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

LÊ THỊ THU HUYỀN
STUDENTS’ ENGLISH LISTENING ANXIETY:
CAUSES AND SOLUTIONS

(Lo lắng của sinh viên trong giờ học nghe:
nguyên nhân và giải pháp)
M.A. MINOR THESIS
Field: English Methodology
Code: 60 14 10
Course: K17
Supervisor: LÊ VĂN CANH Hanoi, 2010
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3.2. Causes of Listening Anxiety
3.2.1. Listening Anxiety associated with Listening Text Factors
a) Complexity and Difficulty of the Lexis and Syntax.
b) Uninterested or Unfamiliar Topic
c) Visual Support
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5.1. Students’ Attitudes toward Listening Skills
5.2. Students’ General Listening Anxiety
a) Students’ feelings about their listening skills
b) Reasons for their feelings about listening skills
5.3 Listening anxiety associated with each listening factors
5.3.1. Listening Anxiety associated with Listening Text factors
5.3.2. Listening Anxiety associated with Speakers factors
5.3.3. Listening Anxiety associated with Listeners factors
5.3.4. Listening Anxiety associated with Listening Environment
PART C: CONCLUSION
1. Summary of the findings
2. Suggestions for classroom practice
2.1. Solutions related to Listening Text
2.2. Solutions related to Speakers
2.3. Solutions related to Listeners
2.4. Solutions related to Listening Environment
3. Limitations and suggestions for further research
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PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Research Justification

the causes of first year English major students at Hong Duc University in listening class
and at the same time the ways to minimize the harmful effect, so that the teaching and 2
learning can be more effective and fruitful especially for those anxious learners. This is my
motivation in conducting this study.
2. Purpose of the Study.
The major purpose of the research is to find out why the first year English major
students at Hong Duc University feel anxious or embarrassed 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 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
Hong Duc 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 Hong Duc 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


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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‖

construct of anxiety has been recognized as one of the most important predictors of foreign
language performance.
Foreign language anxiety is a universal phenomenon that has a significant factor
adversely affecting the language learning process. Gardner & MacIntyre (1993, cited in
Arnold 1999:59) refer to language anxiety as ―fear or apprehension occurring when a
learner is expected to perform in the second or foreign language."
Scholars have studied anxiety and its effect on foreign language learning for many
years. However, ―for all the work conducted in this area, many fundamental questions
remain unanswered‖ (Speilmann & Radnofsky, 2001). ―Teachers have long been aware of
the fact that many of their students experience discomfort in the course of language
learning [yet] researchers have been unable to establish a clear picture of how anxiety
affects language learning and performance. (Horwitz and Young, 1991, p. xiii). Alpert and
Haber (1966) determined that anxiety could have a beneficial or facilitative effect on
student performance (as cited in Elkhafaifi, 2005, p.208). In 1977, , Kleinmmann‘s (cited
in Aida, 1994) study of Spanish-speaking and Arabic-speaking ESL students found that
facilitating anxiety was correlated with students‘ oral production of linguistically difficult
(thus challenging) English structures (e.g., infinitive complements and passive sentences).
However, there was no evidence that debilitating anxiety negatively influenced oral
performance. Spielmann and Radnofsky (2001) concluded that anxiety has a detrimental
effect on language acquisition. Horwitz (2001) reiterated that the issue of understanding
the relationship between anxiety and achievement is unresolved.
Horwitz, E.K., Horwitz, M.B, and Cope, J. (1986) conceptualize foreign language
anxiety as ‗a distinct complex of self-perceptions, beliefs, feelings, and behaviors related to
classroom language learning arising from the uniqueness of the language learning
processes‖ (p.128).
1.3 Components of Foreign Language Anxiety
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

(Horwitz and Young, 1991). According to Young (1991), there are different variables that
can affect learners‘ anxiety in a test: the content of the test; particular types of test items or
formats; forms of test; students‘ learning or study skills; and students‘ experience of test
taking in the past. Test anxiety can bring on butterflies, a stomachache, or a tension
headache. Some people might feel shaky, sweaty, or feel their heart beating quickly during
the test situation because they don‘t know how to process or organize the information. A
student with really strong test anxiety may not be able to focus on what is going on in the
classroom and he can answer incorrectly even though he knows the correct answer.
1.3.3. Fear of Negative Evaluation
Among these components, fear of negative evaluation is more broadly based than
are the previous two. Evaluation, in this case, refers to both the academic and personal 7
evaluations made of students on the basis of their performance and competence in the
target language (MacIntyre and Gardner, 1991,p.105) . Horwitz et al. (1986) define fear of
negative evaluation as ―apprehension about others‘ evaluation, avoidance of evaluative
situations, and the expectation that others would evaluate oneself negatively‖ (p.128).
They also point out that learners‘ fear of negative evaluation derives from ―the disparity
between the language learner‘s ―true-self and his/her more limited self‖ as reflected in
linguistic competence in foreign language class‖( 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.

teaching of listening comprehension centers on what teacher does, and ―student is a mere
by stander or recipient of input during the communication process‖ (Elkhafaifi, 2005: 505).
Students just need to receive passively the information provided in the listening materials
and it seems they are seldom required to use the language by themselves in listening
classes. Most listening lessons take the form of simply having the students listen and then
answer comprehension questions. This view is criticized as inappropriate and inadequate
(Anderson and Lynch, 1988; Elkhafaifi, 2005,… ). On the other hand, alternative view
considered the listener as an active model builder. Listener needs to get involve actively in
the interpretation of what they hear, bring his own background knowledge and linguistic
competence to reach full comprehension of what had been heard. Most scholars now agree
with this view.
In a word, listening comprehension involves to an active process of listening for
meaning, using both the linguistic and nonlinguistic knowledge. According to Buck
(2001:1-2), linguistic knowledge consists of different types such as phonology, lexis,
syntax, semantics and discourse structure. Nonlinguistic knowledge includes the
―knowledge about the topic, about the content, and general knowledge about the world and
how it works‖.
2.2. Significance of Listening Comprehension
Listening plays a very important role in student‘s academic success. This is true
according to Krashen (1980) providing a large amount of listening or comprehension input
that is the raw material necessary for the process to occur was the best way to learn a
second language because of its contribution to the development of the overall language
proficiency (Rost, 2002). Rost (1994) also pinpointed the importance of listening in the
language classroom as the supplier of supplied the input for students. Without
comprehension input at the right level, learning cannot work well. Students spend most of
their time listening to the teacher‘s lecture. Nichols and Stevens (see Elkhafaifi, 2005: 505) 9
reported data on how students spend their communicative time among four language skills

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 10
hear some sounds (bottom-up processing), hold them in their working memory long
enough (a few seconds) to connect them to each other and then interpret what they‘ve just
heard before something new comes along. At that time, listeners are using their
background knowledge (top-down processing) to determine meaning with respect to prior
knowledge and schemata‖
2.3.2. A Sequential Process of Listening
From a cognitive view, listening comprehension is believed to follow a natural
order of acquisition, reflecting the process of first language acquisition. For instance, it is
recognized by Anderson (1983) that the listening comprehension process is divided into
three stages: the perceptual, parsing, and utilization. During the perceptional phase, listener
pays close attention to spoken message and preserves the sound in echoic memory.
Because the echoic memory is extremely limited, listener almost immediately starts to
process the sounds for meaning. In the next stage, the parsing phase, listener uses words
and phrases to construct meaningful mental representations. Listener decomposes the
information into a meaningful unit that could be stored in short-term memory. In the
utilization phase, the final stage, listener utilizes long-term memory in order to connect the
incoming message to their existing knowledge. If the new input and existing knowledge
matched, comprehension occurred.
Willis (1981:134) lists a series of micro-skills of listening, which she calls enabling
skills. They are:
- predicting what people are going to talk about
- guessing at unknown words or phrases without panicking
- using one‘s own knowledge of the subject to help one understand

an American university, as reported by the students themselves. With regard to student
responses about sources of anxiety, listening anxiety was associated with four principal
categories: characteristics of FL input (nature of the speech, level of difficulty, lack of
clarity, lack of visual support, and lack of repetition); process of foreign language learning;
instructional factors; and attributes of the teacher or learner‖. When asked to suggest how
their listening anxiety could be reduced, about a third of the students' responses focused on
input-related factors, such as making the input more informal and ungraded, selecting
familiar and meaningful topics, and using known vocabulary. Some students claimed that
they needed the help of some visual aid to help with the listening task. Students reported
feeling anxious if they could only listen to texts twice before having to respond.
Elkhafaifi (2005) made an investigation about listening anxiety involving 233
North American university learners of Arabic. The result showed that ―students with
higher levels of FL anxiety tended to have higher levels of listening anxiety and vice
versa‖ (p. 211). There was a ―reasonable amount of overlap‖ (p. 214) between the two
anxiety measures, as they shared about 44% of the variance, but about 56% of the variance
was not shared. This led him to assert that listening anxiety was a distinct phenomenon
from general foreign language anxiety. He also suggested that listening anxiety could be
reduced by providing learners comprehensible input, more listening practice and listening
strategies as well as a less stressful classroom environment.
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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

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3.2.1. Listening Anxiety associated with Listening Text Factors
a) Complexity and Difficulty of the Lexis and Syntax.
One of the most obvious sources of difficulty for learners of English is the
complexity and difficulty of the lexis and syntax. Meeting unknown sounds, lexis and
syntax, FL learners ―seem to work much harder than necessary aiming for accurate
perception and interpretation of every word they hear‖ (Ur, 1984, p.19). Thus, fatigue may
come from ―how hard the 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 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.

compounded the students‘ difficulties‖.
Kelch (1985) examined speech rate under controlled conditions in an L2 situation.
He proposed that slower speech, with its features of clearer articulation, fewer vowel
reductions, and more easily identifiable word boundaries, may offer greater facility of
comprehension for L2 listeners. Hatch (1983) also suggested that the advantages of slower
speech to L2 listeners include more processing time and clearer segmentation of the
structures in the input. In a word, one of the factors affecting listening comprehension is
speech rate.
b) Phonological Modifications
―In rapid speech, adjacent sounds influence each other‖ (Buck, 2001, p.32).
Phonological modification, one language phenomenon which is observed in the informal
speech of native speakers, is believed to influence ESL learners‘ comprehension of input.
According to Buck (2001:33), the more informal situations is, the more modification the
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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‖
He further point out that infusion as well as a strong form and wea
k form also make phonology change. The modifications to pronunciation that take place
during fast speech, especially informal speech, are quite extensive. A missing word always

a) Limited Vocabulary
Restriction of vocabulary is the common problem for the students. The words they
listened to perhaps are the new words that are unfamiliar. Just as Underwood (1989:17)
said, ―For people listening to a foreign language, 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‖.
b) Memory
There is ample theoretical evidence that memory is important in listening
comprehension. According to scholars, for example Buck (2001:26); Nagle and Sanders
(1986); Anderson (1985) memory has been characterized in three ways: Acoustic input is
held briefly in echoic memory, where it is retained and stored for further processing in
short-term memory. After simple processing, information is finally stored in long-term
memory as schema for future decoding and comprehending new information. Call (1985)
pointed out that short-term memory appears to be the most important in listening
comprehension. Call‘s (1985: 769) study on the relationship between short-term memory
and listening comprehension avers that:
memory span for target language input is shorter than for native language input, the
amount of target language input that can be successfully processed seems to
increase as proficiency in the language increases. A corollary of this finding is that
length of memory span for linguistic input is a good indicator of overall language
proficiency. Knowledge of target language syntax seems to be an important factor
in increasing the amount of linguistic material that can be retained in short-term
memory.
Rivers (1981) also had the same idea with Call, he stated that linguistic elements
are not sufficient for comprehending the spoken message. Listeners must retain these
elements in short-term memory long enough to interpret the utterance to which they are
attending.
c) Background knowledge
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

shuffling books, entering and leaving the room, some neon lights having a low
buzz, dogs barking and traffic from public places, and so on.
- extreme temperatures, an uncomfortable sitting position,
According to Buck (2001, p.180), if the sound quality is poor, listeners ―will have
difficulty hearing and understanding. In such case their performance may not present their
actual ability.‖ It is no use making good recordings and then playing them on inadequate
equipment.(Buck, 2001, p.190)
3.3. Instructional Approaches for Listening Anxiety Reduction.
Some instructors who already recognize that many students experience anxiety in
their classes have proposed ways of reducing listening anxiety. For example, according to 18
Elkhafaifi (2005), providing comprehensible input, teaching listening strategies and letting
students have more practice; paying attention to the selection of listening passage,
especially when using authentic materials, etc can reduce the level of tension and anxiety
in the classroom. Besides, providing various forms of support for learners as preparatory
activities, question preview and repeated input (Chang & Read, 2008); making learning
context less stressful (Horwitz et al.,1986) also make the situation better. Horwitz (2010)
averred that some practices perceived as comfortable by one group of learners may prove
stressful for a group from a different background.
In short, the chapter reviews the literature on many issues related to anxiety and
listening anxiety. These include a definition of foreign language anxiety and its
components, definition of listening comprehension and its process, factors related to
listening comprehension and empirical evidence of listening comprehension anxiety that
has been reported by other researchers. This knowledge, therefore, serves as a basic for
further work in the later chapters.

female.
2. Data Gathering Instruments
The instrument used in this study were: (1) a questionnaire, (2) informal interviews
with the students
The questionnaire consists of three parts. First, the students responded about their
general listening anxiety. Second, the subjects were asked to identify their problems that
increase their anxiety in listening classes by responding to statements on the basis of the
five-point scale (never, seldom, sometimes, often, and always). Third, students give their
personal information about gender and attitudes toward listening skills. The questionnaire
was designed after a review of the literature (see references of this research) about factors
viewed as causing anxiety that influence listening comprehension. The data obtained from
the questionnaire was tabulated, presented, and frequencies and percentages were
calculated.
The informal interviews with the students were conducted in the form of electronic
interviews. The major concerns were their opinions of why each problem of listening
skills, which was shown in the second part of the questionnaire, made them nervous and
stressful in listening classes. The data obtained from the informal interviews was
transcribed and analyzed so that the author of this study could gain a deep understanding of
the problems, from those giving possible solutions to help students alleviate their anxiety.
In the analysis, a numerical system was applied to identify each data entry. Their answers
were translated into English. The code for each account indicated the learner ID which is
assigned by the researcher. For example, "S1‖, ―S2‖, ―S30" stand for the first, second and
thirtieth student, respectively.
3. Procedures
First, the questionnaire was administered in class when students were just
completing the second-term of the academic year of 2010. The entire procedure took about 20
10 minutes of their class time. After completing the questionnaire, students gave their

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0 3. How is listening skill important to you?
Very important
Rather important
Little important
Not important at
all
Students‘ No.
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0
Students‘ %
97
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4. How do you enjoy listening to English?
Very much
Not much
little
Not at all
Students‘ No.
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