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

ĐỖ THU HÀ A STUDY ON THE ATTITUDES OF 12
TH
GRADE
STUDENTS IN LISTENING LESSONS
AT A HIGH SCHOOL IN BAC NINH PROVINCE

(Nghiên cư
́
u tha
́
i đô
̣
cu
̉
a ho
̣
c sinh lơ
́
p 12 trong giơ
̀
ho

STUDENTS IN LISTENING LESSONS
AT A HIGH SCHOOL IN BAC NINH PROVINCE

(Nghiên cư
́
u tha
́
i đô
̣
cu
̉
a ho
̣
c sinh lơ
́
p 12 trong giơ
̀
ho
̣
c nghe
Ti mt trưng THPT  tnh Bc Ninh)

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS FIELD : ENGLISH METHODOLOGY
CODE : 60.140.111
SUPERVISOR : DR. MAI THI LOAN ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my
supervisor, Dr. Mai Thi Loan, for her invaluable inspiration, assistance, guidance
and encouragement during the time I have tried to complete this thesis. She has
been willing to give help and advice whenever I expect.
I wish to take this opportunity to express my sincere thanks to all lectures
and the staff of Department of Post Graduate Studies at University of Languages
and International Studies, Hanoi for their interesting and helpful lectures and
suggestions for the topic of my study.
I am in debt of many authors’ works and ideas, which enhance me to
complete my study with sharp evidences.
My appreciation and gratitude are also extended for the teachers and
students of grade 12 at Que Vo 1 High School, who participated in doing the
survey and responding to my interviews.
Last but not least, I wish to express special thanks to my husband and my
beloveds for their everlasting, care and encouragement.


grade at Que Vo 1 High
School exhibited negative attitudes to learn listening skill, which resulted from the
teachers’ behaviors, teaching methods and infrequent use of teaching aids, students’
lack of vocabulary, the gender and the field of study.
Based on the findings, some suggestions were given to teachers with the hope that
they will collaborate with the school to make certain positive changes to this problematic
reality.

iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
DECLARATION i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ii
ABSTRACT iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS iv
PART A: INTRODUCTION 1
1. Rationale 1
2. Aims of the study 2
3. The research questions 2
4. Significance of the study 2
5. Scope of the study 3
6. Method of the study 3
7. Design of the study 4
PART B: THE STUDY 5
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 5
1.1. Theoretical background of attitude 5
1.1.1. Definition of attitude 5
1.1.2. Language attitude 6

3.1.3.1. Demotivational factors to learn listening skill of students 23
3.1.3.2. Motivational factors to learn listening skill of students 26
3.1.3.3. The teachers’ use of teaching aids and motivational strategies in
listening lessons 27
3.1.4. Students’ expectation on learning listening skill 28
3.1.4.1. Students’ anticipation from the teachers 28
3.1.4.2. Students’ anticipation with the teachers’ use of motivational strategies
during listening lessons 30
3.1.4.3. Students’ expectation from the school 31
3.2. Data analysis on class observations 31
3.3. Data analysis on teachers’ responses from the interviews 36
3.4. Summary 38
PART C: CONCLUSION 39
1. Summary of major findings 39
1.1. Findings from questionnaires for students 39
1.2. Findings from class observations 40
1.3. Findings from interview questions with teachers 40
2. Suggestions for teachers 40
3. Recommendations for further studies 42
4. Conclusion 42
REFERENCES 43

vi
APPENDIX 1 I
APPENDIX 2 VI
APPENDIX 3 XII
APPENDIX 4 XVIII

order to focus on reading comprehension, grammar and vocabulary. The students,
therefore, merely spend most of their time learning what their teachers ask them,
which includes new words, grammar rules to get good marks in their final exams.
Despite the crucial role of attitude and listening skill in language learning as

2
mentioned earlier, there have never been any researches on students’ attitudes
towards learning listening skill, especially on this issue at Que Vo 1 High school.
To conclude, the study proceeds from three main reasons, the first of which
lies in the decisive role of students’ language learning attitudes in their learning
success and achievement. Next, regardless of the importance of listening skill, it has
been ignored at the researcher’ school, she thus wants to make some positive
changes on this problematic reality. Lastly, the researcher has found that there have
never been any researches on students’ attitudes towards learning listening skill at
the selected school.
2. Aims of the study
The study aims at:
- Exploring the attitudes of 12
th
grade students towards learning English and
learning listening skill
- Investigating the factors affecting their attitudes in listening lessons.
- Examining students’ expectation when learning listening skill.
- Proposing some suggestions for teachers to foster students’ positive attitudes
towards learning listening skill.
3. The research questions
With the given aims of the study, the study implies four research questions:
1/ What are the attitudes of 12
th
grade students at Que Vo 1 high school

such attitudes and their expectation during listening lessons.
Second, class observation was made to study teachers’ teaching methods,
and students’ performance in listening lessons.
After that, personal interviews with six teachers were conducted in order to:
- Survey their perception on the magnitude of learning listening skill in
students’ learning English.
- Study their students’ involvement in listening activities.
- Find out the difficulties in their listening teaching and their way of carrying
out the lessons.
- Exploring their own suggestions to strengthen their students’ positive
attitudes in listening lessons.
- Give teachers a chance to offer some proposals to increase students’ positive
attitudes in listening lessons.

4
After the data were collected, sorted and analyzed quantitatively and
qualitatively, realistic results were obtained.
To end with, pedagogical implications for enhancing students’ positive
attitudes in learning listening skill will be proposed based on the results found from
all data collection instruments.
7. Design of the study
The study consists of three main parts:
Part A, Introduction presents the rationale of the study, the aims, the research
questions, the significance, the scope, the method and the design of the study.
Part B is The Study including three chapters:
Chapter 1, Literature Review, reviews the theories on listening and language
learning attitudes.
Chapter 2, Methodology, describes the participants, the setting of the study
involving the school, textbook and curriculum. Moreover, this chapter shows how
the researcher applied the data collection instruments and her procedure of

Particularly, in Triandis’ (1971) (cited from Saracaloglu, 2004: 40), attitude is a manner
of consistency toward an object or it is characterized by a large proportion of emotional
involvement such as feeling, self, relationship in community. Additionally, Gardner
(1985: 91-93) states that it is the evaluative response to the referent, which can be
inferred by the individual’s beliefs or opinions about it. Hence, attitude is linked to a
person’s values and beliefs and promotes or discourages the choices made in all realms
of activity, whether academic or informal.
Some others, namely Montano and Kasprzyk (2008) (quoted from Abidin,
2012: 120), claim that attitude is determined by one’s beliefs about the results and
attributes when performing the behaviors, which can be measured by the evaluation on
those outcomes and attributes. As a result, one who believes that their performing
behaviors will be positively evaluated will have a positive attitude toward the behavior,
and inversely, one who believes that their performing behaviors will be negatively
valued will have a negative attitude.
Another group of scholars, including Weden (1991) and Kara (2009) (quoted
from Abidin, 2012: 121), define attitude by showing the components involving in it.

6
They agree that attitude concerns three interrelated components, namely cognitive,
affective (emotional in Kara’s) and behavioral one. Cognitive component refers to
beliefs, thoughts, viewpoints about the object of attitude, while affective component
includes the individual’s feelings and emotions towards an object, whether (s) he likes
or dislikes, and the other component of attitude is behavioral one, which involves the
tendency to adopt particular learning behaviors.
In conclusion, attitude is the individual’s feelings about or evaluation and
reaction to an object, a situation, it is inner mood or emotion, the cognition of that
person about the referent and then expressed outside by the manner of his behaviors.
Positive attitude will lead to positive behaviors towards the target objects; positive
outcomes will thus be easily obtained. On the opposite extreme, failure or
disappointment usually results from negative attitude. Accordingly, in language

considered one of the most important factors intensifying or impairing students’
success in language learning, apart from students’ mental competence. Hence,
educators are supposed to take into account students’ language attitude, especially
positive attitude during their learning process to ensure best accomplishment.
1.1.3. Aspects of language attitude
As mentioned above, according to Weden (1991) and Kara (2009) (cited from
Abidin, 2012: 121), the attitude concept involves three attitudinal aspects: behavioral,
cognitive and emotional (affective) one.
Behavioral aspect of attitude implies the way a person behaves or reacts in
certain situations. Actually, the success in learning language can intensify the learners
to identify themselves with the native speakers of that language and acquire or adopt
various aspects of behaviors characterizing the members of the target language
community. In the same work, Kara states that students who have affirmative attitudes
will behave positively towards the course and possess the desire to learn more. They
are more willing to solve the problems, to acquire information and skills helpful for
daily life and engage themselves emotionally.
Cognitive aspect of attitude refers to the beliefs of language learners about the
knowledge they receive and their understanding in the process of language learning.
There are four steps of this aspect of attitude, namely connecting the previous
knowledge and the new one, creating new knowledge, checking new knowledge and
applying the new knowledge in particular situations.
Emotional aspect of attitude involves the ability of foreign language learners to

8
express their likes or dislikes for referent objects or surrounding situations. In Choy &
Troudi (2006: 120), they advocate that the inner feelings and emotions of foreign
language learners influence their perspectives and their attitudes towards the target
language. This is also reached by Feng and Chen (2009: 94) that, learning process is, in
fact, the emotional process, which is affected by different emotional factors. In the
learning process, both teachers and learners engage in numerous emotional activities

learning, the attitude of a person is determined by different stimuli and it is undeniable
that the affective component, not mental competence or cognitive skills, has more
influence on language learning.
Obviously, there is an interaction between language learning and environmental
components in which the students grew up because attitude influences one’s behaviors,
inner mood and therefore learning.
In a word, because of affective variables, taking account of that attitude has
significant influence on the success of second and foreign language learning,
discovering students’ attitude about the language learning will facilitate both teachers
and students in teaching – learning process. Hence, it is advisable to consider the
crucial role of these affective elements.
1.2. Theoretical background of listening skill
1.2.1. Definition of listening and listening comprehension
Most researchers identify the two terms, listening and listening comprehension
when they characterize listening as a process of negotiating the meaning from the
speaker’s intended message and corresponding to it at the same time. In Howatt and
Dakin (1974), Underwood (1989: 1), listening is simply defined as the ability to pay
attention to or the ability to hear what others are saying attentively and identify or
understand their intended message. Besides, Rost (2002: 59) consider listening as a
complex and inferential process, which concerns receiving what the speaker actually
says, constructing and representing meaning, negotiating meaning with the speaker and
responding, and creating meaning through involvement, imagination and empathy. In
other words, linguistic knowledge and world knowledge interact as listeners create a
mental representation of what they hear. In order to listen thoroughly, listeners are
supposed to possess the ability to decode the message, the ability to apply a variety of
strategies and interactive processes to make meaning, and the ability to respond to what
is said in a variety of ways, depending on the purpose of the communication. Listening
involves listening for thoughts, feelings, and intentions.

10

consisting of the perceptual, parsing, and utilization (Anderson, 1983 Rivers, 1992)

11
(quoted from Ly, 2011: 13).
In perceptual stage, the listener has to recognize the sound patterns in bounded
segments related to phrase structure. This stage is very fleeting and the listener has to
be dependent on echoic memory.
During the parsing stage, the listener must instantly start to process and
identify the groupings detected according to the content of his/ her central
information processing system.
Last, the listener has to recycle the material he/ she organized through the
immediate memory, thus building up an auditory memory which helps to retain the
segments he/ she is processing.
The second tendency consensus that there are two distinct processes involved in
listening comprehension, namely “bottom – up” and “top - down” processes. (Caroll,
1972; Chaudron & Richard, 1986; O’Malley, Chamot, & Kupper, 1989) (cited from
Ly, 2011: 13) and Gillian Brown (1997: 150) (quoted from Lan, 2012: 5).
The listener uses 'bottom-up' process when he uses linguistic knowledge to
understand the meaning of a message. He builds meaning from lower level sounds to
words to grammatical relationships to lexical meanings in order to arrive at the final
message. In other words, the listener makes use of his knowledge of the target language
in the bottom-up processing (Rubin, 1994: 210). This process is closely associated with
the listener’s linguistic knowledge. Conversely, bottom-up process has its weak points.
Understanding a text is an interactive process between the listener’s previous
knowledge and the text. Efficient comprehension that integrates the textual material
with listener’s brain does not only depend on one’s linguistic knowledge.
In top-down process, the listener is required to employ his background
knowledge in comprehending the meaning of a message. Carrell and Eisterhold (1983)
point out that in top-down processing, the system makes general predictions based on a
higher level, this is general schemata, and then searches the input for information to fit

concluded that the students possessed negative attitude towards learning English with
negative behaviors and they were always nervous when being asked to speak English
in front of others.
Conversely, Shams (2008: 121) conducted a study making effort to examine
students’ attitudes, motivation and anxiety towards the learning of English. The
results emphasized the students’ affirmative attitudes and high enthusiasm towards
learning English.

13
This was also reached by Momani (2009) when he investigated the secondary
stage students’ attitudes towards learning English as a foreign language and their
achievements in reading comprehension. The same findings found by Al – Tamimi and
Shuib (2009: 40) with the subjects of his study were Petroleum Engineering students.
Some Vietnamese scholars have also studied students’ attitudes towards learning
English and found that most students expressed affirmative attitudes towards learning
English. Among them, Phu and Lan (2012: 62-63) pointed out that all the students
exhibited encouraging attitudes in learning English because they agreed that the English
skills and proficiency acquired in the program would be useful for their future.
Hang (2009: 169) mentioned that there has been a shift in Vietnamese students’
attitude in learning English, which particularly moved from resentment against foreign
languages toward appreciation of, and motivation in learning them. However, only a
group of Vietnamese who have benefited from their English competence are fully
aware of its importance.
Moreover, Hoa and Ha (2009: 163) investigated the 100 upper secondary
students in Quang Nam province and their study revealed that the students have
positive attitudes toward learning English and are highly motivated to study it
As a teacher of English, I have experienced six years of teaching English at two
high schools, I have noticed and explored that my students express a negative attitude
towards learning English, especially when they are boys studying Natural Science
subjects. Moreover, listening is so important when students learn English; however it

these classes almost pass the university entrance exams with great results.
The facility of the school is relatively good in comparison with the others in
the locality. However, teaching aids for teaching English is rather poor: the number of
cassettes is not sufficient for all classes; there is no language laboratory in school.
Consequently, teachers have to face many difficulties in teaching listening; they thus
usually teach listening by reading the listening passage themselves.
2.1.2. The curriculum and text book
First and foremost, the curriculum is not suitable to the level of students. All of
the students have learnt English at secondary schools before they enter the school.
Still, they find it hard to catch up with the knowledge the teachers want to cover. In
addition, the teachers do not have enough time to deal with all the parts of a lesson
within 5 periods. Last but not least, the curriculum is not equivalent to the test design.
The curriculum focuses on 4 language skills: reading, speaking, listening, writing and

15
grammar part, pronunciation with language focus; however, the achievement tests
designed only focus on grammar exercises and reading comprehension.
In terms of the textbook English 12- basic curriculum, contents of the textbook
are accurate and in accordance with Vietnam's realities and are arranged in a certain
theme, including 16 units and 6 reviews. The lessons are distributed and arranged in
appropriate sequence with each unit corresponding to a particular topic and following
language skills (reading, speaking, listening, and writing) and language.
In terms of style and presentation, new textbook partially supported the
teachers and students to innovative methods of teaching and learning foreign
languages in school. The textbook has a scientific presentation and good illustration.
2.2. Participants
2.2.1. The teachers
Ten teachers of English at the school, aging from 28 to 46, are experienced
and enthusiastic. They are willing to help students overcome the challenges and
difficulties in learning English. They all have graduated from mainstream training

2.3. Data collection instruments
In order to gain reliable, objective and in – depth data on exploring the
attitudes of 12
th
grade students in listening lessons, both quantitative and qualitative
methods were employed.
Three instruments were applied in this study, including the survey questionnaire
for students, the class observation and the personal interviews with teachers.
The survey questionnaires for students: are in Vietnamese to avoid
anticipated misunderstanding and comprise three main parts:
- Part 1 consists of 6 questions, which investigates students’ attitudes in
learning English in general (question 1), and listening skill in particular (question 2 to
question 6)
Part 2 includes three next questions, which examines affecting factors on
students’ attitude to learning listening skill.
- Part 3 encompasses the last three questions, which inquires students’
expectation in listening lessons.
The questionnaire for students also exploits their personal information
regarding their gender and field of study.

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The class observation: is made to record teachers’ and students’ activities
during listening lessons. It aims at finding out teachers’ teaching methods, including
their variety of activities, their use of teachings aids during listening lessons and
students’ performance as well as reaction to teachers’ lectures. Basing on the
findings, the researcher proposes suggestions for teachers to strengthen their students’
affirmative attitudes towards learning listening skill.
The interview questions for teachers: is made of five questions about
teacher’s perception on the importance of listening skill in their students’ English
learning and their students’ attitude in learning this skill. It also focuses on exploring