VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST–GRADUATE STUDIES
***************** LÊ THỊ SÁU DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED BY THE 11
th
FORM STUDENTS AT
CẨM THỦY II SECONDARY SCHOOL WHEN LEARNING
THE ENGLISH LISTENING SKILL

(Những khó khăn trong việc học kĩ năng nghe của học sinh khối 11
Trường THPT Cẩm Thủy 2) M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Language Teaching Methodology
Code: 60 14 10
HA NOI – 2013

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST–GRADUATE STUDIES

L2: The second language
CT2SS: Cẩm Thủy 2 Secondary School
Sts: students
LC: Listening comprehension v

LIST OF TABLES, FIGURES AND CHARTS Page
Table 1: Students‟ goal to learn English 21
Table 2: Students general self-rating to listening proficiency 22
Table 3: Pronunciation in the cassette tape 27
Table 4: Problems related to the learners 29
Table 5: Students‟ opinion towards the listening environment at school 32
Table 6: Students‟ expectation from their teachers in helping them better 33
learning English listening skills
Chart 1: Students‟ attitude towards English listening skills 22
Chart 2: Students‟ frequency in listening English outside class 23

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1.2.1.2 The importance and purposes of the listening skill 6
1.2.1.3. Nature of Listening 7
1.2.1.4. The process involved in the listening skill 8
1.2.2. Teaching the listening skill 9
1.2.2.1. The listening skill 9
1.2.2.2. Phases in teaching the listening skill 10
1.2. 3. Potential problems in learning to listening to English 11
1.2.3.1. Speed of delivery 11
1.2.3.2. Inability to get thing repeated 12
1.2.3.3. Limited vocabulary 12
1.2.3.4. Unrecognizing the signals 12
1.2.3.5. Listeners’ lack of contextual knowledge or background knowledge 13
1.2.3.6. Inability to concentrate 13
1.2.3.7. Learning habits 14
CHAPTER II: THE STUDY 15
2.1. Introduction 15
2.2. The setting of the study 15
2.2.1. English teaching and learning situations at CT2SS 15
2.2.2. The students’ background and their English levels 16
2.2.3. Listening text books 16
2.3. Data collection 17
2.3.1. Selecting the subjects 17
2.3.2. Data collection instruments 18
2.3.2.1. The questionnaire for the students 18
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2.3.2.2. Interviews 19
2.3.3. Procedures to collect data 19

3.2.2.4. Encouraging the students to relate their background knowledge 39
with the topic they are going to listen
3.2.2.5. Guiding the students which listening strategies should be 39
used for each task
3.2.2.6. Using the tapes and radios with good quality 40
3.2.2.7. Providing and trying to again as much feedback as possible 40
3.2.2.8. Improving the learning environment of listening skills 40
3.3. Summary 41
PART C: CONCLUSION 42
1. Summary of the study 42
2. Limitations of the study 43
x

3. Suggestions for further research 43
REFERENCES 45
APPENDICES I
1

PART A: INTRODUCTION
1.1. Rationale
Language is a means helping people to communicate with each others. Without
language, people can not understand each other properly. However, to master a language
is not easy at all.
Of the four language skills -Listening, Speaking, Reading, and Writing-that all
language learners are supposed to acquire, listening is believed to be the most challenging
due to the complex and subtle nature of listening comprehension in L2 or foreign
language. It takes much time and effort to make progress in this skill.

in English?
3. How can the teacher help the Sts overcome these listening comprehension difficulties?
1.3. Scope of the study
This minor thesis is conducted at CT2SS in order to perceive difficulties in
learning listening skills of the 11
th
form Sts. The study focuses on describing the
problems and factors causing such challenges, for instance, facilities, students‟ English
listening proficiency. To go ahead, the thesis also offers some appropriate suggestions to
better the current context.
1.4. Methodology of the study
To seek the answers to the research questions, both qualitative and quantitative
methods are used.
First of all, for the theoretical basis, a lot of reference materials on listening skills
have been collected, analyzed and synthesized carefully with the due consideration for
the students‟ learning situations.
Secondly, a survey questionnaire has been conducted with the students to collect
the data. Then, follow-up interviews have been carried out with students to gather the
most reliable data for analysis to find the answers to the research questions mentioned
above.
1.5. Significance of the study
This study may provide insights into the process of learning the listening skill for
the students. It can help students understand why they have difficulties in the listening
3

skill. It also gives some suggestions to help students overcome the difficulties. It may
play a crucial role in enhancing the listening skill to the students.
1.6. Organization of the study
The thesis is divided into 3 parts:
PART A: INTRODUCTION. This part refers to the rationale, aims, scope, methods,

Listening is considered as one of the most important skills in acquiring both a
native language and a second or foreign language; It is being paid more and more
attention to. So far, there have been a number of definitions of listening by different
linguists such as Howatt and Dakin (1974); Wolvin and Coakley (1982); Pearson (1983);
Hirsch (1986); Feyten (1991); Scarcella and Oxford (1992); Bentley & Bacon (1996)
Howatt and Dakin (1974) defined listening as the ability to identify and
understand what others are saying. This involves understanding a speaker's accent or
pronunciation, his grammar and his vocabulary, and grasping his meaning.
Wolvin and Coakley (1982) regarded listening "the process of receiving, attending
to and assigning meaning to aural stimuli".
Pearson (1983) stated “Listening involves the simultaneous organization and
combination of skills in Phonology, Syntax, Semantics, and knowledge of the text
structure, all of which seem to be controlled by the cognitive process. Thus it can be said
that though not fully realized, the listening skill is essential in acquiring language
proficiency”.
5

Hirsch (1986) gave another definition “Listening as an aspect of skills: involves
neurological response and interpretations of sounds to understand and to give meaning by
reacting, selecting meaning, remembering, attending, analyzing and including previous
experience.”
Bentley & Bacon (1996) stated that listening, an important part of the second
language learning process has also been defined as an active process during which the
listener constructs meaning from oral input.
To sum up, all of definitions are given with a view to clarifying the nature of the
listening skill which is necessary in the process of acquiring a native language or a
foreign one.
1.2.1.2 The importance and purposes of the listening skill in the language learning
process
It can‟t be denied that listening plays a vital role in our daily lives. People listen

vital in the language classroom because it provides input for the learners. Without
understanding input at the right level, any learning simply cannot begin”. According to
this scholar, without understanding input appropriately, learning simply can not get any
improvement. In addition, without listening skill, no communication can be achieved.
Though different linguists give a number of views about the importance of
listening, they all claim that listening play a vital role in communication and in learning a
language. Listening is essential not only as receptive skill but also to the development of
spoken language prophecy
1.2.1.3. Nature of the listening skill
When we talk about listening, we tend to assume it as hearing. However, as stated
above, listening involves a more complex process than hearing (Burley- Alen, 1982).
Hearing is the process in which sound waves are received and modified by the ear while
listening refers to a process of being aware of sound sequences. In listening to speech, the
7

person first identifies the component sounds and then recognizes sound sequences as
known words through the avenues of auditory analysis, mental reorganization and
association of meaning. It can be said that listening is a skill characterized as a highly-
complex problem –solving activity.
In the past, listening comprehension was usually characterized as a passive activity
(Bacon, 1989). However, many theorists realized that listening is not a passive but an
active process of constructing meaning from a stream of sounds (McDonough, 1999;
Rivers & Temperly, 1978; Thompson & Rubin, 1996; Vandergrift, 1998; Weissenrieder,
1987; Wing, 1986).
As Anderson and Lynch(1988) described, there are two principal sources of
information we should consult in the process of comprehension: Schematic information
and systematic knowledge. Schematic information involves background knowledge, and
systematic knowledge refers to knowledge of the language such as semantic, syntactic
and phonological knowledge .
Cognitive psychology defines comprehension as information processing.

general schemata, and then searches the input for information to fit into these practically
satisfied, higher order schemata. In terms of listening, the listener actively constructs (or
reconstructs) the original meaning of the speaker employing new input as clues. In this
reconstruction process, the listener employs prior knowledge of the context and situation
within which the listening occurs to understand what he/she hears. Context and situation
involve such things as knowledge of the topic at hand, the speaker or speakers, and their
correlation with the situation, as well as with each other and previous events. We must
realize if the incoming information the listener hears is unfamiliar to him, it can„t evoke
his schemata and he can only depend heavily on his linguistic knowledge in LC.
9

Besides, although the listener can trigger a schema, he might not have the suitable
schema expected by the speaker.
Thus, only relying on top-down processing may result in the failure of
comprehension The interactive processing (the third type) overcomes the disadvantages
of bottom-up processing and top-down processing to augment the comprehension. In the
early 1980s, it was the tendency that only top -down processing was acknowledged to
improve L2 listening comprehension. However it is now more generally accepted that
both top-down and bottom-up listening processing should be combined to enhance LC.
Complex and simultaneous processing of background knowledge information, contextual
information and linguistic information make comprehension an interpretation become
easy. When the content of the material is familiar to the listener, he will employ his
background knowledge at the same time to make predictions which will be proved by the
new input.
In conclusion, learners need to be aware that both of these processes affect their
listening comprehension, and they need to be given opportunities to practice employing
each of them. The best way is to combine both of these processing. Because each of them
has their own disadvantages and advantages. Using the interactive process ( both of
them) helps us overcomes the disadvantages of bottom-up processing and top-down
processing to augment the comprehension

While- listening activities should help the students develop the skill of extracting
meaning from the speech stream. While-listening activities can be shortly defined as all
tasks that students are asked to do during the time of listening to the text. The nature of
these activities is to help learners to listen for meaning, that is to elicit a message from
spoken language. Rixon (1986) points out that, at the while-listening stage students
should not worry about interpreting long questions or giving full answers, but they should
11

concentrate on comprehension, whether they have understood important information
from the passage. That means that students can focus their attention on listening itself,
rather than on worrying about reading, writing, grammar or spelling. The aim of the
while-listening stage for students is to understand the message of the text not catching
every word, they need to understand enough to collect the necessary information.
Post- listening activities are activities that follow the listening passage, on the other
hand, consist of extensions and developments of the listening task (Underwood, 1989);
they may emphasize cultural themes and socio-linguistic aspects related to the materials.
The post-listening stage comprises all the exercises which are done after listening to the
text. Some of these activities may be the extensions of those carried out at pre- and while-
listening work but some may not be related to them at all and present a totally
independent part of the listening session. Post-listening activities allow the learners to
„reflect‟ on the language from the passage; on sound, grammar and vocabulary as they
last longer than while-listening activities so the students have time to think, discuss or
write (Rixon 1986:64,97 and Underwood 1989: 78).
1.2. 3. Potential problems in learning to the English listening skill
There are a lot of potential problems in learning a language skill. For the listening
skill, Underwood (1989) offers seven conceivable causes of obstacles to efficient
listening comprehension.
1.2.3.1. Speed of delivery
Sometimes, listeners cannot control the speed of delivery, especially for beginners.
Learners often feel that the utterances disappear before they can sort them out or they

13

the discourse, Chaudron and Rechards (1986) empirically demonstrated that a speaker‟s
use of discourse markers facilitates comprehension of the incoming information.
Discourse markers used in formal situations or lectures such as “secondly”, or “then” are
comparatively evident to listeners. In informal situations or spontaneous conversations,
signals are more vague as in pauses, gestures, increased loudness….These signals are not
easy to be recognized at all.
1.2.3.5. Listeners’ lack of contextual knowledge or background knowledge
Another problem is that listeners may lack contextual knowledge. In other words,
they don‟t have enough essential background knowledge. That is the knowledge that we
possess previously about the context or passage (Ur, 1985). Many researcher agree that
prior knowledge can affect listening comprehension (Bacon, 1989; Carrell, 1983;
Connor, 1984; Chiang& Dunkel, 1992). It helps listeners interpret the speaker‟
utterances and remove the difficulties in comprehending the text as the listeners lack the
familiarity with the target language. Bacon(1989) reported that successful listeners tend
to use their personal , world and discourse knowledge effectively. When EFL listeners
lack familiarity with the cultural element in the discourse, communication could break
down.
1.2.3.6. Inability to concentrate
Sixthly, it can be difficult for listeners to concentrate in a foreign language. This
can be caused by a number of things such as : the bad quality of machines, the poor
quality of listening materials. Other reason for loss of concentration is that the topic is not
interesting or not familiar and learners find it difficult to understand. In listening
comprehension, even the shortest breaks in attention can serious impair comprehension.
Concentration is easier when the students find the topic of the listening passage
interesting; however, students may feel listening is tiring because they must use an
enormous amount of effort to follow the meaning.
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the data gathered from the survey questionnaire and informal interviews.
2.2. The setting of the study
2.2.1. English teaching and learning situation at CT2SS
The study was conducted at CT2SS which was established in 1984 in Cam Thuy
district, Thanh Hoa province.
There are currently 57 teachers in the school, most of whom are young (from the
age of 23 to 35) with 1-13 years of teaching experiences. Among them, there are 6 English
teachers, graduating from different universities in the country, and being well- trained and
qualified; however, they still lack teaching experience, particularly teaching English skills.
These teachers of English are in charge of 24 classes with 3 periods of English per week in
each class. Every year, they often attend summer training courses organized by Thanh Hoa
education and training bureau to learn new English teaching methods as well as new
English textbooks or how to raise the quality of teaching English
Classes at the school are very crowded with from 35 to 50 students in each class.
In addition, the desks are often arranged traditionally with rows of four desks with a
narrow isle in the middle and two narrower on the sides. There is no other empty space
left where teachers and students can move to and from if they conduct different
16

interaction activities. Also, unavoidable noise in a big class usually has bad effects on
students‟ concentration and sound quality.
Though the school has a library, a laboratory, and two computer rooms, not many
teachers make full use of them.
Like in other schools, students at CT2SS are taught all the subjects, one of which is
English. English is taught in classrooms with five parts: Listening, Speaking, Reading
Writing and Grammar within 40 weeks.
2.2.2. The students’ background and their English levels
The 11
th
form students at CT2SS are aged from 16 to 17. They came from