Nhận thức của học viên tại trung tâm anh ngữ talky về những yếu tố ảnh hưởng tới việc nghe hiểu tiếng anh

z HANOI UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF THE FACTORS AFFECTING THEIR ENGLISH LANGUAGE LISTENING COMPREHENSION AT TALKY ENGLISH SCHOOL Nhận thức học viên Trung tâm Anh ngữ Talky yếu tố ảnh hưởng tới việc nghe hiểu tiếng Anh A dissertation submitted to the Department of Post-graduate Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master‟s degree Student: Bui Quang Huy Supervisor: Dr Dinh Thi Bao Huong Hanoi 2019 Table of Contents ACKOWLEDGEMENTS i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP ii ABSTRACT iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS iv LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES v CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Statement of the problem 1.2 Purpose of the study 1.3 Research questions 1.4 Significance of the study 1.5 Scope of the study 1.6 Organization of the dissertation CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Definition of listening 2.2 Listening comprehension processes 2.2.1 Top-down processing 2.2.2 Bottom-up processing 2.2.3 Combination of top-down and bottom-up processing 10 2.3 Factors influencing listening success 13 2.3.1 Cognitive factors 14 2.3.2 Affective factors 20 2.3.3 Contextual factors 23 2.4 Previous studies 25 2.5 Summary 30 CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 31 3.1 Research design 31 3.2 Research setting 32 3.3 Participants 32 3.4 Data collection instruments 33 3.4.1 Justification for the use of the questionnaire and interview 33 3.4.2 Questionnaire 34 3.4.3 Interview 35 3.5 Procedure 36 3.6 Data analysis 39 3.7 Ethics 39 3.8 Summary 40 CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION 41 4.1 Answer to the first research question: What are the most common factors affecting the students‟ listening comprehension during the two listening tasks? 41 4.2 Answer to the second research question: Is there any relationship between the listening task types and the factors experienced? 48 4.3 Discussion 50 CHAPTER 5: RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSION 53 5.1 Recommendations 53 5.2 Limitations 54 5.3 Directions for future research 55 5.4 Conclusion 56 References 57 APPENDIX A: QUESTIONNAIRE (ENGLISH) 67 APPENDIX B: QUESTIONNAIRE (VIETNAMESE) 69 APPENDIX C: INTERVIEW GUIDE (ENGLISH) 71 APPENDIX D: INTERVIEW GUIDE (VIETNAMESE) 72 APPENDIX E: SAMPLE TRANSCRIPT 73 APPENDIX F: CODING TABLE 79 ACKOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks to everyone who helped me to complete this M.A program and, ultimately, this dissertation Firstly, I would like to extend my grateful thanks to Dr Dinh Thi Bao Huong for her tremendous support and guidance throughout my coursework, study, and writing of this dissertation I am also grateful for the support of the librarian staff at Hanoi University who have assisted me in searching for coursework- and research-related material, as well as supported me in the processing of statistical data Thanks in general to the Department of Postgraduate Studies for their enthusiasm and practical assistance throughout the two years I have been a student at Hanoi University I would also like to express my thanks to my friends and family for encouraging me to pursue this area of interest and providing me with valuable comments and suggestions Thanks to my students for their willingness to take part in this study and for being guinea pigs during some stages of my study Last but not least, thanks to the management at Talky English School for making it possible for me to carry out this research i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I certify that except where due acknowledgement has been made, the work is that of the author solely; and the work has not been submitted in support of another degree or qualification from this or other university or institute of learning The study in this thesis has been approved by Hanoi University Hanoi, November 2019 Bui Quang Huy ii ABSTRACT This dissertation presents an exploratory approach to investigate the factors expected to have an impact on listening skills of B1-level students at English Talky School The primary purposes of the dissertation were to explore the factors influencing learner listening comprehension with greatest frequency as well as the relationship between the listening task types and the factors experienced A mixed-methods concurrent design was employed in the study Quantitative data were collected from 33 students at B1 level according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) Qualitative data were acquired from one-on-one interviews with four participants Many of the factors reported were related to text, listener, task and environment characteristics The factors experienced by the students related to the gap-filling task type, in order of frequency of mention, were memory, attention and concentration, time available for processing, speech rate, vocabulary, physical conditions, speaker's clarity, culturally specific vocabulary and idioms, physical and psychological states, knowledge of grammar, concern about understanding every word, opportunities for second hearing and directness of text With regards to the factors influencing the students‟ listening in the other task type, in order of frequency of mention, attention and concentration, opportunities for second hearing, speech rate, memory, physical conditions, vocabulary and time available for processing were reported to be highly influential The findings also revealed that the number of factors with the highest impact was almost twice as many in the gap-filling task type as that in the multiple-choice task type Furthermore, most of the factors cited in the gap-filling task type were related to characteristics of the text and those of the listener (five each), whereas the number of factors reported in the multiple-choice task type, which were connected with the text and the listener, was rather low (two each) Last but not least, the overlap between the factors reported in the multiple-choice task type and those in the gap-filling task type signifies that the seven factors which are attention and concentration, opportunities for second hearing, speech rate, memory, physical conditions, vocabulary and time available for processing are equally important in both of the listening tasks The results of this study are mixed in terms of corroborating and disproving the assertions in previous literature Notwithstanding differences, the findings from this paper carry a number of pedagogical implications and recommendations for those in the teaching profession, material developers and future researchers who are interested replicating this work iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CEFR: Common European Framework of Reference for Languages EFL: English as a Foreign Language L1: First Language L2: Second Language PET: Preliminary English Test TES: Talky English School iv LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 1: Factors reported in the two listening task types 48 Table 2: Percentages of students reporting factors experienced in two task types 49 Table 3: Groups of factors experienced in two task types 50 Figure 1: Most common factors experienced in pilot multiple-choice task 38 Figure 2: Most common factors experienced in multiple-choice task 41 Figure 3: Most common factors experienced in gap-filling task 42 v CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Statement of the problem The importance of listening comprehension is increasing the world over, and the need for global communication has made listening by non-native speakers even more crucial According to Rost (2002), of the four language skills being listening, reading, writing and speaking, listening skills are considered a “primary means of L2 acquisition” (p 103) Unfortunately, this „Cinderella‟ skill is often overlooked in many ESL or EFL programs (Mendelsohn, 1994; Nunan, 1997; Vandergrift, 1997) Given the role of listening in everyday life, such neglect is surprising; Regarding the time an individual is engaged in communication, 45% is devoted to listening, while speaking accounts for only 30% (as cited in Hedge, 2001, p.228) Considering the growing importance of listening, it seems logical that language learners should be equipped with an insight into listening factors which learners usually experience in order to help them to avoid experiencing the same negative factors as well as to promote the positive ones in future listening tasks Although the practice of teaching English to second language (L2) learners has changed considerably over the last few decades, learners still find it challenging in different language tasks L2 learners continue to be faced with a plethora of problems inside and outside the classroom as they try to improve their listening comprehension skills (Vandergrift & Goh, 2012) In Vietnam, it is disappointing to see that language learners have devoted a great deal of their time to practicing their listening skills by listening to recordings of various kinds Unfortunately, it seems that no return has been achieved as students are still in the dark about the key factors which contribute to their listening success and, to complicate matters further, no explicit factors are available for the students to reflect on, based on which current pedagogical practices can be redirected in the way of helping them to overcome listening problems associated with certain factors Also, empirical findings from the existing body of L2 listening research, though informative, have done little to assist the researcher in generalizing those findings to his current research context Regrettably, within the current research context, that is Talky English School, despite the generous offer of various learning resources, the scores obtained from recent listening tasks have shown that while some gained high marks, others received low ones This leads to the researcher believing that the differences in the test results lie in the factors they experience in particular listening task types Taking this as a starting point, a study into factors affecting ... Hanh (2018) carried out a study to investigate listening problems facing non-English major freshmen at Hanoi University of Natural Resources and Environment The research purposes of Cao Mai Hanh‟s... and the participants‟ gender The difference between Cao Mai Hanh (2018) and Zou (2015) lies in the research methodology While Cao Mai Hanh (2018) used both the questionnaire and the interview as... as a Foreign Language L1: First Language L2: Second Language PET: Preliminary English Test TES: Talky English School iv LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Table 1: Factors reported in the two listening