HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY
FACULTY OF ENGLISH
……

GRADUATION THESIS
B.A DEGREE IN ENGLISH STUDIES

IMPROVING LISTENING SKILLS FOR FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS AT
THE FACULTY OF ENGLISH - HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

Supervisor

: Nguyen Van Quang, ph.D

Student

: Nguyen Thi Thanh Hoa

Date of birth

: 27/09/1994

Course

: K19 (2012-2016)

HA NOI, 2016


Graduation paper


My deep appreciation also goes to the first-year students at Hanoi Open
University who have helped me to collect data for this study.
Ultimately, my gratitude and appreciation are also extended to my family,
for their assistance, support and encouragement during the development of this
study. All have enabled me to accomplish my study.
Hanoi, 15th April 2016
Student
Nguyễn Thị Thanh Hoa

Nguyễn Thị Thanh Hoa – K19A06 (2012- 2016)


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TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES
PART A: INTRODUCTION............................................................................... 1
1. Rationale of the study .................................................................................... 1
2. Aims and objectives of the study .................................................................. 1
3. Scopes of the study ......................................................................................... 1
4. Research questions ......................................................................................... 2
5. Methods of study ............................................................................................ 2
6. Design of the study. ........................................................................................ 2
PART B: DEVELOPMENT................................................................................ 4
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW........................................................... 4
1.1. Listening skills ............................................................................................. 4
1.1.1. Definitions of listening skills .................................................................... 4

2.1.2. Instrumentations ..................................................................................... 24
2.1.3. Survey questionnaires............................................................................. 25
2.2. Findings and discussion............................................................................ 25
2.2.1. First-year student’s attitude towards listening skills............................. 26
2.2.2. First-year student’s obstacles when learning listening skills ............... 28
2.2.3. First-year student’s attitude towards their teachers creating listening
activities and motivation...................................................................................... 35
2.2.4. First year students’ self-study methods to enhance listening skills ........ 36
2.5. Summary ...................................................................................................... 38

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CHAPTER 3: RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FIRST-YEAR STUDENTS
AT THE FACULTY OF ENGLISH – HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY TO
IMPROVE LISTENING SKILLS.................................................................... 39
3.1. Stages of listening ........................................................................................ 39
3.1.1. Pre-listening .............................................................................................. 39
3.1.2. While-listening .......................................................................................... 41
3.1.3. Post-listening ............................................................................................. 42
3.2. Applying listening sub-skills ...................................................................... 43
3.3. Self-studying ................................................................................................ 46
3.4. Background knowledge .............................................................................. 47
3.5. Vocabulary and Grammar ......................................................................... 47
3.6. Becoming active listeners............................................................................ 49
3.7. Summary ...................................................................................................... 53
PART C: CONCLUSION.................................................................................. 54
REFERENCES

considered the most difficult one for most English learners. Indeed, many firstyear students at the Faculty of English – Hanoi Open University find it really
challenging to learn listening skills effectively. Thus, the present study is done to
further listening skills for first-year students at the Faculty of English – Hanoi
Open University with hope that this study will offer some benefits for students
learning English skills.
2. Aims and objectives of the study
The purpose of this study is to help the freshmen at Faculty of English –
Hanoi Open University to understand the reasons why they find it challenging to
boost listening skills. Accordingly, some feasible solutions are given with hope
that first -year students can find out suitable approaches in learning English
listening skills.
3. Scopes of the study
Teaching and learning English, especially listening skills, are quite
complex and varied among these levels. However, within the study, the author
will only focus on some main difficulties of the first-year students at Faculty of

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English - Hanoi Open University. Additionally, the study also gives some
suggestions to help them to improve listening comprehension.
4. Research questions
The study mainly focuses on answering these following questions:
- What are the difficulties of the first-year students in learning listening
skills?
- What factors have an impact on the listening skills of freshmen at

the important of listening, the classification of listening, sub-skills involved in
listening skills, listening stages, as well as difficulties in learning listening
skills.
- Chapter two, data collection, deals with analysis on general learning
situation of first-year students at Faculty of English - Hanoi Open University.
Also, in this chapter, there is a focus on data analysis, finding and discussion.
- Chapter three suggests some feasible solutions to help the first-year students
at Faculty of English - Hanoi Open University to enhance listening skills.
Part C, “CONCLUSION” summarizes the key issues in the study, point
out some limitations and recommendations for further study.

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PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
1.1.

Listening skills

1.1.1. Definitions of listening skills
Listening is considered one of the most important parts of the oral
communication. The term is used in order to make oral communication effective.
There was an idea that “Students spend 20 percent of all school related hours just
listening. If television watching and one-half of conversation are included,
students spend approximately 50 percent of their walking hour just listening. For

than perception of sound. This view of listening is in accordance with secondlanguage theory which considers listening to spoken language as an active and
complex process in which listeners focus on selected aspects of aural input,
construct meaning, and relate what they hear to existing knowledge (O’Malley &
Chamot, 1989; by, 1984; Richards, 1985; Holand, 1983.
Also, Underwood (1989) simplifies that the definition of listening to “the
activity of paying attention to and trying to get meaning from something we
hear”. Mendelsohn (1994) defines listening comprehension as “The ability to
understand the spoken language of native speakers”.
Moreover, O’Malley, Chamot, and Kupper (1989) offer a useful and more
extensive definition that “listening comprehension is an active and conscious
process in which the listener constructs the meaning by using cues from
contextual information and fro existing knowledge, while replying upon multiple
strategies resources to fulfill the task requirements”.
Mendelsohn (1994) points out that, in listening to spoken language, the
ability to decipher the speaker’s intention is required of a competent listener, in
addition to other abilities such as processing the linguistic forms like speech
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speed and fillers, coping with listening in an interaction, understanding the
whole message contained in the discourse, comprehending the message without
understanding every word, and recognizing different genres. Listeners must also
know how to process and how to judge what the illocutionary force of an
utterances is – that is, what this string of the sounds is intended to mean in a
particular setting, under a particular set of circumstances – as an act of real
communication (Mendelsohn, 1994).

need to understand and work with the components of the listening process.
Listening is the process of making sense out of what we hear. Listening is an
active process of receiving, processing, and interpreting aural stimuli. Firstly,
listening involves taking in meaningful sounds and noises and in some ways,
retaining and using them. Just as we speak for different purposes. We listen for
enjoyment, information and evaluation.
Frank Tyger said that “Hearing is one of the body’s five senses, but
listening is an art.”
Listening is a part of transactional process of communication. The
recipients’ responses have an impact on the direction of the conversation.
Listening is a habit that requires knowledge, skills, and desires. Knowledge plays
a role similar to that of methods and theories by describing what to do and why
to do it. Skills represent how to do it.
1.1.2. Traditional point of view on listening skills
There are some conventional viewpoints that listening is regarded as a
passive language along with the reading skills, which means learners are almost
passive in practicing the listening activities in classroom.
Listeners just hear what they are to listen without paying much attention in
the discourse such as background knowledge of the speakers as well as their
intention, attitude, implication and other shades of meaning. The listeners mainly
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hear the message, and they only try to elicit the meaning from the individual
syntactic and sematic components of an utterance and the manner in which it is
spoken. This leads to the result that it is hard for listeners to communicate.

stages and Clark (1977) divides it into four stages but in general, they have the
same idea. There are two level activities of the aural process. The level two of
this activity are recognition and selection. The first one is the structure and the
relationship between syntax and phonology of language are recognized. And the
second one, the listeners select what they find most interesting, important or
comprehensible in the utterance.
Yet, there are several contrastive opinions on listening skills. The two
authors, Anderson and Lynch (1995) considered the listener as active model
builder. They said that to listen successfully, we have to construct our own
“coherent interpretation” of any spoken message. Both part of this term are
crucial.
In short, to be successful in listening, we should remember that:
“Listening comprehension is not a skill which can be mastered once and for all
and then ignored whereas other skills developed. There must be regular practice
with increasingly difficult materials.” (Rivers Wilga, 1986, P.157).
1.2.

Classification of listening skills

1.2.1. Real-life listening.
1.2.1.1. Types of real-life listening
According to Doff (1995) notes that in real-life, there are two kinds of
listening:
- Casual listening: in daily life, we sometimes listen with no particular
purpose and often without much attention. This kind of listening is
called “casual” listening. For instance, many students have the habit of
listening to radio while studying or watching television or doing
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purpose,

and

comprehension.
1.2.1.2. Characteristics of real-life listening
In the book “Teaching listening comprehension” (1995, P.9), the author
Penny Ur, indicates some characteristics of real-life listening:
- We listen on purpose with certain expectation.
- We make prompt response to what we hear.
- We see the person we are listening to.

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- There are some visual or environmental clues as to the meaning of
what is heard.
- Stretches of heard discourse come in short chunks.
- Most heard discourse is spontaneous, therefore, it differs from formal
spoken prose in the amount of redundancy, noise and colloquialism and
in its auditory character.
Some particular situation may lack one or more of these characteristics.
For example when watching television we are not normally expected to
respond or when listening to the lecture we may have to hear uninterrupted
speech for a very long time indeed – but it is very rare that none of them present
at all. We seldom listen to stretches of “disembodied” discourse of any length.

as well as expose them to the valuable extra contract with spoken language.
Furthermore, Rob Waring, one of the original proponents of extensive
listening, believes that an extensive listening program can be effective from
immediate level. He provides background and resources for guiding students into
an extensive listening program, with helpful troubleshooting tips for keeping
students focused. It means that the people, who are not good at English, also
have extensive listening.
1.3.

Sub-skills involved in listening skills
According to Martin Parrott (1993), depending on the different range of

“sub-skills” may be involved. The following lists some of the sub-skills which
may be involved in efficient listening. The ability to:
- Recognize the communicative function of the text (stretch of speech or
writing) or part of the text. Examples of communicative function are
invitation, commiseration, persuasion, etc (note that a text or part of a
text may express more than one function, and the function(s) may be
more easily identifiable in certain texts than in others).
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- Obtain the gist (main ideas) from the text.
- Identify the specific details.
- Distinguish main ideas from supporting details.
- Recognize the speaker’s (writer’s) attitude towards the topic and


Also Marry Underwood said: “Pre-listening can be done in a variety of
ways and often occur quite naturally when listening forms part an integrated
skilled course. When planning lessons, time must be allocated for pre-listening
activities and these activities should not be rushed.” (1989, P.31)
*Types of pre-listening activities.
1. The teachers introduce the listening’s topic, give background information
2. The students read something relevant.
3. The students look at pictures, read through the questions if asked.
4. The students discuss the topic situation.
5. The students consider how the while-listening activities will be done.
Each of the above types will help students focus on the main point of the
listening passage. But it is very important to remember that the amount of the
types of pre-listening activities may vary according to each class, the level of
difficulties of material, and the students’ language ability. Therefore, the teachers
should select the most efficient activities to help their students get the purpose of
listening required.
*Factors affecting the choices of pre-listening activities
1. The availability of time
2. The availability of materials
3. The interest of the class
4. The interest of the teacher
5. The place where the work is carried out
6. The nurture and content of the listening itself.
1.4.2. While-listening
*Purpose of the while-listening stage
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While listening activities should be thought that most people can do.
Failure may lead to the demotivation, activities with potential “sticking point”,
where the students are likely to get into the difficulties, should be used sparingly
in the early stage. In time, of course, it will be necessary to include activities
which present potential “sticking point” so that students learn not to be put off
and preserve in spite of the problem.
According to Marry Underwood, the level of difficulties of while-listening
stage can be adjusted by giving support. Some while-listening activities are
successful with groups of varying level of ability and provide a challenge for the
more advanced students but not discouraging those who only gain a little.
*Factors affecting the choice of while-listening stage.
1. The possibilities of varying the level of difficulties if required.
2. The inconvenience of carrying out the activities which require individual to
give their response orally in the classroom. This kind of work is best done in a
language laboratory. While -listening activities in classroom generally have to be
limited to those which can be done without the need for each student to respond
by speaking.
3. Whether the work is to be done by the students with the teacher’s presence or
whether it is to be done as private study, either in classroom or at home. This
will influence to the teacher’s choice of activities as she may want to give the
students different work according to their level of ability, to provide additional
instructions, or to select activities which generates little or no marking.
1.4.3. Post-listening
*Definition of the post-listening stage

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- To expand in the topic or language of the message and transfer the
learners’ thought to another context.
- To make introduction to the planned work.
*Factors affecting the post-listening stage
Marry Underwood (1989) said that the attention should be given to the
following factors in selecting post-listening activities:
- The amount of language acquisition the teacher wishes to in relation to the
particular listening text.
- The time which is allowed to do the post-listening stage.
- The speaking, reading and writing should be included in the post-listening
stage.
- The students should work in pair or in groups.
- The chosen activities should be made motivation.
1.5.

Major factors influencing the listening skills
1.5.1. Vocabulary
The English vocabulary is very large and changes every day; therefore, it

is regarded as a huge obstacle of English learners when they listen.
Samuels (1984) emphasized that “Knowledge of the vocabulary used by
the speaker is another quality for good listening comprehension. Some words
have many meanings when used in different contexts. Most people can only