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VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

ĐÀO THỊ KIM NHUNG
STUDENTS’ ENGLISH LISTENING ANXIETY:
CAUSES AND SOLUTIONS

(Lo lắng của sinh viên trong giờ học nghe:
nguyên nhân và giải pháp)

Course: Cohort 12
Supervisor: Prof. Silvia Spence Hanoi, 2013

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ABSTRACT


1. Research Justification
2. Purpose of the Study.
3. Research Questions
4. Significance of the Study.
5. Scope of the Study.
6. Structure of the Thesis
PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
1. Overview of Anxiety
1.1. Definition and Types of Anxiety
1.2. Foreign Language Anxiety
1.3 Components of Foreign Language Anxiety
1.3.1. Communication Apprehension:
1.3.2 Test Anxiety
1.3.3. Fear of Negative Evaluation
2. Overview of Listening Comprehension
2.1. Definition of Listening Comprehension
2.2. Significance of Listening Comprehension
2.3. The Listening Comprehension Process:
2.3.1. Two Levels View: Bottom-up and Top-down
Processing
2.3.2. A Sequential Process of Listening
3. Listening Anxiety
3.1. Related Studies of Language Anxiety in Listening Skill
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a) Fast Speech Rate
b) Phonological Modifications
c) Unfamiliar Accents
d) Hesitation and Pause Phenomena (usually grouped
together)
3.2.3. Listening Anxiety associated with Listener Factors
a) Limited Vocabulary
b) Memory
c) Background knowledge
d) Application of Strategies
3.2.4. Listening Anxiety associated with Listening
Environment
3.3. Instructional Approaches for Listening Anxiety Reduction.
CHAPTER II: THE STUDY
1. Participants
2. Data Gathering Instruments
3. Procedures
4. Techniques of Data Analysis
5. Data Analysis and Findings
5.1. Students‘ Attitudes toward Listening Skills
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2.4. Solutions related to Listening Environment
3. Limitations and suggestions for further research
REFERENCES
Appendix 1: Questionnaire
Appendix 2: Informal Interview
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while listening to English. In other words, this study seeks to identify the
factors or causes that make students stressful and nervous while listening to
English in the language classroom setting. This includes considering the

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factors that originate from listening text, listeners, speakers, and listening
environment. The second most important aim of this study is to find out and
suggest some solutions in order to alleviate English listening anxiety in the
students.
3. Research Questions
The research is carried out with an attempt to address the following
research questions:
- What are the possible causes that make the first-year English major
students at Tay Bac University anxious and nervous while listening to
English?
- What are possible solutions that may reduce listening anxiety of the
students?
4. Significance of the Study.
Foreign language anxiety is a universal phenomenon that has a
significant factor adversely affecting the language learning process. This
study could be of considerable interest to teachers and students at Tay Bac
University: (1) to improve the teachers‘ theoretical understanding of foreign
language anxiety, especially causes of listening anxiety; (2) to enhance the
students‘ awareness of causes of listening anxiety they encounter in foreign
language, and from this they can manage their anxiety level in other language
skills. This study is also significant with respect to the understanding of the
students‘ anxiety and the causes of that anxiety, thereby solutions can be
suggested to help learners reduce their listening anxiety. Hopefully, all given
solutions will be more motivating for the students to learn and make progress
in listening.


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PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW

The main aim of this chapter is to review the literature on second
language anxiety in general and listening anxiety in particular. The chapter
starts with a literature review on anxiety. This is followed by an overview of
listening comprehension. The end of the chapter is a discussion of listening
comprehension anxiety
1. Overview of Anxiety
1.1. Definition and Types of Anxiety
―Anxiety is a psychological construct, commonly described by
psychologists as a state of apprehension, a vague fear that is only indirectly
associated with an object‖ (Hilgard, Atkinson, & Atkinson, 1971 cited in
Scovel, 1991: 18). In another definition, Scovel (1978: 134) suggests that
anxiety is associated with feelings of uneasiness, frustration, self-doubt,
apprehension, or worry. Spielberger (1983), as cited in Horwitz, E.K.,
Horwitz, M.B, and Cope, J. (1986: 125), defines anxiety as ―the subjective
feeling of tension, apprehension, nervousness, and worry associated with an
arousal of the autonomic nervous system‖
According to many psychologists, anxiety can be experienced at three
perspectives.
The first one is trait anxiety, which is defined as an individual‘s likelihood
of becoming anxious in any situation (Spielberger,1983 cited in MacIntyre et al
1991, p.87). Some people are generally anxious about many things in a number
of different situations. Therefore, state anxiety is viewed as ―a steady personality
feature‖ (Brown, 2007). Its negative effects are thought to ―impair cognitive

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Horwitz et al. (1986) integrated three related anxieties to their
conceptualization of foreign language anxiety: communication
apprehension, test anxiety, and fear of negative evaluation. This
conceptualization lay the foundations for the concept of second/ foreign
language anxiety, providing an insight to comprehend the sources or causes
it can originate from.
1.3.1. Communication Apprehension:
Communication apprehension is one perspective dealing with general
concern about problems with communication avoidance and anxiety
(McCroskey, 1984) and it has been received substantial attention from
communication researcher.
According to Brown (2007) communication apprehension refers to
―learners‘ inability to adequately express mature thoughts and ideas‖ when
getting into communication with others although they have mature thoughts
and ideas, especially in the language learning context. McGroskey (1984)
defines communication apprehension as a fear or anxiety about actual or
anticipated communication with other individual, and is a behavioral trait
related to the psychological constructs of shyness and reticence. He also
points out that typical behavior patterns of communicatively apprehensive
people are communication avoidance and communication withdrawal.
Communicatively apprehensive people are more reluctant to get involved in
conversations with others and to seek social interactions than
nonapprehensive ones. According to Lucas (1984), the unique component of
communication apprehension is the metacognitive awareness that, as a
speaker and a listener, full comprehension of foreign language message is
impossible. Therefore, the potential for frustrated or aborted communication

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is always present. Such frustration may even be considered part of the
learning process.

p.128). The findings of the study conducted by Aydin (2008) aiming to
investigate the sources and levels of fear of negative evaluation as well as
language anxiety among Turkish students as EFL learners demonstrated that
fear of negative evaluation itself is a strong source of language anxiety. Daly
and Haily (1983) suggest that the student is more anxious if evaluation is
occurring.
Horwitz et al. (1986) suggest that foreign language anxieties are a separate
and distinct process particular to second language acquisition. Foreign language
anxieties are related to communication apprehension, fear of negative evaluation,
and test anxiety. They also believe that these factors have an adverse effect on
the students‘ language learning process.
2. Overview of Listening Comprehension
2.1. Definition of Listening Comprehension
Although listening is now well recognized as a crucial role in language
learning and communication, it has long been neglected by many FL teacher
and researchers (Ur, 1884, Krashen, 1985; Underwood, 1989; Rost, 1994;
Rubin, 1994, etc.). Before 1960s, the teaching of listening used to be thought
the most infertile and least understood aspect of foreign language. However,
over the last two decades, with a new wave of interest in the development of
communicative competence in language teaching, listening comprehension
skills have ever received much more attention in language teaching
classrooms.
Chastain (1971) defines listening comprehension as the ability to
understand native speech at normal speed in unstructured situation.

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According to Buck, G. (2002: 31), ―Listening comprehension is an
active process of constructing meaning and this is done by applying
knowledge to the incoming sound‖.
Thus, while scholars‘ definitions of these two terms are often worded

listening is the most frequently used skill, 45% is devoted to listening, 30% to
speaking, only 16% to reading and a mere 9% to writing. Therefore, listening
is a fundamental and vital skill in the acquisition of languages (Nunan, 2002).
2.3. The Listening Comprehension Process:
2.3.1. Two Levels View: Bottom-up and Top-down Processing
The processing of listening comprehension has often been viewed as
interactive process taking place simultaneously between two levels: bottom-
up processing and top-down processing.
In bottom-up processing, listening processing is formed hierarchically,
from the lowest level of detail to the highest level. The new incoming data is
first decoded into phonemes (the smallest meaningful unit), and then
phonemic units are connected together to construct individual words. Next, a
group of words are connected to form phrases, which make up sentences.
These sentences build a meaningful and complete text. The meaning of the
spoken text is derived as the last step in the process. ―The listener interprets
that literal meaning in terms of the communicative situation to understand
what the speaker means.‖ (Buck, 2001: 2)
On the other hand, top-down processing refers to utilizing schemata
which was known as a learner‘s background knowledge and global
understanding to deduce the meaning from and interpret the message (Nunan,
2002).

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To become an effective listener, student should be very careful not to
go overboard with top-down at the expense of bottom-up. The reason for this
is that listening comprehension is the result of an interactive process of
bottom-up processing and top-down processing by employing both linguistic
and non-linguistic information to make sense of the incoming message.
Brown (2006:2) explained more about this, ―students must hear some sounds
(bottom-up processing), hold them in their working memory long enough (a

3.1. Related Studies of Language Anxiety in Listening Skill
Listening in a FL is a less thoroughly studied skill in general by
researchers. However, they come to a consensus that anxiety impedes
listening comprehension (Elkhafaifi, 2005, p. 209). Quite a lot of attention has
been paid to the anxiety suffered by many learners when listening to the
foreign language.
According to Horwitz et al. (1986: 127), listening was the ―primary
process in the development of a second language‖. In their study‘s (1986),
many students were anxious when listening to the L2, and had ―difficulties in
discriminating the sounds and structures of a target language message‖ (p.
126). One male student said that he heard ―only a loud buzz‖ (p.126) when his
instructor was speaking, and anxious students also told of problems with
comprehending the content of L2 messages and with understanding their
teachers in ―extended target language utterances‖ (p. 126). Over one third
(35%) of the participants expressed their fear of not being able to ―understand
what the teacher is saying in the foreign language‖ (item 4), and over a
quarter (27%) said they were nervous when they did not ―understand every
word‖ uttered by the teacher (item 29) (Horwitz et al., 1986, pp. 129-130).

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They suggested that instructors help students cope with anxiety-producing
situations and make the learning context less stressful.
3.2. Causes of Listening Anxiety
There is growing support for the view that listening comprehension is
not only an essential skill but a prerequisite for oral proficiency as well. Most
learners of English as a foreign language experience considerable difficulties
in listening comprehension, and these difficulties appear to be main causes of
anxiety which should be taken into consideration. In order to help students
facilitate their listening comprehension skills as well English proficiency, it is
crucial to identify problems which listeners face in understanding the spoken

learner need to concentrate‖ (Ur, 1984, p.19). The listening texts which do not
match the students‘ current proficiency level may lead to failure in
understanding listeners‘ progress. For many learners, knowing the meaning
of words in the text is decisive for their comprehension; and ―an unknown
word can be like a suddenly dropped barrier causing them to stop and think
about the meaning of the word and thus making them miss the next part of the
speech‖ (Underwood, 1989, p.17). ―Their perceptions of their own listening
ability are often directly affected by how well they think they can understand
content words in a text.‖ (Goh,….:24). As a result, they are probably less
successful than listeners who get the meaning from the listening text without
focusing much on the language
b) Uninterested or Unfamiliar Topic
A topic which is uninterested or unfamiliar often makes FL learners get
tired and feel discouraged from listening process, because they find it ―more
difficult to make inferences, and comprehension will be more dependent on
interpreting the linguistic information‖ (Buck, 2001, p.20). Uninterested or

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unfamiliar topic can interfere with the learner‘s concentration which is a
major problem in listening activity because even the shortest break in
attention can seriously affect listening comprehension process. According to
Underwood (1989), ―If students find the topic interesting, they will find
concentration easier.‖ Interesting topic makes listening activities enjoyable;
students become engaged in classroom activities, therefore it is a good way to
minimize the harmful effect. In the study of Schmidt-Rinehard (1994) on
correlation between listener‘s comprehension and topic familiarity, he
suggested that all subjects score higher on familiar passage while the
unfamiliar topics, such as cultural or linguistic oral output, make
comprehension difficult.
c) Visual Support

ESL learners‘ comprehension of input. According to Buck (2001:33), the
more informal situations is, the more modification the speakers will tend to
have. Buck points out that the most important modifications include the
following:
Assimilation: when sounds influence the pronunciation of adjacent
sounds. For example, the reader may read the phrase, "gave her," but the
listener may hear "gaver"; ―What are you going to do?‖ will be
―wadjagonnado?‖
Elision: when sounds are dropped in fast speech. For example, For
example, the reader may read the phrase "kept talking," but the listener will
hear "keptalking.", ―tomato‖ will be ―tmato‖
c) Unfamiliar Accents

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The speaker‘s accent is unfamiliar to the learner when words are
pronounced in non-standard manner. It is clear that Vietnamese pronounce
English differently from Indians, and is different again British or Americans
because of different places‘ different accents. However, the problem arises
popularly when FL learners are too accustomed to their teacher‘ accent, come
across the pronunciation of the native speakers characterized by fast rate of
delivery, unstructured language with incomplete sentences, and false starts,
and hesitations (Underwood, 1989). ―When listeners hear an unfamiliar
accent This can cause problems and may disrupt the whole comprehension
process. An unfamiliar accent can make comprehension almost impossible for
the listener‖ (Buck, 2001, p. 35)
d) Hesitation and Pause Phenomena (usually grouped together)
According to Buck (2001, 41) ―hesitation phenomena can present a
major comprehension difficulty to non-native speakers who are listening to
spontaneous speech‖. He also further states that:
Listening message with pause and hesitation phenomena reduces the

The lack of background knowledge, which is also called prior knowledge
or schemata, may impede student performance. It explained up to 81% of the
variance in posttest scores (Dochy, Segers & Buehl, 1999). ―To make sense of
the rapid-fire noise that comes from oral speech, learners often try to find an
overall schema. Even at the word, phrase, or sentence level students attempt
to associate prior knowledge of the language with the incoming noise‖
(Rubin, 1994, p.209). As suggested by Underwood (1989: 19), students who
are unfamiliar with the context may have considerable difficulty in
interpreting the words they hear even when they can understand their

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‗surface‘ meaning… The meaning of non-verbal clues –facial expression,
nods, gestures, tone of voice – can easily be misinterpreted by listeners from
other cultures. On the other hand, if the incoming information is unfamiliar, it
cannot evoke the listener‘s schemata and thus, he must depend heavily on his
linguistic ability in listening comprehension to interpret and analyze the
information.
d) Application of Strategies
Learning strategies can be defined as conscious ―steps taken by students
to enhance their own learning‖ (Oxford, 1990: 1). More particularly, they are
―specific actions taken by the learner to make learning easier, faster, more
enjoyable, more self-directed, more effective, and more transferable to new
situations‖ (Oxford, 1990: 8).
Goh (1998) investigated the cognitive and metacognitive strategies and
tactics used by Chinese ESL learners in a university in Singapore and she
compared the use of these strategies and tactics by high- and low- ability
listeners. The result revealed that high-ability listeners used more strategies
and tactics than low ability ones
3.2.4. Listening Anxiety associated with Listening Environment
There are some certain factors related to listening environment that can