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

VŨ THỊ THANH HƯƠNG

A STUDY ON THE PROBLEMS IN TEACHING ENGLISH LISTENING SKILLS TO
THE 10
TH
FORM STUDENTS AT PHU LY B HIGH SCHOOL, HA NAM
AND SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS

(Tìm hiểu những khó khăn của giáo viên trong việc dạy kĩ năng nghe hiểu cho học sinh lớp
10 Trường THPT B Phủ Lý, Hà Nam và một số giải pháp khắc phục)

MINOR PROGRAM THESIS
FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY
MINOR PROGRAM THESIS FIELD: ENGLISH TEACHING METHODOLOGY
CODE: 601410
SUPERVISOR: KIM VĂN TẤT, M.A. Hanoi - 2012
iv TABLE OF CONTENTS
Declaration i
Acknowledgements ii
Abstract iii
Table of contents iv
List of abbreviations viii
List of tables and charts viii
PART I: INTRODUCTION 1
1. Rationale of the study 1
2. Aims and objectives of the study 2
3. Scope of the study 2
4. Methods of the study 2
5. Significance of the study 3
6. Design of the study 3
PART II: DEVELOPMENT 5
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5

1.5.3.4 Students’ limited vocabulary and structures 14
1.5.3.5 Students’ lack of background knowledge 15
CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 16
2.1. Introduction of language teaching and learning conditions in PB school 16
2.1.1. Students 16
2.1.2. Teachers 16
2.1.3. Teaching and learning conditions 16
2.1.3.1. Teaching aids 16
2.1.3.2. Teaching hours 17
2.1.3.3. Class size 17
2.2. The new “Tieng Anh 10” textbook 17
vi 2.2.1. Form 10 listening objectives 17
2.2.2. Listening lessons 18
2.3. Research questions 18
2.4. Data collection instruments 18
2.4.1. Instrument one: Questionnaires 19
2.4.2. Instrument two: Interviews 19
2.5. Summary 19
CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSIONS 20
3.1. Questionnaires 20
3.1.1. Questionnaires for students 20
3.1.2. Questionnaires for teachers 25
3.2. Results of the interviews 30
3.3. Summary 31
CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND SUGGESTED SOLUSIONS 32
4.1. Findings 32
4.1.1. Teachers’ attitudes towards teaching ELS 32
viii
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
PB school
ELS
Phuly B high school
English Listening Skills LIST OF TABLES
Tables
Titles
Pages
Table 1
Students’ attitudes towards the importance of listening skills
20
Table 2
Teachers’ techniques of encouraging students
23
Table 3
Factors affecting students in learning ELS
24
Table 4

Students' frequency of listening to English outside the class
22

1 PART I: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale of the study
In Vietnam, in the recent years, the teaching and learning of English have been gaining
significance firstly because it is an international language; secondly it is also seen as a means
to promote mutual understanding and cooperation between Viet Nam and other countries.
There have been an increasing number of people desiring to know English with the hope of
keeping up with the latest modern technology in the world. English has now been taught not
only at all universities and colleges, but also at almost every senior high school and it is
considered as a compulsory subject at secondary schools.
At PB school, where the author studies, English is a compulsory subject in the curriculum and
it is considered as a major subject for the high school examination. It is taught with the
purpose that students have some basic knowledge of English in order to communicate and to
use it as a key to science and technology. However, there still exist many difficulties facing
English language teachers at PB school, especially in teaching listening skills to students. The
teachers of English at PB school find it difficult to teach listening lessons successfully.
Listening has long been considered a difficult and boring subject by many second language
learners. It takes much time and energy to make progress in this skill. For listening teachers, it
is a difficult task to get students involved in listening lessons.
At my school, teaching listening is really a problem. In addition to the lack of well-equipped
facilities, teaching listening methods are not satisfactory. Another problem is students’ low
level of proficiency in terms of vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, skills and so forth. It is
the reason why students find it difficult and tough to listen to and they are not confident
enough to do listening tasks successfully. Moreover, learning habits do not help much to
improve their listening in classroom.

th

graders. Hopefully, they will have more smooth and successful listening lessons. Also, it is not
expected that the study can bring solutions to the ELS teaching for students of all levels.
4. Methods of the study
The study is designed to use both qualitative and quantitative methods. Besides, many
resources such as books, magazines, articles, newspapers and some sources on the Internet
have been read by the researcher.
In order to gain the most reliable results, the quantitative data will be collected through two
survey questionnaires. One survey questionnaire is for 180 students from four different groups
3 in grade 10 in PB school and the other survey is for 7 teachers. The data, then, will be
processed and analyzed to yield conclusions for the study.
Along with the quantitative method, the qualitative data has been obtained by informal
interviews with some teachers to collect further information about the real situations of
teaching and learning ESL in grade 10 at PB school.
5. Significance of the study
This research provides an insight into the problems that are often met by teachers teaching
English for 10
th
form students in PB school. In addition, this research also points out some
feasible solutions which are beneficial for both teachers and students.
Hopefully, the findings and recommendations of this study will be of some help to the
improvement of the teaching and learning ELS of Vietnamese students in general and of PB
school students in particular. The study also gives some guidelines for teachers to help their
students overcome their listening comprehension problems. The results of this study may also
be useful for those who are interested in this field.
6. Design of the study


5 PART II: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
1.1. Definitions of listening
There appear many different points of view on the definition of listening:
Underwood (1989, p.1) describes listening in a simple and easily understandable way:
“Listening
is the activity
of paying
attention to and trying to get meaning from
something
you
hear”.
As a matter of fact, to succeed in listening, the duty of listeners is not
only to
understand
of the words given, but also seek the real meaning hidden in words. Buck
(2001, p.3) asserts listening in communicative approach: “Listening comprehension is the
result of an interaction between a number of information sources, which include the
acoustic input, different types of linguistic knowledge,
detail
of the context, and general
world knowledge, and• so forth, and listeners use whatever information they have
available, or what ever information seems relevant to help them interpret what the speaker is
saying”. In this definition, Buck aims to highlight the active role of the learners who act as
the negotiators and integrators in the process of learning listening. In this process,
learners activate both linguistic cues and nonlinguistic knowledge to achieve the meaning.

which activate language acquisition. The author focuses that: “by interacting with each other,
they get to listen to language which may be beyond their present ability, but which may be
assimilated into their knowledge of the target language for use at a later time” and “the
language practiced in the classroom is not predetermined, but rather derive from the nature of a
particular project that the students elect to do”.
1.3. Stages of a listening lesson
Rixon (1986, p.63-64) stated that a commonsense way of dividing up a listening lesson is into
three stages:
- Things to do before the students hear the passage, to help them get the most out of
what they are going to hear.
- Activities and exercises to be carried out as the students listen to the passage, to guide
them as they try to gasp the main information in it.
- Things to do once the class has come to grips with the meaning and content of the
passage, and is ready to look back, to reflect on some of the language points in it or to
do some extension work based on the content of the passage
7 The three stages are summarized as: Pre-listening stage, While-listening stage and Post-
listening stage. Each stage has its own aims and activities.
1.3.1. Pre-listening stage
It is difficult for students to have ideas of what they are going to hear if the teacher just says
"Listen to this" and then switches on the cassette recorder or begin to read aloud. Even if the
sounds and words are familiar with students, they may still be unable to comprehend because
of the lack of necessary knowledge of the topic, setting or the relationship between speakers.
Therefore, the aim of pre-listening stage is to provide students with everything necessary for
listening and understanding the text such as the topic, related vocabulary and additional
information. This stage also helps the teacher to arouse students' interest in the listening text.
Ur (1992, p.4) points out that "It would seem a good idea when presenting a listening passage
in class to give students some information about the content, situation and speakers before

listen for three pieces of information the first time they hear the recording, and tell teachers
about the attitude of the speakers after the second time they have heard it. In general, teachers
should help their students understand rather than testing their understanding the whole time.
Underwood (1989, p.49) pointed out that when choosing while-listening activities, teachers
should consider the following factors:
a) The possibilities for varying the level of difficulty if required;
b) The inconvenience of carrying out activities which require individuals to give their
responses orally in the classroom. This kind of work is best done in a language
laboratory. Classroom while-listening activities generally have to be limited to those
which can be done without the need for each student to respond by speaking;
c) Whether the work is to be done by the students with the teacher present or whether it is
to be done as private study, either in the classroom or at home, this will influence the
teacher's choice of activity as he/she may want to give students different work
according to their level of ability, to provide additional instructions, or to select
activities which generate little or no marking;
9 d) Whether or not the while-listening activities generate material or ideas which might be
used for post-listening work, and if so, whether the teacher wishes to make use of
these.
Furthermore, Davis (2000, p.78) suggests the following while-listening activities:
- 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
1.3.3. Post-listening stage
This stage is to help the learners connect what they have heard with their own ideas and
experiences, just as we often do in real life. It also allows teachers to move easily from

- Write a similar text
- Debate the topic
In conclusion, by raising students' awareness of listening as a skill that requires active
engagement, teachers should help their students develop both the ability and the confidence to
handle communication situations they may encounter beyond the classroom. In this way
teachers will give their students the foundation for communicative competence in the new
language.
1.4. Strategies of listening comprehension
Listening strategies are techniques or activities that contribute directly to the comprehension
and recall of listening input. Listening strategies can be classified by how the listener
processes the input.
Top-down strategies are listener based; the listener taps into background knowledge of the
topic, the situation or context, the type of text, and the language. This background knowledge
activates a set of expectations that help the listener to interpret what is heard and anticipate
what will come next. Top-down strategies include:
- listening for the main idea
- predicting
11 - drawing inferences
- summarizing
Bottom-up strategies are text based in which the listener relies on the language in the message,
that is, the combination of sounds, words, and grammar that creates meaning. Bottom-up
strategies include:
- listening for specific details
- recognizing cognates
- recognizing word-order patterns
Listening comprehension tends to be an interactive, interpretive process in which listeners use
prior knowledge and linguistic knowledge in understanding messages. Listeners use meta-

appreciated
by this author in coping with large and multilevel classes.
The problem of noise needs to be focused for the reason that many teachers and students
complain noise affects the success of their listening lesson. For teachers, they find it

difficult
to control the class and to instruct students. For the students, they feel distracted and
sometimes can not capture the essential words and phrases due to the noise. The feasible
solution for this matter is to conduct listening lesson in lab room with good quality recorders
and CD players and it is necessary that students keep quiet during the lessons. It is not new
that many teachers and students reveals good class equipments assist listening.
1.5.2. Problems from the listening materials
1.5.2.1. Unfamiliar topics
Listening texts can be about various topics in life including daily conversation, formal meeting
and class discussion which make students confused and anxious. Almost of words and
phrases are new to them and they do not have any background knowledge of these
topics. In this case, it is a need for students to practice as much as they can on the
topics
at
home. And teacher’s role is providing students with essential background and systemic
knowledge.
1.5.2.2. Different accents
Listeners feel strange to various accents, and they are sure to meet the difficulties when
hear the new accent. When considering problem with accent, Buck (2001, p.35) confirms:
“accent is potentially a very important variable in listening comprehension” and “an
unfamiliar accent can make comprehension almost impossible for the listener”.
1.5.2.3. Speed of speech
It is the case in which learners regularly ask the teachers pause the recorder because they can
not understand the fast native speech and fail to “control how quickly the speakers speak”
and the consequence entailed is: “they are so busy working out the meaning of one part of

highlights that: “creating purpose for listening can motivate students”. This viewpoint is
reasonable because if the students make out the point of what they are performing, they will
feel encouraged to join the listening tasks. Teachers can gain this by “providing tasks which
are as realistic as possible, so that the students can relate what they are doing in the lesson to
things that happen in real life, outside classroom” (Underwood, 1989, p.21). Along with
these, the students will get disappointed when they always fail in doing tasks. Therefore, to
14 motivate and encourage students during the lesson, it is advisable for the teachers to
“help students see how successful they have been in doing the task” (Hedge, 2000, p.244).
And Tuyet (2007, p.35) provides one solution which states that: “teachers had better not treat
the activities as tests to be marked or scored”. Giving students background knowledge before
listening is also a good advice. The use of visual aids should be taken into consideration when
teachers try to seek the path to have students’ motivation. Students themselves can seek the
interest in learning listening through English songs, movies and stories at home as well as
joining in pair-work and group-work in class.
1.5.3.2 Students’ low level of proficiency
Teaching listening to intermediate and advanced students is difficult, and for the beginners,
the case is more complex because they do not gain themselves a lot of experiences with
listening, plus their lack of linguistic and cultural knowledge of the language. Therefore, it is
not easy to understand the provided input to infer the meaning of the listening text. Buck
(2001, p.47) approves the use of visual aids in teaching listening to low competent learners.
This will help the students feel more excited in acquiring the lesson. In addition, with the
beginners, the listening tasks given should be simple enough. They tend to be interested in the
simple ones first, and then move to the more complex one because they need time to get used
to the level of difficulty in each task. For students, it is a need to practice a lot with simple
listening exercises at home because everything always starts with the simplest points.
1.5.3.3 Students’ anxiety
The feeling of anxiety always appears among beginners who are worried about the difficulties
16 CHAPTER 2: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
2.1. Introduction of English teaching and learning conditions at PB school
2.1.1. Students
The level of English for grade 10 students is targeted at pre-intermediate level though a
few actually reach the standard. As their lower-secondary years were spent with the
grammar translation method, most students are good at grammar, but bad at listening and
speaking the target language. They can do written exercises on English grammar accurately
but they can hardly communicate in English. Using English to communicate is a big
challenge for most of them who think that learning a foreign language means learning
grammatical rules or a list of irregular verbs.
Students at PB school are sixteen years old and have experienced in English, including
listening skill for five years at lower-upper schools. Nevertheless, they basically are
beginners of English. They are likely to be motivated or de-motivated easily. This
matter of fact should be taken into account in using teaching methods and approaches
in order to foster and develop their listening skills efficiently.
2.1.2. Teachers
The teachers are the most important factors in the process of teaching and learning a target
language. To carry out this process properly, the teachers need to have good experience of
teaching and understanding of the syllabus. At PB school, there are 7 teachers of English and

writing.
2.2.1. Form 10 listening objectives
18 The aim of the course is to equip students with English listening skills for basic
communication. For 10
th
form students, the objectives are to develop listening comprehensive
skills such as intensive listening, extensive listening, listening for specific information,
listening for gist, etc.
2.2.2. Listening lessons
In the “Tieng Anh 10” textbook, reading, speaking and listening lessons are divided into three
parts: Before you listen, While you listen and After you listen. In Before you listen, learners
listen to the subject matters related to the unit topic; new vocabulary is presented in listening
sessions. While you listen includes 2 - 3 tasks (matching, multiple choice questions, true/false,
comprehension questions, gap-filling, taking notes, etc.) aiming at developing students’
comprehensive listening. After you listen consolidates comprehensive listening via summary,
speaking and writing activities. In order to realize the course objectives, the listening section
focuses on daily and popular topics.
2.3. Research questions
In order to find out the problems that the teachers and students of form 10 in teaching and
learning ELS, it is necessary to answer the following questions:
1. What is the present situation of teaching and learning ELS at PB school?
2. What difficulties do the teachers and the 10
th
form students encounter in teaching and
learning ELS?
3. What are the suggested ways to effectively improve the current situation of teaching
and learning ELS at this school?