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

NGUYỄN THU TRANG

AN EXPLORATOTY STUDY ON THE TEACHING
AND LEARNING OF TOEIC LISTENING SKILL
AT A UNIVERSITY IN HANOI

(NGHIÊN CỨU KHẢO SÁT VIỆC DẠY VÀ HỌC KỸ
NĂNG NGHE TOEIC TẠI MỘT TRƯỜNG
ĐẠI HỌC Ở HÀ NỘI)
M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS
HÀ NỘI – 2013
Field
Code

: English Teaching Methodology
: 60 14 10

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

TABLE OF CONTENTS ………………………………………………………… iv
LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS ………………………………………………. vii
ABBREVIATIONS ……………………………………………………………… viii
PART A: INTRODUCTION ………………………………………… ………… 1
1. Rationale ………………………………………………………………… ………. 1
2. Objectives of the study …………………………………………………… …… 1
3. Significance of the study ………………………………………………………… 2
4. Scope of the study ………………………………………………………… …… 2
5. Methodology ……………………………………………………………… …… 2
6. Organization ……………………………………………………………………… 2
PART B: DEVELOPMENT…………………………………………………… … 4
CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND ……………………… ………… 4
1.1 Notions of listening …………………………………………………… ……… 4
1.2 Process of listening…………………………………………………………….… 5
1.3 Classification of listening ………………………………………… …………….6
1.4 Affective factors in listening ………………………………………………… …7
1.4.1 Listener factor ……………………………………………………………….11
1.4.1.1 Experien ce and practice in listening ………………………… …… .11
1.4.1.2 Background knowledge ……………………………………………… 11
1.4.1.3 Knowledge of the target language ………………………….…………12
1.4.1.4 Psychological factors ………………………………………………… 12
1.4.2 Speaker factor ……………………………………………………………… 12
1.4.2.1 Speaker’s production …………………………………….…………… 12
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1.4.2.2 Speed of delivery ……………………………………………… …… 12
1.4.3 Material and medium ……………………………………………… ………13
1.4.3.1 The language used …………………………………………… ………13
1.4.3.2 Content and concepts ………………………………………….………13
1.4.3.4 The support provided ………………………………………………… 13

REFERENCES …………………………………………………… ……………… 46
APPENDICES ………………………………………………… …….……………….I
APPENDIX 1 …….……………………………………………… … ………………I
APPENDIX 2 …………………………………………………………………….… IV vii

LIST OF FIGURES, CHARTS AND TABLES
Figure 1:
A classification of aural texts
7
Table 1:
Affective factors in listening
9

Table 5.5
Students’ difficulties in Part 2
38
Table 5.6
Students’ difficulties in Part 3
38
Table 5.7
Students’ difficulties in Part 4
39
Chart 1.1:
Teachers’ age ranges
25
Chart 1.2:
Teachers’ teaching qualifications
25
Chart 1.3:
Teachers’ extra responsibilities
26
Chart 1.4:
Teachers’ length of time teaching TOEIC listening
26
Chart 2.1
Students’ gender ratio
30
Chart 2.2
Students’ reasons for studying TOEIC
31
Chart 2.3
Students’ length of time studying TOEIC
31
1

PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale
As English nowadays has become a prerequisite for job seekers, there is a growing
number of English learners who wish to sit for worldwide standardized English tests
such as IELTS, TOEFL or TOEIC. Among these, TOEIC (Test of English for
International Communication) has been increasingly applied in both workplace and
educational institutions. Many universities offer English courses basing on the
students’ TOEIC test scores. Enterprises and organizations also use TOEIC scores as
one criterion for employing new recruits and promoting employees.
At Hanoi Law University (HLU), the TOEIC test has been used since 2010 as a
standardized test to classify students’ English proficiency, place them into the right
classes and evaluate their learning progress. Students have to get at least TOEIC 450
scores to meet the requirements for graduation.
Traditionally, a TOEIC test consists of two sections, which are designed to test
candidates’ two skills: listening and reading. Generally, listening skill is always
considered the most essential as well as the most difficult skill for both teachers to
teach and for learners to learn. Listening in TOEIC is not an exception because it
comprises different task types with various topics. “An exploratory study on the
teaching and learning of TOEIC listening skill at a university in Hanoi” has been
conducted to gain insights into the difficulties encountered by teachers and students in
TOEIC listening with the hope to contribute to the improvement of English teaching
and learning at HLU.
2. Objectives of the study

Part B Development is divided into two chapters:
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Chapter 1 Theoretical Background lays the theoretical foundation for the research and
reviews the previous studies.
Chapter 2 The study deals with the subjects, research instruments, and procedure as
well as results and discussions. Some recommendations based on the findings are also
provided in this chapter.
Part C Conclusion summarizes the major findings of the study. Limitations of the study
and some suggestions for further research are mentioned as well.
The Appendices where the survey questionnaires can be found come after the
References .

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PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
1.1 Notions of listening

Listening process involves complex physiological and cognitive processes. Listening
process is proposed to consist of three different processes. They are perceptual
processing, parsing and utilization. In the perceptual processing, the sounds enter the
echoic memory and are organized into meaningful units basing on the listener’s
linguistic knowledge. In the parsing, the meaning is constructed in the short-term
memory by comparing the incoming information with the previous knowledge. The
utilization involves the transfer of short-term information to the long-term memory for
other purposes (Underwood, 1989; O’Malley and Chamot, 1989).
Duzer (1997) agrees, for the most part, listing the following nine stages in listening
process: (1) determining a reason for listening; (2) taking the raw speech and
depositing an image of it in short-term memory; (3) attempting to organize the
information by identifying the type of speech event (a conversation, a lecture, a radio
ad) and the function of the message (to persuade/inform/request); (4) predicting
information expected to be included in the message; (5) recalling background
information to help interpret the message; (6) assigning a meaning to the message; (7)
checking that the message has been understood; (8) determining the information to be
held in long-term memory; and (9) deleting the original form of the message that has
been received into the short term memory.
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Concerning how the knowledge is applied to the incoming sounds, there are two
critical views of bottom-up and top-down processes in second language listening
instruction (Nunan, 1991). In the bottom-up process, the meaning is constructed by
combining increasing larger units of meaning from the phoneme-level up to discourse-
level features. In other words, in this process learners attempt to understand a listening
passage by decoding sounds to form words, linking words to form phrases and
sentences. These sentences build a complex text, the meaning of which is then
constructed by the listener.
On the contrary, in the top-down process, the contextual and prior knowledge of the
listener is utilized to build a conceptual framework for comprehension. This view
Figure 1: A classification of aural texts (extracted from Nunan, 1991, p.21)
1.4 Affective factors in listening
There are a great number of studies conducted in order to find out the factors
contributing to listening difficulties. According to Brown and Yule (1983), there are
four groups of factors which can affect the difficulty of oral language tasks. These are
Aural texts
Monologue
Dialogue
Planned
Unplanned
Interpersonal
Transactional
Unfamiliar
Familiar
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the speaker (the number of speakers, the speaker’s speaking speed and the speaker’s
accent ); the listener (the role of the listener, the requirement of listening task and the
listener’s interest in the subject); the content (grammar, vocabulary, information
structure, and background knowledge); and the support (pictures, diagrams, and visual
aids).
This view is shared by Boyle (1984), who details the affective factors in listening as
follows:
A. LISTENER FACTOR
GENERAL

4 Amount of support provided by gestures, visuals, etc.

Table 1: Affective factors in listening (extracted from Boyle (1984, p.35))
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Byrnes (1986) identifies three main problems in learning to listen. The first listening
problem is learners’ limited experience of the language. Therefore, beginning-level
listeners must concentrate very hard on form and might fail in getting the meaning. The
second problem is that the learners must listen - often for a longer time than listening
in real life - and respond to a task which has been designed beforehand. In practice, a
lengthy spoken discourse often makes listeners physically tired and bored. People
listen for many purposes in their real life, not just to complete a given task. The third
problem that makes listening difficult is that the learners are divorced from the
context. Listeners cannot either look at the speakers and their meaning expressed via
the gesture, eye contact and body movements or witness the setting in which the
discourse occurs. Thus, the process of grasping the meaning becomes much more
challenging.
Anderson and Lynch’s work (1988) asserts that the affective factors in listening fall
into three principal categories: the type of language; the purpose in listening and the
context in which the listening takes place. After a series of experiments, the authors
finally found out the five most influential factors in listening. They include the
organization of information; the familiarity of the topic; the explicitness and
sufficiency of the information; the type of referring expressions used; and the type of
relationship described in the text.
In 1989, Underwood claim that one of the reasons why listening is challenging comes
from the special features of spoken English. First, the English language contains many
unknown or unusual sounds for foreign listeners. Second, English has a rhythmic
intonation. Next, unlike the written discourse, the spoken discourse is generally not
well-organized, which makes it really hard for the listener to follow. Another
problematic aspect comes from the syntax and vocabulary of the utterance, which is

Listeners’ knowledge of the target language includes the knowledge of the language’s
phonology, vocabulary, grammar, and cohesion. During the listening process, an able
listener must recognize the sounds, decode them into words, understand the
grammatical structures that connect words together, as well as catch the signals that
make the discourse cohesive. Also, successful listening requires the power of analysis
and selection (that is, the ability to distinguish between main and supporting points).
1.4.1.4 Psychological factors
Learners’ psychological factors can be categorized into motivation, sense of purpose,
attitude of the listener to the speaker, attitude of the listener to the message, level of
interest, and listener’s power of attention and concentration.
1.4.2 Speaker factor
1.4.2.1 Speaker’s production
As English nowadays has been globalized, the voice of speakers recorded in listening
tapes varies greatly in terms of pronunciation and accent. The different pronunciations
of English versions (British, American, Indian, Canadian, Australian) make it difficult
to perceive the sounds. Especially students who are used to the accent of their teachers
might feel dismayed when they cannot listen to other speakers.
1.4.2.2 Speed of delivery
Listeners cannot control how fast a speaker speaks. Very often, beginning listeners
cannot keep up with the speed of the information delivered. While dealing with the
meaning of one part, they might miss the next part or ignore the whole chunk because
they fail to sort it out quickly enough.
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1.4.3 Material and medium
1.4.3.1 The language used
The type of language (formal/informal) can cause troubles for the learners’ listening
process. In general, colloquial/informal language used in spoken discourse affects the
pronunciation, the lexis and the syntax in use. Students who are familiar with the
formal and academic language uttered in educational setting might find it very difficult

there can be a period when students discuss their responses. The listening can be
repeated for students to complete the activity or to clarify their missing information.
Examples of while-listening activities include putting pictures in order, completing
pictures, drawing pictures, arranging items, following a route, completing grids,
completing chart, labeling, deciding True/False statements, doing multiple-choice
questions, gap-filling, spotting mistakes, and predicting. Whatever activities, it is
highly suggested that teachers provide immediate feedback on students’ performance.
1.5.3 Post-listening
The purpose of post-listening stage is to encourage learners to use what they have got
from the listening text and reinforce their overall command of English through a
combination of skills. To be more specific, students needs to act upon what they have
heard to clarify meaning and extend their thinking. Well-planned post-listening
activities are just important as those before and during listening. There are a variety of
15

post-listening activities such as summarizing the speaker’s presentation, reflecting on
what they have listened to, using information from the listening text for problem-
solving and decision-making activities, identifying relationships between speakers,
establishing mood/attitude/behavior of the speaker, role-play and so on.
1.6 TOEIC
1.6.1 Overview of a TOEIC test
TOEIC, which was developed by Educational Testing System (ETS) in Japan in 1979,
is an English-language proficiency test for non-native learners. It measures the
everyday English skills of people working in an international environment in business,
commerce, and industry.
Traditionally, TOEIC is a two-hour paper-and-pencil test. It consists of 200 multiple-
choice questions which are divided into two sections: Listening and Reading. Separate
scaled scores are provided for each section, the part score scales ranging from 5 to 495
and the total score scales ranging from 10 to 990. The Listening section tests how well
the test taker understands spoken English and the Reading section written English. The

 Health: medical insurance, visiting doctors, dentists, clinics, hospitals
 Housing/Corporate Property: construction, specifications, buying and renting,
electric and gas services
 Manufacturing: assembly lines, plant management, quality control
 Offices: board meetings, committees, letters, memoranda, telephone, fax and e-
mail messages, office equipment and furniture, office procedures
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 Personnel: recruiting, hiring, retiring, salaries, promotions, job applications, job
advertisements, pensions, awards
 Purchasing: shopping, ordering supplies, shipping, invoices
 Technical Areas: electronics, technology, computers, laboratories and related
equipment, technical specifications
 Travel: trains, airplanes, taxis, buses, ships, ferries, tickets, schedules, station
and airport announcements, car rentals, hotels, reservations, delays and
cancellations
(Extracted from “TOEIC Examinees Handbook” (2008, p.3))
1.6.2 TOEIC Listening
The entire listening test, which lasts approximately 45 minutes, is broken up into four
main parts differing in the length and structure of the listening passage.
Part 1: Photographs (approximately 5 minutes)
In part 1, for each of the ten questions, the candidate will see a photograph either about
people or things and hear four descriptive statements related to the photograph.
Examinees are asked to select the one statement that best describes the picture. The
difficulty in this part may come from (1) words that sound like the correct answer; (2)
words related to the correct answer; (3) words used out of context; (4) incorrect details
provided; and (5) incorrect inferences made.
For example:
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