1 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
DEPARTMENT OF POST GRADUATE STUDIES
*********************

TRẦN THỊ THANH HOA AN INVESTIGATION INTO LISTENING COMPREHENSION
PROBLEMS OF THE SECOND YEAR ENGLISH STUDENTS AT NGHE
AN JUNIOR TEACHERS TRAINING COLLEGE

(Nghiên cứu những khó khăn trong việc học kỹ năng nghe hiểu của sinh viên
chuyên Anh năm thứ hai ở trường CĐSP Nghệ An.)

M.A Minor Program Thesis Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 601410 Hanoi, 2010
6

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1 Learners‟ perceptions of strategies of listening comprehension
Table 2 learners‟ perception of listening problems related to the listening
text
Table 3 Learners‟ perception of listening problems related to tasks and
activities
Table 4 Learners‟ perceptions of listening problems related to the listener
Table 5 Learners‟ perceptions of teacher‟s teaching methods
Table 6 Teachers‟ perceptions of teaching methods
Table 7 Teachers‟ perceptions of learners‟ strategy uses
Table 8 The expectations of the students towards teachers of listening skill Page

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8 TABLE OF CONTENT

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3.4.1.2 Improving teachers‟ classroom techniques …………………………
3.4.2 Recommendations for students …………………………………………….
3.4.2.1 Improving English proficiency ………………………………………

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11
PART A: INTRODUCTION

years, the researcher has noticed that her students have lots of difficulties in listening
comprehension. This becomes a strong inspiration for her to have an investigation into
their listening comprehension problems through which she can identify kinds of
listening problem and factors causing their difficulties. This would help the researcher
to work out possible solutions to help improve the effectiveness of teaching and
learning listening comprehension at her college.

2. AIMS OF THE STUDY
The purpose of the study is to investigate the listening comprehension problems of the
2
nd
year English students at Nghe An JTTC. Therefore, the specific aims are:
1. To find out kinds of listening comprehension problems encountered by 2
nd
English
students at Nghe An JTTC
2. To find out factors causing their difficulties in listening comprehension
3. To provide some suggestions on strategies to help students overcome

3. SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The minor thesis is conducted at Nghe An JTTC in order to perceive difficulties in
learning listening comprehension of the 2
nd
year English students. The study focuses
on describing the problems and factors causing the given difficulties related to
strategies of listening comprehension, the listening text, tasks and activities, listener,
and teachers‟ methodology.

4. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STYDY
This study points out the listening comprehension problems encountered by 2

nd
year students.

6. DESIGN OF THE STUDY
This study is divided into three parts.
Part A, INTRODUTION, presents reasons for choosing the topic, aims, scope,
significance, methods as well as the design of the study.

Part B, DEVELOPMENT, has three following chapters:
Chapter one is the Literature Review which deals with theories on factors involving
listening comprehension and listening comprehension problems.

In chapter two, Methodology, the current situation of teaching and learning listening
at N.A JTTC is investigated. The research methods which cover research questions,
the participants, data collection instruments are presented in this chapter.

14 Chapter three presents the data results, analysis and discussion of major findings of
listening comprehension problems, factors contributing to their difficulties and
provides some suggestions on strategies to help students overcome their difficulties.

Part C, CONCLUSION, summarizes what are addressed in the study, particularly the
major findings and recommendations. The limitations of the study and some
suggestions for further study are also included in this part. 15
PART B: DEVELOPMENT
Chapter one: LITERATURE REVIEW

1.1 The Nature of Listening Comprehension
1.1.1 The concept of listening comprehension

There have been a large number of definitions of listening comprehension which present
different views of scholars towards the concept.

Traditional views considered listening as a passive language skill alongside with reading
skill. Listeners were regarded as a tape-recorder, took in and stored aural messages in
much the same way as the tape-recorder. They just hear what they are to listen without
paying sufficient attention to the discourse such as background knowledge of the speakers
as well as their intentions, attitudes, implications and other shades of meaning etc.

Nowadays, there exist different views about listening comprehension.
Anderson and Lynch (1988, as cited in Fang, 2008, p. 21), considered the listener as an
active model builder. This kind of listener could combine the new information with his
previous knowledge and experience to reach full comprehension of what had been heard.
This view emphasized the active interpretation and integration of incoming information
with prior knowledge and experience.

According to Buck (2001), listening comprehension is an active process of constructing

and associate what they hear with existing knowledge.

Rost (2002, as cited in Vandergrift, http:// www.llas.ac.uk/resourses/gpg/67) defines
listening, in its broad sense, as a process of receiving what the speaker actually says
(receptive orientation), constructing and representing meaning (constructive orientation),
negotiating meaning with the speaker and responding (collaborative orientation) and
creating meaning through involvement, imagination and empathy (transformative
orientation).

Moreover, it is agreed that the comprehension process is constructed based on the two
principal sources of information which Widdowson (1983) refers to as (1) systematic or
linguistic knowledge (knowledge of phonological, syntactic, and semantic components of
the language system) and (2) schematic or non-linguistic information. There has been
17 much debate about this knowledge though, the two most important views are bottom-up
view and top-down view.

Bottom-up view considers listening comprehension as a process in which listeners make
sense of what they hear by focusing on different parts such as vocabulary, grammar or
functional phrases, sounds, etc. Schemata are hierarchically formed, from the most
specific at the bottom to the most general at the top. It acknowledges that listening is a
process of decoding the sounds, from the smallest meaningful units (phonemes) to
complete texts. This process is closely associated with the listener‟s linguistic knowledge.
However, bottom-up processing has its weak points. Understanding a text is an
interactive process between the listener‟s previous knowledge and the text. Efficient
comprehension that associates the textual material with listener‟s brain does not only
depend on one‟s linguistic knowledge.


shuttle between bottom-up and top-down processes. Successful listening requires skill in
both top-down and bottom-up processing

1.2 Potential problems in learning listening comprehension

In the eyes of many learners of English, listening is usually regarded as the most difficult
skill. However, they have difficulties with different aspects.

According to Underwood (1989), there are seven problems which learners often
encounter in learning listening. Firstly, they cannot control the speed at which speakers
speak. Secondly, the listeners are not able to get things repeated. Another difficulty is
learners‟ limited vocabulary. The next, they are not able to recognize the „signals‟ by
which a speaker can indicate that he/she is moving from one point to another, or giving
an example, or repeating a point, or whatever. Underwood also indicates that listener may
have problems of interpretation. Students who are unfamiliar with the context may have
considerable difficulty in interpreting the words even if they can understand their
„surface‟ meaning. Especially, this can even occur when the speaker and listener are from
the same background and use the same language. Besides, inability to concentrate is a
major problem to the listeners, because even the shortest break in attention can seriously
impair comprehension. The last problem is learners‟ established learning habits due to the
fact that their teachers aims to teach them to understand everything in the English lesson.
Consequently, students are worried if they fail to understand a particular word or phrase
19 when they are listening. Underwood sees these problems as being related to learners‟
different background such as their culture and education.

Flowerdew and Miller (1996, as cited in Hasan, 2000, p. 139) found that students‟
problems in listening to academic lectures were speed of delivery, new terminology and

above provide clues about the problems which learners face when they listen to spoken
text. These insights can not, however, account for exhaustive explanation of these
problems. As Nunan (1991, p.38) states “theories, ideas, and research are as good as
teachers and textbook writers make them. Interesting and unexpected things happen in the
classroom, and in the final analysis, principles and ideas need to be tested in practice”

1.3 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 ones in which the listener taps into background
knowledge of the topic, the situation or context, the type of the 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 main ideas
- Predicting
- Drawing inferences
- Summarizing

Bottom-up strategies are text based ones in which the listeners are trying to make sense of
what they hear by focusing 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


There are often three main stages in a listening session. They are: pre-listening stage,
while-listening stage, and post-listening stage. Each stage has its own aims and activities.

1.4.1 Pre-listening stage

Pre-listening stage prepares student by getting them to think about the topic or situation
before they listen to the texts. In other words, it gives students a purpose to listen. It also
22 gets students to relate to what they already know about the topic and arouses their interest
in listening. During this stage, teachers may use some activities such as: teacher giving
background information, the students reading something relevant, the student looking at
pictures, discussion of the topic/ situation, a question and answer session, written
exercises, following instructions for the while-listening activities and consideration of
how the while-listening will be done. These activities may provide an opportunity for
students to gain some knowledge which help them to follow the listening text. Moreover,
each of these activities helps students focus their mind on the topic by narrowing down
the things that they expect to hear. The choice of which activities to use should depend on
the time, the material available, the place in which the work is being carried out, the
nature and the content of the listening text itself. If one of these forgotten, the whole
process of activity can be failed (Underwood, 1989).

1.4.2 While-listening stage

The while-listening stage involves activities that students are asked to do during the time
that they are listening to the text. This stage gives students a guide of framework to
practice listening. It helps students to listen better, more accurately through carefully
designed comprehension tasks. Good while-listening activities help learners find the way
through the listening text and build upon the expectation raised by pre-listening activities.

learning tasks.
There has been relatively extensive research on difficulties encountered by many learners
when listening to the foreign or second language. Yagang (1994) attribute the difficulty
of listening comprehension to four sources: message, the speaker, the listener and the
physical setting. Higgins (1995, as cited in Hasan, 2000) studies Omani students‟
problems in listening comprehension and found that the factors which facilitate or hinder
listening are speech rate, vocabulary, and pronunciation. Flowerdew and Miller (1996)
studied learners‟ strategies and difficulties in listening to academic lectures. They found
that students‟ problems were speed of delivery, new terminology and concepts,
difficulties in concentrating, and problems related to physical environment. Rubin (1994)
identified five factors which affect listening comprehension: text characteristics,
interlocutor characteristics, task characteristics, listener characteristics, and process
characteristics. Another study was conducted by Hasan (2000) with focus on the
investigation into the difficulties encountered by Arab EFL learners in listening
comprehension. The evidence points out that Arab EFL learners encountered listening
problems related to tasks and activities, the message, the speaker and the listener.
24 In the context of Vietnam, there has been a recent unpublished M.A thesis entitled
“Listening difficulties perceived by teachers and students in using the new English
textbook for grade 10 at Que Vo II upper-secondary school in Bac Ninh” by Phung,
(2008). In her study, Phung investigated three main problems that students cope up with:
learners‟ low level of language background, lack of strategies, and lack of teachers‟
assistance. This study is a further contribution to the investigation of foreign language
listening comprehension problems. However, the study only focuses on exploiting the
difficulties related to level of students, learner strategies and teachers‟ assistance when
teaching and learning the new textbook. It does not cover major factors causing listening
challenges such as the message they listen to, the speaker, the listener and the physical
setting. Besides, subjects of the study were high school students, who are totally different

Chapter two: Methodology

The previous chapter has presented a literature review on the theory of listening
comprehension, potential listening problems and listening strategies, and provided a
necessary theoretical background for the present study. This chapter presents the
research methods used for data collection and analysis in the study. It starts with a
description of the participants. It then describes the setting of the study and research
methods.

2.1. Participants
2.1.1. Students
Aiming at second year English students at Nghe An Junior Teachers Training College,
the researcher chose all three English classes, namely K5A, K5B and K11 to carry out
the research. Their age ranged from 19-22. There were 73 females and 5 males, three
forth of whom came from the countryside. All of them were being trained to be
teachers in the future. Their English proficiency levels were reported to be at pre-
intermediate level. However, the time they started learning English at school was
different. Most of them have learnt English since the 6
th
grade and the rest have learnt
English at high schools. All of them started learning listening skill at college.
There are two reasons for choosing the second-year English students as the
participants of the study. Firstly, the training quality of English students is of great
concern to both the college authority and teachers at the faculty of Foreign Languages.
Secondly, although they have had one year training in English, their listening skill still
seems to be the weakest among all the four skills learnt at college.

2.1.2. Teachers
Five English teachers who were teaching at the college were invited to take part in the
study. Their ages range from 25 to 34 years old. All of them were female. 2 teachers

isolated environment from English-speaking people. Thus, their abilities to speak and
listen in English can hardly be improved. The other factor that may affect their
listening comprehension is their lack of effective learning strategies. Consequently,
English students at Nghe An JTTC face a variety of problems in learning listening
comprehension

2.3 Research methods.
2.3.1 Research questions.
27 This study attempts to investigate listening comprehension problems encountered by
English students at Nghe An JTTC as well as factors which help and hinder their
listening comprehension in English. To achieve this aim, the following research
questions are proposed:
1. What problems do 2
nd
year English students at Nghe An JTTC face in listening
comprehension?
2. What are the factors causing their listening comprehension problems?
3. What strategies should teachers and students employ in improving the effectiveness
of teaching and learning listening comprehension?

2.3.2 Data collection instruments.
This study employed mainly quantitative methods in form of survey questionnaires
to find out listening comprehension problems encountered by 2
nd
year English
students at Nghe An JTTC and factors causing their listening comprehension
problems.

Another questionnaire of 8 items and 1 question was delivered to the teachers. It
aimed to get information concerning the teachers‟ perceptions of the methodology and
learners‟ strategy uses that can affect learners‟ comprehension either positively or
negatively.

The two questionnaires were given to 2 teachers who have expertise in the area for
judgments and comments, and then they were piloted on a sample of 2 other listening
teachers and a class (23 students) who were chosen randomly. After analyzing the
data obtained in the pilot study, following discussions with the teachers and the
students involved, the final and formal questionnaires were given to the rest of
teachers and students to find out the perceived listening comprehension problems. The
researcher believed that from information obtained, some useful suggestions could be
made to minimize the difficulties encountered and thus improve the effectiveness of
teaching and learning of listening comprehension at the faculty of foreign language at
Nghe An JTTC.

2.3.3 Data analysis method.
Data gathered from responses of the teachers and students in the two given
questionnaires were sorted and analyzed statistically to get the answers for the given
research questions.

2.4 Summary.