aspect of the difficulties Despite the aforementioned limitations, I hope the results of this research will clarify the difficulties and reasons why 6th graders have difficulty in learning English listening at LEA English Center 5.3 SUGGESTIONS FOR THE FURTHER STUDY: From the limitations of the research paper, the researcher has some recommendations for the further studies For better results, the researcher should invite more participants and implement more information collection methods The combination of questionnaires, interviews and observations is needed to get more convincing results Overall, I have successfully completed my study with the dedicated help of my instructor and my schoolmates at Thu Dau Mot University Any comments and critics will be highly appreciated for further research 29 REFERENCES Anderson, A & Lynch, T (1988), Listening, Oxford, Oxford University Press Bloomfield, A et al (2010), What Makes Listening Difficult? Factors Affecting Second Language Listening, www.ccsenet.org/elt English Language Teaching Vol 9, No 6; 2016 130 Comprehension, Retrieved January 10, 2013 Brown, G (1992), Listening to Spoken English, London, Longman Press Boyle, J P (1984), Factors Affecting Listening Comprehension, ELT Journal, 38(1), 34-38 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/elt/38.1.34 Flowerdew, J and Miller, L (1996), Student perceptions, problems and strategies in second language lecture comprehension, RELC Journal 23 (2), 60–80 Goss, B (1982), Listening as Information Processing, Communication Quarterly, 30, 304-307 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01463378209369465 Hamouda, A (2013), An Investigation of Listening Comprehension Problems Encountered by Saudi Students in the EL Listening Classroom, International Journal of Academic Research in Progressive Education and Development, 2(2), 113-15 Hasan, A (2000), Learners’ perceptions of listening comprehension problems, Language, Culture and Curriculum, 13, 137-153 Herron, C and Seay, I (1991), The effect of authentic aural texts on student listening comprehension in the foreign language classroom, Foreign Language Annals 24, 487–95 10 Rost, M (1994), Listening, London, Longman 11 Teng, H C (2002), An Investigation of EFL Listening Difficulties for Taiwanese College Students, Selected Papers from the Eleventh International Symposium on English Teaching/ Fourth Pan-Asian Conference (pp 526533), Taipei: Crane 12 Underwood, M (1989), Teaching listening, New York, Longman 13 Weir, C & Robert, J (1994), Evaluation in ELT, Oxford, Blackwell 30 APPENDIX APPENDIX 1: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRES FOR STUDENTS TITLE: AN INVESTIGATION ON DIFFICULTIES IN LEARNING ENGLISH LISTENING OF GRADE STUDENTS AT LIEN AU MY ENGLISH CENTER (LEA) My name is Phan Thi Thuy Hang I am a student of class D17AVGD01 This survey questionnaire is designed for my graduation paper namely: “An investigation on difficulties in learning English listening of grade students at Lien Au My English Center (LEA)” I would love you to help me complete this questionnaire All your personal information as well as your answers will be kept confident and not be used for the other purposes Your answers will greatly contribute to the success of the study Personal information: (write your answers in the blanks) Age:………………………………………………………………………… Class:……………………………………………………………………… Gender (Male/Female):…………………………………………………… How long have you been learning English? ………………………………………………………………………………… How long have you been learning English at LEA English Center? ………………………………………………………………………………… Your opinion on learning English listening: (Circle the best answer for each question) How you feel about English listening skills? A It is very interesting B It is very difficult C It is very difficult but very interesting D It is quite easy and very interesting E It is very difficult and boring Do you like English listening lessons at class? x A I like very much B I like C I don’t mind D I don’t like What you think about the importance of English listening? A Very important B Important C Quite important D Not important How often you have problems in your listening skills? A Always B Often C Sometimes D Rarely Your difficulties and the reasons cause difficulties for you in learning English listening: (For each answer, you circle the number that best describes how much you agree with the statement If you want to change your opinion, please draw a cross on it and circle a new one.) 1= Strong Agreement (SA) 2= Agreement (A) 3= Neutral (N) 4= Disagreement (D) 5= Strong Disagreement (SD) xi Question 10: “Do you think you are having the following difficulties in learning English listening?” Contents The choice of students When you are learning English listening, you SA A N D SD (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) Feel tired and unfocused Do not recognize English sounds Cannot catch the main information Cannot predict the next information 5 Do not keep up with the speed of the speech Do not have enough vocabulary and grammar Need to listen many times to understand Have to understand all the words in order to understand the content of the listening text 5 Others xii Question 11: “Do you think the following reasons cause difficulties for you in learning English listening?” Contents The choice of students SA A N D SD (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) Limited practice time at class Unfamiliar content listening text Poor-quality CDs and CD players Fast speed speaking 5 Many hesitations (“er”, “uhm”), false starts, pauses, and corrections Appearance of colloquial language: reduced forms, idioms, slang,… Background noise Others Thank you very much for your cooperation! xiii APPENDIX 2: INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR STUDENTS Question 1: How you feel about English listening skills? Why you think so? Question 2: What you think of the importance of English listening? Question 3: How often you have problems in your listening skills? Question 4: What you think you are having difficulty in learning English listening? How difficult is it? Question 5: What reason you think caused difficulties for you in learning English listening? Why you think so? xiv ... for grade students in learning English listening at Lien Au My English Center (LEA)? What are the reasons why 6th graders at Lien Au My English Center (LEA) have difficulty in learning English listening? ... QUESTIONNAIRES FOR STUDENTS TITLE: AN INVESTIGATION ON DIFFICULTIES IN LEARNING ENGLISH LISTENING OF GRADE STUDENTS AT LIEN AU MY ENGLISH CENTER (LEA) My name is Phan Thi Thuy Hang I am a student of class... This survey questionnaire is designed for my graduation paper namely: ? ?An investigation on difficulties in learning English listening of grade students at Lien Au My English Center (LEA)? ?? I would