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

NGUYỄN THỊ LỆ THỦY

TEACHERS’ DIFFICULTIES IN TEACHING ENGLISH LISTENING
SKILLS TO THE 11
TH
-GRADE AT DAIMO HIGH SCHOOL, HANOI
AND SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS

(Khó khăn của giáo viên trong việc dạy kĩ năng nghe hiểu cho học sinh
lớp 11 Trường THPT Đại Mỗ, Hà Nội và một số giải pháp)

M.A. Minor Thesis
Major: English Teaching Methodology
Code : 60 14 10
Major: English Teaching Methodology
Code : 60 14 10
Supervisor: CHU THỊ PHƯƠNG VÂN M.A. Hanoi - 2011

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 1
3. Scope of the study 2
4. Methods of the study 2
5. Significance of the study 2
6. Design of the study 3
PART II: DEVELOPMENT 4
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 4
1.1. Definitions of listening 4
1.2. Communicative approaches to listening comprehension 5
1.3. Stages of a listening lesson 7
1.3.1. Pre-listening stage 7
1.3.2. While-listening stage 8
1.3.3. Post-listening stage 9

3.1.2. Questionnaires for teachers 28
3.2. Results of the interviews 34
3.3. Summary 37
CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND SUGGESTED SOLUSIONS 38
4.1. Findings 38
4.1.1. Teachers’ attitudes towards teaching ELS 38
4.1.2. Students’ attitudes towards learning ELS 38
4.1.3. Students’ difficulties in learning ELS 39
4.1.4. Teachers’ difficulties in teaching ELS to grade 11 students 39
4.2. Suggested solutions 40
4.2.1. Doing a pre-listening warm up activity effectively 40
4.2.2. Encouraging students to practice ELS outside the classroom 40
4.2.3. Giving support and encouragement 41
4.2.4. Upgrading teaching aids 42
4.2.5. Adapting and re-designing the tasks 42
4.2.6. Equipping students with listening strategies 42
4.3. Summary 43
PART III: CONCLUSIONS 44
1. Summary of the study 44
2. Limitations of the study 44
3. Recommendations for further study 45 vii
REFERENCES 46
APPENDICES I
Appendix 1: Questionnaire for students I
Appendix 2: Questionnaire for teachers III
Appendix 3: Interview questions for teachers V
Appendix 4: Topics of the listening texts in English textbook 11 VI

Students LIST OF TABLES

Tables
Titles
Pages
Table 1
Table 2
Table 3
Table 4
Table 5
Table 6

Table 7
Table 8
Table 9
Table 10
Table 11
Table 12

Teachers’ techniques of encouraging students
Students’ evaluation on other students’ participation
Factors affecting students’ difficulties in learning ELS
Students’ suggested techniques to better teaching ELS
Teachers’ assessment and attitudes towards ELS
Teachers’ assessment of listening topics & tasks in “Tieng Anh
11” textbook
Teachers’ opinion of students’ attitudes towards listening lessons

Chart 4
Chart 5
Chart 6

Students’ assessment of their listening abilities
Students’ attitudes towards the importance of listening skills
Students' frequency of listening to English outside the class
Students’ assessment of tasks in the “Tieng Anh 11” textbook
Students’ attitudes towards the appropriate time for learning ELS
How students discuss their listening comprehension problems

21
22
23
23
24
25
- 1 - PART I: INTRODUCTION

1. Rationale of the study
In this new era of globalization, English language becomes the international language. It
has become the most popular language of communication among countries and in many
fields of human endeavor. So it is important that we learn to use English if we do not want
to be old fashioned. Therefore, there is a great demand for teaching and learning English in

listening skill for 11
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 140 students from five different
groups in grade 11 in DM school and the other survey is for 7 teachers teaching English for
grades 11 during the time they took part in the survey. 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 grades 11 at DM school.
5. Significance of the study
This research provides an insight into the difficulties that are often met by teachers
teaching English for grades 11 in DM 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
DM school students in particular. The study also gives some guidelines for teachers to
- 3 - 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.


wave of interest in the development of communicative competence in language teaching,
listening comprehension skills have ever received much more attention in language
teaching classrooms. There have been a large number of definitions of listening
comprehension which present different views of language scholars towards the concept.
Helgesen (2003: 24) stated that “Listening is an active, purposeful processing of making
sense of what we hear.” It is clear that the listener is doing more than simply decoding
what is heard. This view emphasized the active interpretation and integration of incoming
information with prior knowledge and experience.
In Rubin‟s point of view (1995:7), “listening is conceived of as an active process in which
listeners select and interpret information which comes from auditory and visual clues in
order to define what is going on and what the speakers are trying to express”. She
emphasizes the activeness of listeners in the listening process and also identifies two
distinctive features of listening comprehension which are selecting and interpreting.
Selecting means that in the process of making sense of the input, listeners use only part of
the incoming information whereas interpreting means in trying to make sense of the input,
they use their background knowledge as well as the new information to decipher what is
going on and to figure out what speakers intend.
Another way to approach the definition comes from O‟Malley and Chamot (1989: 420).
They made a conclusion that “Listening comprehension is an active and conscious process
in which the listener constructs meaning by using cues from contextual information and
- 5 - existing knowledge, while relying upon multiple strategic resources to fulfill the task
requirement.”
Moreover, Richards and Schmidt (2002: 313) emphasized that “Listening comprehension
is the process of understanding speech in a first or second language. The study of listening
comprehension in second language focuses on the role of individual linguistic units (e.g.,
phonemes, words, grammatical structures) as well as the role of the listeners’
expectations, the situation and context, background knowledge and topic.” In this

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.
 Top-down view, on the other hand, starts with background knowledge in
comprehending the meaning of a message. This knowledge can be content
schema (general knowledge based on life experience and previous learning) or
textual schema (knowledge of language and content used in a particular
situation). While listening, the listener actively constructs (or reconstructs) the
original meaning of the speaker employing new input as clues to understand what
he/ she hears. However, if the incoming information the listener hears is
unfamiliar to him, it cannot evoke his schemata and he can only depend heavily
on his linguistic knowledge in listening comprehension. 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 two views above have certain disadvantages. Bottom-up view focuses on linguistic
knowledge whereas top-down bases on background knowledge. While listening,
accordingly, if listeners depend heavily on one of two, they will fail to understand the
spoken text. It is now generally accepted that both top-down and bottom-up processes
should be combined to enhance listening comprehension. These two processes intersect to
develop an interactive process. The process employing background knowledge
information, textual information and linguistic information make comprehension and
interpretation become easy for listeners. When the content of the material is familiar to the
listener, he will employ his background knowledge at the same time to make predictions
of what the speakers are going to say or to overcome barriers of unfamiliar words. As
opposed to this, if the listener is unfamiliar with the content of the listening text, he can
- 7 -

Pre-listening work can be done in various ways and consist of a wide range of activities.
Thus, Underwood (1989:33) stated that teachers should consider the following factors
when choosing pre-listening activities:
- The time available;
- The material available;
- The ability of the class;
- The interest of the class;
- The interest of the teacher;
- The place in which the work is being carried out;
- The nature and content of the listening text itself.
The last item on the list, "the nature and content of the listening text", is very important
when teachers choose activities. Teachers need to select some kinds of suitable activity to
some types of text.
Davis (2000:78) points out that pre-listening work can consist of a whole range of
activities, including:
- Discuss a relevant picture
- Discuss relevant experiences
- Associate ideas with the topic
- Associate vocabulary with the topic
- Predict information about the topic
- Write questions about the topic
1.3.2. While-listening stage
While-listening activities are what students are asked to do during the time that they are
listening to the text. The purpose of while-listening activities is to help learners understand
the text and develop the skill of eliciting message from spoken language. Teachers should
not expect students to try to understand every word. For example, teachers may ask
students to 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

activities are also raised by Underwood (1989:74-78):
- Checking whether the students have understood what they need to or not;
- Reflecting on why some students have failed to understand or miss parts of the
message;
- 10 - - Giving the students the opportunity to consider the attitude and manner of the
speakers of the listening text;
- Expanding on the topic or language of the message and transferring learned things
to another context;
- Making introduction for the planned work.
Again, according to Underwood (1989:80), when the teachers select post-activities, the
attention should be given to the following factors:
- The amount of language work which the teacher wishes to do in relation to the
particular listening text;
- The time which is allowed to do post-listening work;
- Whether the post-listening work should consist of speaking, reading or writing;
- Whether the post-listening stage is seen as an opportunity for pair/group-work or it
is intended that students should work alone;
- Whether it is necessary to provide post-listening activities which can be done
outside the classroom (at home/ in the listening centre);
- The chosen activity should be made motivating.
And here are the possible post-listening activities by Davis (2000:78):
- Give opinions
- Relate similar experiences
- Role-play a similar interaction
- Write a brief report
- Write a similar text
- Debate the topic

go on trying. The teacher' role in this is to provide experiences and activities in which
students can be successful. It is important to remove the idea of "testing" from listening
activities and to take advantage of the almost universal interest in problem-solving as a
basis for most of the listening work.
To have a successful listening lesson, the teacher should spend time preparing the lesson
carefully. There are a number of steps to take when the teacher plans the listening activity
for the class:
- Choose the listening text.
- Check that the activities are suitable
- Adjust the level of difficulty of the activities if you need to.
- Consider whether the listening work you are planning will fill the time available.
- Think about visual aids.
- 12 - - Make up your mind what procedure you will adopt for the listening session.
- If you are planning to present the listening text 'live', practice reading it aloud.
(Underwood, 1989: 25)
Most of the teacher's work associated with listening practice is done before the actual
lesson. During the lesson, the teacher should create and maintain an encouraging class
atmosphere by:
- Being available to give help whenever it is needed, but not inflicting help on those
who do not need it. This may be at any stage during the lesson.
- Encouraging the students to help each other, so that the emphasis is on the
successful completion of the task(s) rather than on who got it 'right' or 'wrong'.
- Not treating the activities as tests to be marked and scored.
- Encouraging the students to alter their answers if they wish to, perhaps after
listening for a second time.
- Encouraging students to jot down odd words, ideas and thoughts as they are doing
their listening task.

- Not being able to get things repeated
- The listener's limited vocabulary
- Failure to recognize the 'signals'
- Problems of interpretation
- Inability to concentrate
- Established learning habits.
Whatever the reasons for students' problems, it is important that teachers recognize the
features of the spoken language and understand how they affect students. From that,
teachers can design exercises and assignments to help students practice and become
familiar with the specific features of the English language such as sounds, stress,
intonation, etc.
1.6. 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
- 14 - 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
- 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

- Include careers education within the curriculum
- Information which always seems to be about alien circumstances or people with
whom students do not identify can become a strain on their attention
(c) Increase interest in the subject
- Using a variety of approaches, teaching styles, and ways of breaking the time
- Setting assignments and tasks which require students to work out answers and solve
problems for themselves
- Building in opportunities for small „successes‟
- Building in real-life learning
(d) Help students to feel good about their study
- Give praise where it is due. Students need to feel they can succeed.
- Help students to feel that they are getting somewhere with their work
- Show students exactly what is required to excel
- Give opportunities to do something creative or to deliver an end-product
- Create opportunities for students to feel they are part of a good team or group
- Help students to feel that study goals are worth the effort.
In short, if teachers can make their classrooms places where students enjoy coming,
because the content is interesting and relevant to their age and level of ability, where the
learning goals are challenging yet manageable and clear, and where the atmosphere is
supportive and non-threatening, they can make a positive contribution to students‟
motivation to learn. - 16 -
CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY

2.1. Introduction of language teaching and learning conditions in DM high school

In addition, the number of female teachers formed the majority (5 female teachers and 2
male teachers). Some of them, however, are middle-aged which prevents them from
learning training programs to have more updated and flexible ways of teaching a new
language. The participants of this study were members of this team.
2.1.2. Objective factors _ Teaching and learning conditions
2.1.2.1. Teaching aids
Facilities in DM school are brought into question. The classes are not well-equipped with
tapes, cassette players, speakers, TVs, CDs or overhead projectors except for a board,
chalks, pictures or other visual aids designed by teachers themselves. There are two
modern classrooms for language teaching and learning equipped with teaching aids such as
overhead projectors and the Internet. Students only have a chance to use these devices
when the teachers present model lessons on special occasions such as Women‟s Day and
Vietnamese Teacher's Day. Therefore, students do not have many chances to use both
visual and audio aids to practice listening skills often.
2.1.2.2. Duration
Students in high schools, in general, have three periods of English a week; each period is
supposed to deal with one lesson in a unit lasting 45 minutes. In Dai Mo high school all the
classes have 3 periods of English per week.
2.1.2.3. Class size
The average number of students in a class in DM school ranges from 40 to 50. Students are
arranged to sit at desks in four rows, each of which includes 5 - 6 desks of two students.
2.2. The new “Tieng Anh 11” textbook.
The new “Tieng Anh 11” textbook composed by Van, H. V et al., (2006) has been in use
since 2006 as the official textbook to obtain general English at grade 11.The textbook
consists of 16 units in terms of 16 topics. There are five parts in each unit represented