THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY
SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

DANG THI LE THUY

FACTORS AFFECTING LISTENING COMPREHENSION
OF THE 8TH GRADE STUDENTS AT A JUNIOR
HIGH SCHOOL IN THAI NGUYEN CITY
(Những yếu tố ảnh hưởng đến khả năng nghe hiểu
của học sinh lớp 8 tại một trường Trung học cơ sở ở
Thái Nguyên)

M.A THESIS

Field: English Linguistics
Code: 8220201

THAI NGUYEN – 2019
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THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY
SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

DANG THI LE THUY

FACTORS AFFECTING LISTENING COMPREHENSION
OF THE 8TH GRADE STUDENTS AT A JUNIOR
HIGH SCHOOL IN THAI NGUYEN CITY




ACKNOWLEDGMENT
For the completion of this thesis, I have received great assistance and support
from many people without whom the work could not have been fulfilled
First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude and my
profound appreciation to my supervisor, Dr. Nguyen Thi Minh Loan- from Thai
Nguyen University, School of foreign languages for her guidance, precious
suggestions, invaluable critical feedback and encouragement in the process of
completing this thesis.
I would also like to express my sincere thanks to all the lecturers of the School
of Foreign Languages, Thai Nguyen University for their interesting lectures and
suggestions for the topic of my study.
Thanks are also due to my students grade 8 and my colleagues at a Junior High
School, Thai Nguyen City for their assistance and cooperation in completing the
questionnaires and interviews
Last but not least, I would like to give my deepest gratitude to my parents, my
husband and my friends for their moral support and encouragement throughout my
training course.

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ABSTRACT
The aim of the study was to discover the factors affecting the listening
comprehension of 8th-grade students at a junior high school in Thai Nguyen. The
participants of the study included 90 grade 8 students from classes 8A1, 8A2, 8A3

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................4
2.1. Listening comprehension .....................................................................................4
2.1.1. Definition ..........................................................................................................4
2.1.2. Listening comprehension process .....................................................................5
2.2. Factors affecting listening comprehension ..........................................................6
2.2.1. Definition ..........................................................................................................6
2.2.2. Taxonomy of factors affecting listening comprehension ..................................7
2.3. Previous studies on factors affecting listening comprehension ...........................9
2.4. Summary ............................................................................................................12
CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY .........................................................................13
3.1. Subjects of the study ..........................................................................................13
3.2. Data collection instruments. ...............................................................................13
3.2.1. Questionnaire (see Appendix 1) ......................................................................13
3.2.2. Interview .........................................................................................................15
3.3. Procedures of data collection .............................................................................16
3.4. Data analysis ......................................................................................................17
3.5. Summary ............................................................................................................17
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CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION ...................................................18
4.1. Findings ..............................................................................................................18
4.1.1. Findings of the questionnaire ..........................................................................18
4.1.2. Findings of the interview ................................................................................26
4.2. Discussion ..........................................................................................................27
4.3. Summary ............................................................................................................30
CHAPTER 5: IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSION ......................................31
5.1. Implications ........................................................................................................32

Despite its significance, language learners consider listening as the most difficult
language skill to learn. Moreover, listening is the most important skill in language
learning because it is the most widely used language skill in normal daily life.
Listening has an important role not only in daily life but also in the classroom
environment. Most people believe that being able to write and speak in a second
language means that they know the language. However, if they do not have efficient
listening skills, it is impossible to communicate effectively. That is, listening is the
basic skill in language learning. Listening is vital in the language classroom because
it provides input for the learner. Without understanding input on the right level, any
learning simply cannot start.
A lot of research has been done on this issue (Chang & Roebl, 2011, Kutlu
&Aslanolub, 2009). The results of previous studies have largely supported the
difficulty of listening to new languages from the text, listeners, speakers, and tasks.
Almost all previous studies in listening skills and listening comprehension skills have
identified important factors affecting the ability of the learner’s listening
comprehension such as process, input, listener, task, affect and context factors.
However, the subjects of those studies were often high school and university students
in Vietnam or other non-English speaking countries.
In Vietnamese schools, especially in Nha Trang junior high schools in Thai
Nguyen, most students thought that learning the listening skills was the hardest, and
some students thought the listening skills were relatively new, even though the
students experienced the least English learning 3 years in primary school and in grade
6, 7. Meanwhile, the period of training at junior high school according to the
distribution of each semester was more than 50 periods (3 periods/ week), in 18 weeks
in a semester, the amount of time spent on listening comprehension was too little.
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recommendations for English teachers to prepare English listening lessons more
effectively, enabling students to improve listening comprehension as well as daily
language communication. Second, this study also played an important role for
students to be aware of their listen ability. They could recognize the factors that
affected their learning to listen skills so that they could find ways to improve their
listening ability. Last but not least, for other researchers who would carry out a similar
study, the results of this study were considered a reference and contributed more
information to solve the same problem.
1.4. Scope of the study
The research was conducted on 90 students of 8th-grade and 5 English teachers
from Nha Trang junior high school in Thai Nguyen city. It focused on the factors that
affected the student’s listening comprehension.
1.5. Organization
The study included five main chapters: introduction, literature review,
methodology, findings and discussion, implications and conclusion.
Chapter 1: Introduction, presented basic information such as theoretical basis,
purpose, research questions, meanings, scope, significance as well as the design of
the study.
Chapter 2: Literature review, considered different views on listening
comprehension, listening processes, factors affecting listening comprehension,
classification of influencing factors as well as previous studies about factors affecting
students' listening skills.
Chapter 3: Methodology, mentioned the method of conducting research including,
research topics, research questions, data collection tools (questionnaires and
interviews), data collection steps and data analysis.
Chapter 4: Findings and discussion, presented research findings and discussed
research questions.
Chapter 5: Implication and conclusion, pointed out the implications of the study,

listener hears and trying to understand what the speaker speaks.
Nadig (2013) defined listening comprehension is different processes to understand
and make sense of spoken language. These involve knowing speech sounds,
understanding the meaning of individual words and understanding the syntax of
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sentences (as cited in Pourhosein Gilakjani & Sabouri, 2016). According to Brown
and Yule (1983) and Hamouda (2013), listening comprehension is a personal
understanding of what he has listened and that is the possibility that the listener can
repeat the text despite the fact that the listener can repeat the sound without real
understanding.
Therefore, listening comprehension might be defined as understanding what the
speaker had said. Listeners play a particularly important role in the listening process
by using their own knowledge to listen and understand what the listeners listen so
that they can understand the speech of the speaker.
2.1.2. Listening comprehension process
Listening comprehension is the ability of one individual perceiving another based
on sense, (specifically aural) organs, having meaning to the message and
comprehending it. According to Steinberg (2007), listening is more complicated than
just hearing. This process consists of four stages: feeling and attending, understanding
and explaining, remembering, and answering. The stages happen in sequence, but we
often don't know them.
Schemata are instructional structures during listening comprehension. A schema is
a data structure to display common concepts stored in memory. Schema means an
abstract text structure that listeners use to understand the text. Listeners use language
signals and situations on new inputs to extract schemata. When a schema is extracted,
it becomes a guiding structure in listening comprehension. If there is a harmony

spoken message and various types of prior knowledge they learned. In top-down
processing, they might lack ability to process acoustic signals. Besides, in the
interactive processing, top-down and bottom-up listening processing should be
combined with each other to increase listening comprehension. Therefore, it is
important to find out the factors that affect the listening process.
2.2. Factors affecting listening comprehension
2.2.1. Definition
Goh in Hamouda (2013) defined listening difficulties are all the internal and
external characteristics that interrupt the understanding process directly related to
cognitive procedures at various stages of listening comprehension. It can be stated
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that listening difficulties are the characteristic that disturbing the listener in
comprehending the information.
Therefore, factors affecting listening comprehension might be defined as all
internal and external factors, subjective or objective, which directly affected the
perception during the listening process.
2.2.2. Taxonomy of factors affecting listening comprehension
There were various factors affected the listening comprehension in the listening
process. Alderson et al. (2006), Bridley and Slatyer (2002), Kostin (2004), Ying-hui
(2006), Wagner (2010), Rost (2011) and others have synthesized several factors that
were likely to influence performance and interpretation of test results. Rubin (1994)
was the first to classify listening factors into five categories, including text,
interlocutor, task, listener and process factors. Based on Jamieson et al.‘s (2000)
learner process models during listening tests, Rost (2011) added a number of
variables that might affect listeners‘ test performance during each stage. These
variables included the stimulus variable, listener variable, and item variable.

structure of the text speech rate, prosodic features, accent, pause, and text length.
Moreover, the factor listener reflected learners' beliefs about listeners'
characteristics identified as having a considerable effect on second language learners'
listening comprehension and contained learners' problems associated with
characteristics, such as attention, attitude, and memory.
The fourth factor, labeled task, includes three items about problems associated with
characteristics of listening tasks as task type, type of responses demanded when
answering global and local questions.
The fifth factor labeled affect consisted of learners effective responses to instances
of comprehension failure are reflected and regarded the level of anxiety they
experience in listening.
The last factor, context factor, reflected learners’ beliefs about unfavorable
characteristics of the learning context affecting listening comprehension. The factor
included problems about the adverse effect of distracters available in the learning
context on their listening comprehension.

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After studying the taxonomies of the factors that affected the ability of students
listening comprehension, the researcher felt that Lotfi’s taxonomy (2012) was very
relevant to this research because, among all taxonomies of listening difficulties,
Lofti’s taxonomy was one of the most comprehensive classifications. Besides, his
taxonomy showed the most specific factors that affected the listening comprehension
of the students. Therefore, the researcher chose his taxonomy as a basic of data
collection instrument in the present study.
2.3. Previous studies on factors affecting listening comprehension
In the past, there was a great deal of research on the listening area of students of

difficulty to focus on the text while having trouble understanding as the major
obstacle. Finally, significant differences existed in listening problems encountered by
students from different colleges.
Asriati

(2017)

conducted

research

about

listening

comprehension

in

Muhammadiyah University of Makassar, South Sulawesi. This research aimed to
identify the factors affecting the students' listening comprehension achievement and
to identify which factor was dominant, conducted at the Muhammadiyah University
of Makassar. This research was restricted into listener and speaker factors that caused
difficulties. The method of this research was descriptive research. The result of this
research showed that there were 25 factors from the listener and speaker that affected
the students' listening comprehension achievement. Moreover, among those 25
factors, there were 5 factors classified to be the most dominant ones. They were:
inability to acknowledge the colloquial words and slang, inability to understand the
reduced word, inability to answer the question of which required the long answer,
focus loss resulted from looking for the answer to the question and the speed of the

done their research with previous studies, but the factors affecting the 8th graders’
age were unclear while their listening comprehension could be said that limited. It
could be said that findings from previous studies had provided good evidence of the
factors that affected students' ability to listening and support the problem in this study.
To fill this gap, the researcher decided to conduct a study to discover clearly the
factors that might affect the listening comprehension of the 8th-grade students in Nha
Trang junior high school in Thai Nguyen city. The study would also highlight the
finding of factors that directly and indirectly might affect students' daily listening
comprehension. It was hoped that this research would contribute to a better
understanding of junior high schools students as well as in Vietnam to help to teach
and learning English listening better.
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2.4. Summary
Chapter 2 had described the background used as the foundation of the present
study. Firstly, listening comprehension skill in language learning was discussed.
Next, there were factors that might affect students’ listening comprehension ability.
Finally, previous studies conducted on factors affecting listening comprehension of
different ages were addressed. The review indicated that from these studies, it had
been shown that listening comprehension skills played a very important role in
learning to communicate in this language. In this regard, previous studies also
presented many different factors that affected students' ability to comprehend and
they also offered deep suggestions and recommendations to help students improve
their listening skill better.

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The combination of the two tools was to ensure a clearer insight into the different
factors affecting the listening skills of students of 8th grade and help them improve
their listening ability.

3.2.1. Questionnaire (see Appendix 1)
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Justification:
Questionnaires are one of the most widely used means of collecting data, and
many novice researchers in business and management and other areas of the social
sciences associate research with questionnaires ( Jenny, 2014). Therefore, the
questionnaire was used as the first data collection instrument. The purpose of the
questionnaire in this study was to collect information about the factors affecting
students’ process of listening.
Details:
The listening problem questionnaire employed in the study was based on the six
categories specified by Lotfi (2012). The questionnaire in his research consisted of
58 different items divided into 6 factors. The researcher removed 18 items and only
used 40 items to match this study. The reason why the researcher removed 18 items
was that those items for the subjects were students of universities and other language
major students of other high schools. They were a difference with this study’s subjects.
Therefore, the researcher only chose to use 40 items and they were also divided into
6 factors. The researcher used the questionnaire to collect information about the
current situation of students’ listening skill, the students’ evaluation, and their
feelings and examine the factors that affected the students’ listening skills. This
questionnaire contained 40 questions in total. The questionnaire was comprised of
listening comprehension problems.

percentage of responses were used for data analysis. This questionnaire was proved
to be reliable and practicable because it had been tested the internal consistency
reliability in the research of Janet Yu-Gi Chao (2013). Due to the students’ limited
English competence, the researcher translated the questionnaire into Vietnamese.
3.2.2. Interview
Justification:
In the field of social science research, the usefulness of interviews has long been
recognized. That is, as qualitative researchers tend to provide detailed descriptions of
individuals and events in their natural settings, interviewing has ‘usually’ been
thought of as a key factor in research design (Weiss, 1994). In this study, the
researcher used face-to-face interviews with the teachers to gain information about
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their own opinions about listening comprehension process of their students. After the
interview, the researcher gained more useful information to analyze the factors
directly and indirectly affected the listening comprehension of students.
Details:
This interview included 5 questions in total. Question 1 was designed to ask about
the roles of the teachers in their listening performance. The researcher asked the
participants about the way in which they teach the listening skills into the class. Then,
question 2 was designed to ask about the attitudes and concentration of students
whenever they gave a listening assignment to students. In question 3, the researcher
asked the participants about the possible difficulties that their students faced have
when they have listening comprehension activities. The fourth question asked about
the factors that most affected the students’ listening skills. The final question was
designed to asked the teachers about possible solutions that could be offered to help
their students improve their listening comprehension skills so that their students could

in the study and the research process. In addition, the data tools used for the study
were detailed. The steps to implement this research method had been given.
Procedures for data analysis have been described. From the methods that had been
studied and analyzed, the results in the next chapter were given.

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