VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES LÊ THỊ HỒNG LOAN

DIFFICULTIES IN LEARNING LISTENING SKILLS EXPERIENCED BY
FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS AT VIETNAM MARITIME UNIVERSITY AND
SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS

(NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN TRONG VIỆC HỌC KỸ NĂNG NGHE CỦA SINH
VIÊN NĂM THỨ NHẤT TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC HÀNG HẢI VIỆT NAM VÀ
MỘT SỐ GIẢI PHÁP KHẮC PHỤC)

M.A. MINOR THESIS

Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 60.14.10
HANOI - 2012
VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES

LÊ THỊ HỒNG LOAN

DIFFICULTIES IN LEARNING LISTENING SKILLS EXPERIENCED BY

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CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

1.1. Statement of the problem and rationale of the study…………………………
1
1.2. Aims of the study……………………………………………………………….
1
1.3. Scope of the study……………………………………………………………
2
1.4. Significance of the study……………………………………………………….
2
1.5. Design of the study……………………………………………………………
2
CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1. Listening comprehension………………………………………………………….
4
2.2. Component skills of listening……………………………………………………
4
2.3. Potential problems in learning listening…………………………………………
6
2.3.1. Sounds…………………………………………………………………
6
2.3.2. Stress and intonation…………………………………………………….
7

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2.3.3. Vocabulary………………………………………………………………
8
2.3.4. Speech rate………………………………………………………………

14
2.5. Previous study on listening difficulties………………………………………….
2.6. Summary………………………………………………………………………….
14
15

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CHAPTER THREE: THE STUDY

3.1. The setting of the study…………………………………………………………
16
3.2. Participants………………………………………………………………………
16
3.2.1. Students………………………………………………………………….
16
3.2.2. Teachers………………………………………………………………….
16
3.3. Research methods…………………………………………………………………
17
3.3.1. Data collection instruments……………………………………………
17
3.3.2. Data analysis methods…………………………………………………
17
3.4. Data analysis… ………………………………………………………………….
17
3.4.1. Learners and teachers‟ perceptions of linguistic difficulties in
learning listening……………………………………………………………….

17
3.4.2. Learners and teachers‟ perceptions of listening difficulties

29
4.2.2. Dealing with sounds, stress and intonation……………………………
30
4.2.3. Helping students get familiar with different accents…………
31
4.2.4. Creating expectations……………………………………………………
31
4.2.5. Overcoming psychological problems……………………………………
31
4.2.6. Using visuals…………………………………………………
32
4.2.7. Giving clear instruction………………………………………
33
4.2.8. Utilizing the internet……………………………………………………
33
4.2.9. Using music……………………………………………………………
35
4.2.10. Providing task variety and text variety…………………………………
35
4.2.11. Encouraging self-study…………………………………………………
37
4.3. Summary…………………………………………………………………………
37
CHAPTER FIVE: CONCLUSION viii
5.1. Conclusions……… ……………………………………………………………
38
5.2. Limitations and suggestions for further study…………………………………….

listener
Chart 9: Students and teachers‟ opinions about solutions to overcome difficulties in
listening

1
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION
1.1. Statement of the problem and rationale of the study
It cannot be denied that English has now become the most popular language in the
world. In the past, learning a foreign language mainly means learning the vocabulary and
practicing the system of grammar. However, in recent years, more attention has been paid
to listening and speaking skills since they play important roles in communication. At
Vietnam Maritime University (VMU), as most other universities in Vietnam, English has
been taught as a compulsory subject for all majors. Among four skills of English,
listening is often considered the most difficult one for students. First-year students at
VMU have various difficulties with this skill because not many of them are familiar with
listening at high school. Moreover, not many researchers have studied the difficulties of
first-year students in learning listening skills at VMU. Therefore, it is urgent to carry out
the research on “Difficulties in learning listening skills experienced by first-year students
at Vietnam Maritime University and some suggested solutions”.

1.2. Aims of the study
The aims of the study are:
 To investigate the difficulties that first-year students at Vietnam Maritime
University encounter in learning listening skill
 To find out factors that cause the students‟ difficulties in learning listening skill
 To provide some suggested solutions to help students overcome these difficulties

In order to achieve these aims, the study has three research questions as follows:
 What difficulties do first-year students at Vietnam Maritime University encounter
in learning listening skills as perceived by themselves and by their teachers?


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CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1. Listening comprehension
Underwood (1989) considers listening as the activity of paying attention to get the
meaning from what we hear. She also explained that only a part of what the speaker
wants to convey lies on the words; in order to interpret the whole meaning of the
discourse, the listener has to recognize other factors such as the speaker‟s mood, the
speaker‟s choice of vocabulary, and his or her tone of voice.
From another angle, Rubin (1995) conceives listening as an active process in
which listeners interpret information which comes from auditory and visual cues in order
to define what is going on and what the speakers are trying to express.
Vandergrift (1999) has a more detailed definition of listening comprehension.
According to him, listening comprehension is an active process in which the listener must
discriminate between sounds, understand vocabulary and grammatical structures,
interpret stress and intonation, retain what was gathered in all of the above, and interpret
it within the socio-cultural context of the utterance.
To summarize, each definition reflects its author‟s own point of view. However,
all definitions share the same idea is that listening comprehension is a complex process; it
requires a number of sub-skills that the listeners must have in order to acquire the overall
understanding of the listening text. Moreover, the definition of Vandergrift seems to be
the most notable.
2.2. Component skills of listening
White (1998, p. 8) indicates five sub-skills that make up the overall skill of
listening as below:
Perception skills
- Recognizing individual sounds
4
- Discriminating between sounds
- Indentifying reduced forms in fast speech (for example, elision and assimilation)

when processing a language.
2.3. Potential problems in learning listening
2.3.1. Sounds
In order to understand spoken language, the sounds must be learned. However,
there are some English sounds which do not exist in Vietnamese and this fact can creates
difficulties to learners. Moreover, it is not only the sounds which cause comprehension
problems but also the way they vary in speech. In English, the most important
phonological changes are: assimilation (changing sounds), elision (losing sounds), and
intrusion (adding or joining sounds). Listeners‟ lack of phonological knowledge might
lead to reduced comprehension (Buck, 2001).
According to Rixon (1986, p.37), “one of the most obvious sources of difficulty
for learners of English is the way in which it is pronounced”. He pointed out that many
learners can recognize English words quite well in written form, but they fail to
understand them in spoken form as they are used to hearing a clear and careful
pronunciation of the words; thus when there are some types of changes in sounds such as
assimilation or elision, the learner find it difficult to recognize.
These above opinions all show that the sounds and changes in sounds in spoken
language can cause many difficulties to second language learners.

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2.3.2. Stress and intonation
According to Buck (2001), stress and intonation can also carry a great deal of
communicative information.
Stress
There are two types of stress: word stress and sentence stress. Word stress is the
relative emphasis of the syllables within a word. A word can be misunderstood if its
stress of the syllables is incorrect. Sentence stress is the relative emphasis of the words
within an utterance. Words are stressed to indicate the point the speaker is making. For
example, if a speaker says: my SISTER returned yesterday, the stress is on the word
sister, indicating that the topic of the utterance is the person, rather than what she did.

According to Underwood (1989), sometimes the listener can guess the meaning of
a word from the context, this skill is actually easy when listening in mother-tongue;
however, for foreign language learners, an unknown word can be a barrier causing them
to stop and think about the meaning of the word and making them miss the next part of
the speech.

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2.3.4. Speech rate
Foreign language listeners often have the experience of listening to something and
not quite understanding it because it seems too fast. Listener perceptions that speech is
too fast are often due to the lack of processing automaticity. However, the actual speech
rate does affect comprehension (Buck, 2001).
A fast speaker is usually a fear of the foreign listener as they cannot keep up with
him or her; they feel that the utterances disappear before they can sort them out
(Underwood, 1989). She analyzes the listener‟s failure in more detail that they are so
busy working out the meaning of one part that they miss the next part or they simply
ignore a whole chunk because they cannot sort it out quickly enough.
2.3.5. Accent
It is normal for different groups of language users to pronounce language in
different ways, and everyone has an accent. The most common accents are related to
geography. For example, Australians pronounce English differently from Americans,
even the pronunciation in the north of England is very different from the south. When
listeners hear an unfamiliar accent, this can cause problems and may disrupt the whole
comprehension process (Buck, 2001).
Discussing about how different accents of the speakers can cause difficulties for
the listener, Ur (1984) points out that the foreign language learner who is used to their
own teacher‟s accent will find that they have difficulty in understanding different voices

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2.3.9. Background knowledge
Background knowledge plays an important role in listening comprehension.
According to Anderson and Lynch (1988), when we learn a foreign language, we acquire
some degree of familiarity with the foreign culture. Language is the means used by a
community to express its culture. So gaps in our knowledge of the L2 culture can present
obstacles to comprehension.
2.3.10. Fatigue and concentration
Concentration is important in listening comprehension, “even the shortest break in
attention can seriously impair comprehension” (Underwood, 1989, p.19). However,
foreign language learners often find it difficult to concentrate in a long time as the
listening work is too tiring. According to Ur (1984), reading, writing and speaking are
also tiring, but at least the learner can set his own pace and makes breaks when he wants;
in listening, the pace is set by the speaker and the breaks may not occur when the listener
needs them. Even when the topic is interesting, students still find listening tiring as they
have to try hard to follow what they hear.
2.3.11. Psychological problems
A typical psychological problem of foreign language learner is that they often try
to understand every word in the listening text. These listeners “tend to get confused and
will probably be less successful than listeners who seek the meaning without focusing
overmuch on the language” (Underwood, 1989, p.13).

Another author, Ur (1984) shares the same idea. She writes that many foreign
language learners have a kind of compulsion to understand everything, even things that
are totally unimportant. She explains more that when learning a foreign language in
classrooms, the listener usually listens to carefully prepared listening text, he is supposed
to understand every words and sentences; therefore, he may get nervous when coming

Like we need to stress our muscles before exercising, students need to warm up
their non-native language skills before doing an exercise (Helgesen & Brown, 2007). It is
helpful to provide considerable pre-listening support so that students can become more
confident and they can listen effectively. This stage is to prepare the learners for what
they are going to hear. Davies (2000, p. 78) suggests some pre-listening activities as
follows:
- Discuss a relevant picture
- Discuss relevant experiences
- Associate ideas with the topic
- Associate vocabulary with the topic
- Predict information about the topic
- Write questions about the topic
2.4.2. While-listening
While-listening activities are what students are asked to do during the time they
are listening to the text. The purpose of these activities is to help learners develop the
skill of eliciting messages from spoken language (Underwood, 1989).
Some possible while-listening activities are:
- Identify the exact topic, or an aspect of it
- Note two to four pieces of information
- Answer questions
- Complete sentences
- Complete a table, map, or picture
(Davies, 2000, p.78)
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2.4.3. Post-listening
This stage is to help the learners connect what they have heard with their own
ideas and experience. Davies (2000, p.78) provides some ideas for post-listening stage as
below:
- Give opinions
- Relate similar experiences

2.6. Summary
In this chapter, the theoretical framework for the study is presented in five main
parts.
Firstly, an overview of listening comprehension is given.
Secondly, the component skills of listening have been discussed.
Thirdly, some possible sources of difficulties in learning listening of learners have
been presented.
Fourthly, three stages of teaching listening are described.
Lastly, some previous studies related to listening problems are presented.
In short, chapter two has provided a necessary background for the present study to
investigate the VMU first-year students‟ listening difficulties so that some treatments can
be adopted to help them become better listeners in English. 15
CHAPTER THREE: THE STUDY
3.1. The setting of the study
The study was carried out at Vietnam Maritime University which was founded in
1956. The main function of this university is to train seamen and engineers specialized in
sea economic and other majors. Students at VMU have finished high school and joined
the course after passing the compulsory entrance examination in mathematics, physics
and chemistry to VMU. They may have learnt English for either three or seven years at
high school before entering university. However, there are some students who studied
French at their high school and English is a completely new subject to them at university.
The teaching of English at VMU is divided into two phases. In the first phase,
students acquire General English with the four language skills through New Headway
Elementary and Pre-Intermediate books. In the second phase, students acquire English for
Specific Purposes depending on their major. Students at VMU have to learn English from
the first term. The time allocated to English is five 45-minute periods per week in 15
weeks for each semester. 17

Chart 1: Learners’ perceptions of their linguistic difficulties in learning listening

Chart 2: Teachers’ perceptions of students’ linguistic difficulties in learning
listening