5.1.1. Research question 1: What listening difficulties do grade 10 students encounter?
Among the five categories of difficulty investigated namely; linguistic related problems, learners related problem, speakers related problem, material related problem and physical setting related problem, the most problematic category is linguistic (68%). Speaker related problem comes to the second place with 55.3%.
In the third place was learner related problem (51%). Material related problem comes in the fourth place with 48.8%. Physical setting does not cause any difficulties for the students when ranks the last with the percentage of only 27.3%.
Figure 5.1. A summary of listening problems by categories
The findings suggest that students at grade 10 at Dong Hy high schools need more improvement in terms of pronunciation, recognizing unfamiliar words and grammatical structure to make sense of spoken messages. Numerous studies have
68,0%
51,00% 55,30%
48,8%
27,3%
Linguistic problems
Learner problems
Speaker problems
Material problems
Physical setting problems
Categories of listening difficulties
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confirmed the linguistic related problem for learners during listening comprehension. Hasan (2000) indicated that unfamiliar words, difficult grammatical structures, and the length of the spoken passages are the most important factors that cause problems for learners’ listening comprehension. Muhammad Naeem Butt (2010) reported that the major problem hindering listening comprehension was that the students’ vocabulary was too limited to understand the message. This is also strengthened by Underwood (1989) who said that that lack of vocabulary is a big obstacle to most students in listening comprehension. Bloomfield et al. (2010) and Walker (2014) expressed that one of the serious problems of listening comprehension is related to the pronunciation of words that is different from the way they appear in print. Due to the fact that the spoken language varies to the form of the written language, the recognition of words that make the oral speech can create some difficulties for students. According to Vandergrift (2007) and Walker (2014), in addition to identify the words despite their unfamiliar pronunciation, students should try to decide which linguistic part belongs to which word. Prosodic features of spoken language like where the stress falls, weak forms and strong forms of words, and intonation also affect the comprehension of oral text. Much attention in second language learning has been devoted to identifying the factors that can influence the listener difficulties (Boyle, 1987; Flowerdew and Miller, 2005). L2 listening research has focused on some factors such as speech rate (Conrad, 1989;
Blau, 1990; Griffiths, 1992), phonological features (Henrichsen, 1984), and text cues used by learners (Conrad 1981, 1985; Harley 2000)
The findings also suggest that students encountered serious problems with accents and dialects (55.3%). Munro and Derwing (1999) expressed that too many accented speeches can lead to an important reduction in comprehension. According to Goh (1999), 66% of learners mentioned a speaker’s accent as one of the most significant factors that affect listener comprehension. Unfamiliar accents both native and non-native can cause serious problems in listening comprehension and familiarity with an accent helps learners’ listening comprehension. Buck (2001) indicated that when listeners hear an unfamiliar accent such as Indian English for
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the first time after studying only American English will encounter critical difficulties in listening. This will certainly interrupt the whole listening comprehension process and at the same time an unfamiliar accent makes comprehension impossible for the listeners.
Unfamiliar accents can create serious problems in understanding the correct meaning of the listening text for both the native and non-native speakers of English language for example; native speakers of English language study British or American accents. On contrary, if they listen to the Indian or Pakistani accents, they will face critical difficulties in listening task. In the same vein, when non-native speakers may have difficulties in comprehending American accents or British accents. It shows that L2 learners need to learn different accents in order to build up their abilities in language learning process. They need to practice both the British and American accents. In the same vein, they need to practice with a variety of sources such as, BBC news, CNN news, TED talks, talk shows, Cricket match commentaries etc. to learn a variety of accents.
5.1.2. Research question 2: What listening strategies are used to deal with listening difficulties?
The findings from the current study indicated that students of grade 10 at Dong Hy high school use listening strategies at low levels; M=2.63 for Cognitive strategies, M=2.38 for Metacognitive strategies and M= 2.27 for Socio-affective strategies. The low level of strategy uses greatly affected the listening comprehension. The results of the listening proficiency test partly showed the reality of the situation at Dong Hy high school in the present study. Cognitive strategies that help learners to listen for gist, to activate background knowledge in pre-listening, and to make predictions and inferences (Hinkel, 2006), and metacognitive strategies, which help learners control their learning through self- monitoring, and self-evaluation.
It has been revealed that listening strategies are crucial in listening comprehension, and in order to success in communication conducted in foreign
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language. Learners must be motivated and use these strategies effectively (Goh, 1998; O'Malley,Chamot, & Kupper,1989). Hsiang (2021) conducted a study on the uses of listening strategies found the similar results of student’s uses of strategies.
5.1.3. Research question 3: What is the relationship between the use of listening strategies and the listening proficiency levels?
The present study reveals that there is significantly difference in the uses of listening strategies among students of different proficiency level. With regard to Cognitive strategies the advanced students used strategies at M= 3.89 while the mean for fair students was M=2.09. In terms of Metacognitive strategies the advanced students used strategies at M= 4.22 while the mean for poor students was M=1.00. For Socio-affective strategies, the mean for advanced students was M=
3.78, while that for poor students was M=1.26. The finding reveals that there was a correlation between the uses of strategies and levels of proficiency.
Oxford (1990) confirmed that higher level students do, indeed, report significantly more frequent use of language learning strategies than do lower level students. Furthermore, the higher level students report using many more (three times as many, in fact) language learning strategies highly frequently than students working at lower levels. In other words, the higher level students report using a much larger repertoire of strategies significantly more frequently than the lower level students.
Previous research has also revealed that the learner proficiency is one of the main factors that determine the choice of a strategy (Conrad, 1985; O’Malley &
Chamot, 1990; Rost & Ross, 1991). Skilled learners were found to use more strategies than their less skilled counterparts. Also there were differences in the types of strategies skilled and less-skilled learners used.