VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES
*****************

LƯƠNG THỊ THÚY HẰNG

A SURVEY RESEARCH ON THE INFLUENCES LEFT BY ANXIETY ON
LISTENING COMPREHENSION OF GRADE 12th STUDENTS AT GIA VIEN A
HIGH SCHOOL.

Nghiên cứu ảnh hưởng của sự lo lắng đến việc nghe hiểu của học sinh lớp 12
trường Trung học Phổ thông Gia Viễn A.

M.A. Minor Programme Thesis

Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 60140111

Hà Nội- 2016


VIET NAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES & INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST – GRADUATE STUDIES
*****************

LƯƠNG THỊ THÚY HẰNG

A SURVEY RESEARCH ON THE INFLUENCES LEFT BY ANXIETY ON
LISTENING COMPREHENSION OF GRADE 12th STUDENTS AT GIA VIEN A

PART II. DEVELOPMENT .............................................................................. VIII
CHAPTER 1. LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................... VIII
1. Definition of listening comprehension. ........................................................... VIII
2. Significance of listening................................................................................... VIII
3. Process of listening comprehension ................................................................... IX
4. Anxiety ................................................................................................................. IX
5. Foreign Language Anxiety ................................................................................... X
6. Anxiety in listening comprehension ........................ Error! Bookmark not defined.
CHAPTER 2. METHODOLOGY .........................ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.
1. Restatement of research questions ........................ Error! Bookmark not defined.
2. The fitness of the research approach ..................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
3. Context of the study ................................................ Error! Bookmark not defined.
3.1. Setting of the study ............................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
3.2. Listening skills in the textbook ........................... Error! Bookmark not defined.


3.3. Participants ........................................................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
4. Research instruments.............................................. Error! Bookmark not defined.
5. Data collection and analysis procedure ................. Error! Bookmark not defined.
6. Summary .................................................................. Error! Bookmark not defined.
CHAPTER 3. DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS. ....... ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT
DEFINED.

3.1. Students’ attitudes towards listening lessons and listening skill.Error! Bookmark not de
3.2. The students’ anxiety when learning listening. . Error! Bookmark not defined.
3.3. Reduction of the listening anxiety....................... Error! Bookmark not defined.
3.4. Concluding remarks............................................. Error! Bookmark not defined.
PART III: CONCLUSIONS................... ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED.
1.


medicine,

diplomacy,

sports,

international competitions, music and advertising. Nowadays we live in the age of
globalization so we need English language because it is the language of this age.
The number of foreign language learners is increasing, and foreign language
educators and researchers have been putting efforts into teaching English more
effectively. Along with the desire to find more effective ways of teaching English,
concern over dealing with learners’ negative feelings and attitudes while learning
English has also increased. This concern over learners’ negative feelings and
attitudes is based on a few language learning theories proposed by a number of
language researchers( i.e., Krashen, 1988; Onwuegbuzie, Bailey, & Daley, 1999;
Young, 1991). A number of factors influence foreign language learning, and anxiety
when learning a foreign language has been identified as one critical factor
interfering with foreign language learning and achievements( Horwitz, Horwitz &
Cope, 1991). Among the many skills required to use a language( i.e., speaking,
listening, reading, and writing), listening comprehension is at the heart of language
learning. Language learners are expected to understand what the interlocutor is
saying in order to continue the conversation. When learners have difficulty with
listening comprehension, it is likely that their listening anxiety will increase, which
in turn will negatively affect their performance.
Being exposed to a natural context and an authentic environment is claimed
to be desirable for foreign language learning. Hadley( 2001) asserted that learning


and practicing language in meaningful contexts is more appealing; however, this
way of practicing a foreign language is not always affordable or feasible. Some

2. Aims and objectives of the research
The main purpose of the study is to investigate the anxiety of 12th grade
students towards learning listening skill. It also proposes some suggestions to
minimize the influences on students when learning listening skill.
With the above aims, the objectives of this study were as follows:
•

Examining the effect of anxiety on students in listening lessons.

•

Investigating

the

degree

of

these

influences

on

students’

listening

comprehension.

and effect of anxiety when learning listening skill.
Second, class observation was designed to study students’ performance in listening
lessons.
After that, semi- structured interview was conducted in order to:
1. Survey students’ perception on the magnitude of learning English and
listening skill in students’ learning English.
2. Study the factors that cause their anxiety.
3. Find out the influences left by anxiety in their listening comprehension and
their way of going on the lessons.
Then, the data were collected, sorted and analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively
to obtain realistic results.
To end with, pedagogical implications for minimizing students’ anxiety in learning
listening skill will be proposed based on the results found from all data collection
instruments.
6. Significance of the study
The study has been conducted with the expectation that the findings will help
students of English at Gia Vien A High school acknowledge the significance of the
impact of anxiety when learning listening comprehension, which forces them to
reduce the anxious emotion before listening, spend more time and effort preparing
the listening lessons.
Still, the researcher harbors the hope that the teachers will understand their
students’ anxiety, study the reasons for such anxiety, from which they will know
how to foster positive attitudes or motivation and eliminate the anxious emotion of


their students so as to help them obtain progress and fruitful achievements in
learning English and English listening comprehension.
7. Design of the study
The study consists of three main parts:
Part I: Introduction presents the rationale of the study, the aims, the research

making relevant inferences based on context, real-world knowledge, and speakerspecific attributes (e.g., to what information the speaker has access and about what
he/she is likely to be talking). For longer stretches of language or discourse,
listening comprehension also involves significant memory demands to keep track of
causal relationships expressed within the discourse( Fred R.volkmar, 2013).
Moreover, listening comprehension refers to the understanding of the implications
and explicit meanings of words and sentences of spoken language.” (
CDE Guidelines for Identifying Students with Specific Learning Disabilities, 2008).
2. Significance of listening
Listening is the first language mode that human beings acquire. It provides
the firm basis for all aspects of language and instinctive reflex development, and it
plays a very important role in the processes of communication. A journal by Tiffany
P. Hogan, Suzanne M. Adlof & Crystle N. Alonzo( 2014), listening comprehension


has a huge effort on reading comrehension starting even in the elementary grades. It
also highlights a growing number of children who fail to develop adequate reading
comprehension skills, primarily due to deficient listening comprehension skills .
Bulletin( 1952, cited in Naizhao Guo, 2005, p.3) said, listening is the fundamental
language skill. It is the medium through which people gain a large portion of their
education, their information, their understanding of the world and of human affairs,
their ideals, sense of values, and their appreciation. In this day of mass
communication, much of it oral, it is of vital importance that students are taught to
listen effectively and critically. According to second language acquisition theory,
language input is the most essential condition of language acquisition. As an input
skill, listening plays a crucial role in students’ language development.
3. Process of listening comprehension
Rost( 2002, cited in Masanori Tokeshi, 2003, p.27) said, the most common
two-levels view is bottom-up processing and top-down processing. In bottom-up
processing listeners first attend to individual phonological units, and decode a larger
unit of input in hierarchical order, from vocabulary to structures, and arrive at the

As the number of English learners is constantly increasing, English education
is concerned more and more. As MacIntyre, P. D.; Gardner, R. C.( 1994, cited in
Shabnam Amini Naghadeh, Mansour Amini Naghadeh, Naser Amini Naghadeh,
Hasan Aminpour, 2013, p.85), foreign language anxiety is the feeling
of unease, worry, nervousness and apprehension experienced

when

learning

or

using a second or foreign language. As Fotos( 1998, cited in Shabnam Amini
Naghadeh, Mansour Amini Naghadeh, Naser Amini Naghadeh, Hasan Aminpour,
2013, p.85), these feelings may stem from any second language context whether
associated with the productive skills of speaking and writing, or the receptive skills
of reading and listening. However, unlike English as a second language( ESL)
instruction, EFL instruction in East Asian countries has focused on reading and
writing for the last few decades). He says that nowadays, EFL curricula also
emphasize the importance of oral and listening skills in English. Because of the


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