Factors affecting the English listening skill of firstyear Business Englishmajored students at Thuong Mai University

ABSTRACT
Nowadays, English is used as the language of international communication,
the Internet, and the media in every corner of the world. With the development of
international relations among countries, English skills have an important role to
play for all citizens on the planet. Having a good command of English increases
your chances of getting a good job in a multinational company within your home
country or seeking jobs abroad. Therefore, learning English is necessary for your
future to be better.
Out of four main English skills, listening skills need to be paid special
attention because it can affect other skills, especially communication skills.
However, it is not easy for learners to be good at English listening skill. Therefore, I
choose this skill as a topic for my study called factors affecting the English listening
skill of first-year Business English-majored students at Thuong Mai University. In
order to get as objective results as possible, I applied one tool which is the
questionnaire survey with 80 participants.
After determining which factor influents students’ English listening skill the
most, I will suggest students some solutions based on the results of the survey. The
study is expected to all readers from solutions, teachers, university, and further
researches.

1


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
In the process of researching, I consider myself a lucky individual when
receiving the valuable assistance of my teachers, friends, and family. I could not
overcome difficulties and complete the graduation paper without their help,
guideline, and encouragement.
Foremost, I would like to express my deepest thanks to my supervisor, Mrs.
Ha Thi Vu Ha, one of the lecturers in the Department of English Skills, Faculty of
English, Thuong Mai University. From the beginning days, she gave me not only

materials but also thorough instructions, and psychological stimulation. Thanks to
her valuable assistance, I can overcome several obstacles of idea development and
data analysis.
Secondly, I would like to give my deep sense of gratitude to all of the lecturers
of the English Faculty at Thuong Mai University for enthusiastically teaching
during my four-year study and facilitating me to complete the Graduation Paper.
Furthermore, my sincere thanks are delivered to my family and friends for caring,
sharing and encouraging me during the time of researching, which regularly moves
me to finish this study. In addition, I am grateful to the first-year English majoredstudents at Thuong Mai University for their dedicated help in expressing their
opinions about my topic so that I can collect exact data. For all readers, I would like
to spend my last thank for being interested in this topic. I hope that it will be useful
for you.
Although there have been many attempts to implement the study, mistakes are
unavoidable because of the limitations of time, knowledge, and practical
experience. Therefore, all comments and recommendations from teachers and
friends are warmly welcome to make my Graduation Paper more perfect.
April 10th, 2021
Student
Lai Thi Quynh

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT..............................................................................................................i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS....................................................................................ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS.......................................................................................iii
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS..................................................................................v
LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES......................................................................vi
CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY......................................................1

1.1. Rationale...........................................................................................................1
1.2. Previous studies................................................................................................2
1.2.1. Studies Abroad................................................................................................2
1.2.2. Studies in Viet Nam........................................................................................3
1.3. Aims of the study..............................................................................................4
1.4. Research Subjects.............................................................................................5
1.5. Scope of the study.............................................................................................5
1.6. Organization of the study.................................................................................5
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW...............................................................6
2.1. Definition of listening.......................................................................................6
2.2. Classification of listening.................................................................................7
2.3. The significance of English listening skill.......................................................8
2.4. The process of listening comprehension..........................................................9
2.5. Factors affecting English listening skill of first-year Business Englishmajored students at Thuong Mai University.......................................................10
2.5.1. Factors related to listening texts...................................................................10
2.5.2. Factors related to linguistic features............................................................11
2.5.3. Factors related to the speaker.......................................................................12
2.5.4. Factor related to listener...............................................................................13
2.5.5. Factors related to physical setting................................................................13
CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH FINDINGS..............................................................14
3.1. Methodology....................................................................................................14
3.1.1. Research methodology..................................................................................14
3


3.1.3. Participants...................................................................................................14
3.1.4. Data collection instrument...........................................................................15
3.1.5. Data collection procedures...........................................................................16
3.2. Data Analysis...................................................................................................16
3.2.1. General information.....................................................................................16

3.2.2. The perception of significance of English listening skill.............................17
3.2.3. How students practice English listening skill..............................................22
3.2.4 Factors affecting English listening skill of first-year Business Englishmajored students at Thuong Mai University..........................................................25
3.3. Conclusion.......................................................................................................34
CHAPTER 4: RECOMMENDATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS........................36
4.1. Recommendations for students........................................................................36
4.1.1. Practicing with the right strategies...............................................................36
4.1.2. Investing more time in practice....................................................................37
4.1.3. Expanding vocabulary..................................................................................37
4.2. Recommendations for teachers......................................................................38
4.2.1. Raising students’ awareness of the importance of English listening skill.......38
4.2.2. Giving more materials and advice................................................................38
4.2.3. Recommendation for university.................................................................39
4.3. Conclusion.......................................................................................................39
CONCLUSION......................................................................................................40
REFERENCES
APPENDIX

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
Abbreviations
EFL
TMU
HUFI
EPU

English Meaning
English as a foreign language

Thuong Mai University
Ho Chi Minh City University of Food Industry
Electric Power University

5


LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURE
Chart 3.1: The period of time the students have been studying English..................17
Chart 3.2: Overall ranking of the importance of four English skills........................18
Chart 3.3: Overall ranking of the difficulty of four English skills...........................19
Chart 3.4: Students’ evaluation about their English listening skill...........................20
Chart 3.5: The time that students spend in practicing listening...............................22
Chart 3.6: How many times students listen to the listening record..........................24
Chart 3.7: Overall influence of listening texts.........................................................26
Chart 3.8: Overall influence of linguistic features...................................................28
Chart 3.9: Overall influence of the speaker.............................................................29
Chart 3.10: Overall influence of the listener............................................................31
Chart 3.11: Overall influence of physical settings...................................................33

Y
Table 3.1: The importance of four English skills evaluated by the first-year Business
English-majored students at TMU...........................................................................18
Table 3.2: The difficulty of four English skills evaluated by the first-year Business
English-majored students at TMU...........................................................................19
Table 3.3: Students’ purpose of practicing English listening skill............................21
Table 3.4: Students’ method of practicing English listening skill............................23
Table 3.5: Techniques used by students to improve their English listening level.. . .24
Table 3.6: Factors related to listening texts..............................................................26
Table 3.7: Factors related to linguistic features.......................................................27

Table 3.8: Factors related to the speaker..................................................................29
Table 3.9: Factors related to the listener..................................................................31
Table 3.10: Factors related to physical settings.......................................................33

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CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY
1.1. Rationale
In the context that globalization is spreading its influence, the importance of
English is undeniable and neglected because it is widely used in all corners of the
world, not only in English-speaking countries. In fact, English became a global
language for most countries to communicate and trade in every industry and sector,
which leads English fluency to be required for employees. In that context, the
emphasis on teaching and learning English is focused in all education systems,
which allows students to obtain knowledge from a number of foreign materials and
meet the fundamental requirement of the global labor market as well.
For the Vietnamese education system, an English certificate nowadays is
regarded as a compulsory standard for most Vietnamese students’ graduation to
ensure a quality workforce for the country to integrate with international trade. For
that reason, learning English is of extreme necessity for Vietnamese learners to
contribute, renovate and develop the country and improve the image of the country
worldwide as well.
Out of the most important skills when learning foreign languages, including
English language, listening skill is the most important one. Listening helps people
receive information to enhance people’s understanding. In communication, listening
account for a majority of communication time, which allows listeners to understand
others’ thinking to solve problems, and to have appropriate behavior. As a result, it
can be advised that improvement of listening skills will boost learners’ English
proficiency.

Although the importance of English listening skills is undeniable, many
students (and even teachers) often fail to devote enough attention to listening, which
leads English learners to find listening hard to grasp. They then have to take plenty
of time to improve their English listening skills. When practicing listening to
English with videos, for example, many people only listen once without spending
their time listening to them many times and studying the videos. Not having a
strategy to practice listening to English causes people to give up listening when they


find themselves not improving. Therefore, many English learners express their
desire to access an effective method to improve their English listening skills.
In Vietnam in particular, instead of teaching students four English skills,
middle and high schools often put emphasis on vocabulary, grammar, and sentence
structures. Because of that, a part of English-majored freshman at Thuong Mai
University are still confused with learning to listen to English in the class and find it
difficult to grasp. This study will indicate factors affecting the English listening skill
of first-year Business English- majored students at TMU. The method of practicing
listening English then will be suggested with the aim of helping TMU’s students
have a clear strategy to practice English listening skills right from the time they
were freshmen to make progress after a four-year course. Having an excellent
English listening skill will have a gorgeous impact on other English skills, which
helps first-year students of the English Faculty at TMU be a confident generation of
employees in the future. These are the reasons why I would like to carry out this
study to help the first-year English students find the recommendation for the issues.
1.2. Previous studies
Listening skill is a vital skill for language learners to gain mastery of
language. Therefore, it is understandable when there have been a number of
Vietnamese and foreign researchers choosing English listening skills as a research
topic. Before getting up to study “Factors affecting the English listening skill of
first-year Business English-majored students at Thuong Mai University”, I will

review some of the previous studies related to this topic.
1.2.1. Studies Abroad
The thesis with the topic “A study of factors affecting EFL learners’ English
listening comprehension and the strategies for improvement” by Abbas Pourhosein
Gilakjani and Mohammad Reza Ahmadi in 2011 indicated listening comprehension
problems of EFL learners and teaching methods and teaching listening activities
used by teachers. The author bases on Underwood’s theory to show seven potential
obstacles to efficient listening comprehension. Firstly, listeners cannot control the
speed of delivery. Secondly, listeners cannot always have words repeated. Thirdly,
listeners have a limited vocabulary. Fourthly, listeners may fail to recognize signals


when speakers move from one point to another. Fifthly, listeners lack contextual
knowledge. Next, listeners find it difficult to concentrate on listening. Finally,
listeners may have certain learning habits. The study then suggests several
approaches to English listening comprehension teaching for EFL learners.
The second study abroad about English listening skills that I refer to is “A
study on listening skills and perspective to first-year students at English
Department of the Academic year 2015- 2016” by Sitti Hadijah, Kata Kunci,
Kemampuan Menyimak, Dan Perspektif in 2016. This study aims to gather
information about the students’ challenges in English listening activities, their
perspectives on English listening subjects and positive factors on the students’
success in listening. The findings of this study revealed that the students faced
problems in English listening skills in the test. Furthermore, most of them
considered that the listening classes are challenging for them due to some problems
and difficulties during the teaching and learning activities. Moreover, the study
summed up five main factors influenced the students’ listening skill. In addition, the
students realized the importance of listening activities, but assistance from the
teachers and some other students were still needed during teaching and learning
activities. It concluded that having an excellent English listening skill still appeared

as a challenge for the first-year students of the English Department.
1.2.2. Studies in Viet Nam
The first study in Viet Nam that I am interested in is “Improving Foreignservice Officials’ Listening Comprehension Abilities in English for International
Relations” by Kieu Thi Thu Huong in 2014. The aim of this study is to find out the
status of English listening level specialized international relations of foreign-service
officials, to discover influencing factors to learning to listen, and offer some
potential solutions for this issue. The findings of this study show that very few
foreign-service officials practice English listening with a regular degree although
they realized that this skill directly affects the quality of their work. The internal and
external challenges that they encountered are then listed in this study.
The second study “Enhancing EPU first-year students’ listening skills by
using Podcasts in the classroom” by Nguyen Thi Nguyet Minh, Electric Power


University in 2019 illustrates that the method of teaching listening comprehension
with Podcasts is much more effective than traditional teaching methods with board
and chalk. The study reaffirms the effectiveness of the application of information
technology in foreign language teaching and learning and shows that the use of
Podcasts in the classroom improves learning outcomes, increases motivation for
students to learn English. Teaching English listening with Podcasts improves
students’ listening comprehension skills because this technology provides English
learners with a diverse resource of material, stimulates the students’ interest in
learning English. The author then highlights few strong points that need to notice
when using Podcasts to have a great result.
Another study which provides me more insight about factors affecting English
listening skill is “Factors affecting English listening comprehension: Perceptions of
English- major students at Ho Chi Minh City University of Food Industry” by
Nguyen Thi Xuyen, 2018. From the beginning of the thesis, the author clearly
shows the significance of listening skills in learning a language as well as in a reallife through affirmations of prestigious researchers. From pointing out problems
related to listening comprehension skills, the author indicates the factors that affect

English-major students of HUFI through her observations and experiences. The
author has read and researched more than ten different studies to show that the
factors affecting English listening skills are classified in different ways. Each
classification method covers most of the factors that need concerned. Finally, the
author chooses to classify the factors based on five aspects: listening text, linguistic
features, speaker, listener, and physical settings. Collected data are analyzed very
clearly, which makes a noticeable contribution to the implication of the study.
1.3. Aims of the study
The study is carried out with the following aims:
First of all, the factors influencing the English listening skill of Business
English-majored freshmen at TMU would be figured out and in this study.
Secondly, the study would like to recommend several strategies of practicing
English listening for first-year Business English-majored students at TMU from the
most influential factors.


Finally, this study would be valuable for first-year Business English-majored
students at TMU University to improve their English skills.
1.4. Research subjects
Based on the rationale and the aims of the study, the subject of this study is
“Factors affecting the English listening skill of first-year Business Englishmajored students at Thuong Mai University”.
1.5. Scope of the study
A large proportion of second and foreign language research findings indicated
that listening is the most important skill for language learning because it is the most
widely used language skill in normal daily life (Morley, 2001; Rost, 2001). This is
the reason why I choose “Factors affecting the English listening skill of first-year
Business English-majored students at Thuong Mai University” as my topic for
this study. There are many students encountering listening challenges while my
researching time is limited. Therefore, this study was completed with the
participation of first-year Business English-majored students at TMU. With the aim

of proposing several solutions to improve the English listening skill for first-year
Business English-majored students, the study is expected to be useful for freshmen
of English Faculty at TMU in particular, and all English learner in general.
1.6. Organization of the study
This study includes four parts as follows:


Chapter 1: The overview of the study shows the rationale, the aim of the

study, the research subjects, the scope of the study, the research methodology, and
the structure of the study.


Chapter 2: The literature review gives the background knowledge relevant

to the topic of the study.


Chapter 3: Research findings include data analysis from the survey

questionnaire, data evaluation, and the result of the study.


Chapter 4: Recommendations and suggestions for improving English

listening skill of Business English majored- freshmen at TMU.


CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1. Definition of listening

Listening is defined in different ways by many resources and researchers.
According to Wikipedia: “To listen is to give attention to sound or action. When
listening, one is hearing what others are saying, and trying to understand what it
means.” Underwood (1989) defines listening in a similar way: “the activity of
paying attention to and trying to get meaning spoken language of native speakers.”
According to the website skillsyouneed.com: “listening is not the same as
hearing. Hearing refers to the sounds that enter your ears. It is a physical process
that, provided you do not have any hearing problems, happens automatically.
Listening, however, requires more than that: it requires focus and concentrated
effort, both mental and sometimes physical as well.”
O’Malley Chamot, and Kupper (1989) offer a useful definition of listening:
“listening comprehension is an active and conscious process in which the listener
construct meaning by using cues from contextual information and from existing
knowledge, while relying upon multiple strategic resources to fulfill the task
requirement.”
Mendelsohn (1994) also underlines the listener’s ability to catch the speakers’
idea: “In listening to spoken language, the ability to decipher speaker’s intention is
required of a competent listener, in addition to other abilities such as processing the
linguistics forms like speech 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.”
Thomlison (1984)’s definition of listening includes “active listening”, which
goes beyond comprehending as understanding the message content, to
comprehension as an act of empathetic understanding of the speaker. In addition,
Gordon (1985) argues that empathy is vital to listening and contends that it is
more than a polite attempt to identify a speaker’s perspectives. More than
importantly, empathetic understanding expands to “egocentric prosocial behavior”.

To sum up, “listening is a key to all effective communication. Without the
ability to listen effectively, messages are easily misunderstood. As a result,
communication breaks down and the sender of the message can easily become
frustrated or irritated”, the website skillsyouneed.com.
2.2. Classification of listening
According to Wikipedia, there are six different types of listening skills used in
human communication: active listening, appreciative listening, dialogic listening,
informative listening, reflective listening, and workplace listening.
Active listening is a technique used in counseling, training, and solving
disputes or conflicts. It requires the listener to fully concentrate, understand,
respond and then remember what is being said. Dialogic listening is an alternative
to active listening, in which two parties exchange ideas while listening, then create
a relation.
Appreciative listening is a type of listening behavior where the listener seeks
certain information which they will appreciate, and meet his/her needs and goals.
People use this type of listening when listening to music, poetry, radios, or a speech.
Appreciate listening does not reply to the message from the speaker it is how one
responds as a listener.
Unlike appreciate listening, informational listening focuses on the ability of an
individual to understand a speaker’s message. Failing to understand the concept of
informational listening can be very detrimental to one’s quality of life and to their
contribution to society.
Oppose to active listening, reflective listening is where the listener repeats
back to the speaker what they have just heard to confirm understanding of both
parties.
Workplace listening is a type of active listening that is generally employed in a
professional environment. Workplace listening includes understanding and listening
process and its barriers that hamper the flow of that process.
In addition to six main types of listening, some researchers also pointed out
other types of listening such as empathic listening, critical listening, biased

listening, evaluative listening, and relationship listening, so on.


2.3. The significance of English listening skill
Listening skill has a critical role to play in learning languages. It is considered
the most important skill that learners need to acquire when learning languages since
it provides the aural input that serves as the basis for language acquisition and
enables learners to interact in oral communication.
According to Mendelson (1994) “of the total time spent on communicating,
listening takes up 40-50%, speaking 25-30%, reading 11-16% and writing about
9%.” This means that listening account for half of communicating time. In fact,
listening is the first language mode that children acquire. Children often go through
a “silent period” where they don’t say anything when they learn a second language.
During this period, the children’s brain is absorbing information, namely
pronunciation, intonation, word stress. In other words, they are listening to imitate
the voice of the speaker. This theory is proved by Gilbert (1988) while he noted that
students from kindergarten through high school were expected to listen 65-90% of
the time.
Anderson and Lynch (2003) affirm that “we only become aware of that
remarkable feat of listening we achieve when we are in an unfamiliar listening
environment, such as listening to a language in which we have limited proficiency.”
Many people regarded speaking as the first skill need to achieve in language
acquisition. However, to get an excellent speaking skill, the first thing that they
need to learn is to listen. Rost (1994) affirms the importance of listening skills to
other skills: “Listening is considered to be a part of oracy, a capacity to formulate
thought verbally and to communicate with others.”
There are numerous studies indicating the role of listening activity in the
classroom:


“Listening consumes more of daily communication time than other forms

of verbal communication.” Wolvin and Coakey (1988)


“Listening is central to the lives of students throughout all levels of

educational development.” Wolvin and Coakey (1997); Feyten (1991); Wing (1986)


“Listening is the most frequently used language skill in the classroom.”

Ferris, 1998; Murphy, 1991; Vogely, 1998).




Both instructors (Ferris & Tagg, 1996) and students (Ferris, 1998)

acknowledge the importance of listening comprehension for success in academic
settings.
2.4. The process of listening comprehension
There are two fundamental modes of the listening process:

bottom-up

processing and topping-down processing.
Bottom-up processing was introduced by psychologist E.J. Gibson. Bottom-up
processing is activated by the new coming data, which pass from the most specific
at the bottom to the most general at the top. This processing requires listeners to

decode from the smallest meaningful units such as phonemes, sound, vocabularies,
grammatical structures to complete texts. Thus, phonemic units are decoded and
connected together to construct words, words are connected together to construct
phrases, phrases are connected together to construct utterances, and utterances are
connected together to construct complete, meaningful text. The listener has to make
use of “his knowledge of words, syntax, and grammar to work on form” in the
bottom-up processing (Rubin, 1994, p. 210). The bottom-up processing is suitable
for those who are beginning to learn to listen. Because of their limited vocabulary,
they cannot automatically process what they are listening to and understand the
message of the listening record.
In contrast to bottom-up processing, top-down processing requires listeners to
use their background knowledge about a topic to comprehend the meaning of the
message. Background knowledge includes context (context or the topic of the
listening record), or co-text (words that appear before or after a specific word in the
listening record, help learners determine the exact meaning of the word). Carrell
and Eisterhold (1983) state that in top-down processing, the general prediction of
listeners is based on “a higher level, general schemata, and then searches the input
for information to fit into these practically satisfied, higher order schemata”. If the
listener finds the incoming information unfamiliar to him, it cannot arouse his
schemata and he can only heavily depend on his linguistic knowledge. In some
cases, the listener can trigger schemata, however, it is not what the speaker
expected. Hence, the listening process may result in failure. This processing is


suitable for English learners the intermediate level or higher. Because they a certain
amount of vocabulary, they can hear and understand the message of the listening
record. In contrast, if the learners’ ability is limited to a few basic words, only their
background knowledge cannot help them to understand the listening record.
2.5. Factors affecting English listening skill of first-year Business Englishmajored students at Thuong Mai University
There have been a significant number of factors affecting English listening

skills. In this thesis, I classify the factors affecting the English listening skill of firstyear Business English-majored students at Thuong Mai University in five
categories: factors related to listening texts, factors related to linguistic features,
factors related to the speaker, factors related to the listener, factors related to
physical settings.
2.5.1. Factors related to listening texts
Factors related to listening texts consist of four main factors: vocabulary,
grammar structure, the topic of the text, and the length of the text.
According to Grabe (1991), vocabulary development is an important factor
contributing to language acquisition. The lack of vocabulary is a major obstacle for
students in learning English in general and listening skills in particular. In fact, the
listening texts often contain a series of specialized vocabulary related to their topic,
contributing to increasing the depth of the content. Let’s try to read an article in a
magazine, readers will see many units of words connected together to create the
main content of the article. If the listening text contains a large number of new
words that you have never seen or heard, you will feel confused in understanding
the passage. You would not even want to continue listening if the next paragraph
contains relevant words.
Similar to vocabulary, the grammatical structure also plays a critical role in
creating a meaningful sentence. Language knowledge is the foundation of learning
English. It would be probable that their English listening comprehension would be
improved if students are very clear about vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation. The
English grammatical structure is completely different from that in the native
language of Vietnamese. It’s necessary for learners to distinguish main clauses from


subordinate clauses in a complex sentence as well as understand the relationships of
them. Reduced sentences in English sometimes make it difficult for learners to
understand even though they totally understand the meaning of single words. It
would be much more difficult to understand the listening text if the listener does not
know how different words come together.

The topic of the listening text also has a noticeable role to play in the learner’s
understanding. Yagan, F (1993) states that “The listening material may deal with
almost any area of life. It might include street gossip, proverbs, and situation
unfamiliar to the students, also in a spontaneous conversation speakers change
topics.” Students can predict the meaning of new words if the topic is familiar to
them while there are no clues for prediction if it is a strange subject. The familiarity
of the content would reduce the level of difficulty.
Too long listening texts sometimes try listeners’ patience. In some cases,
listeners will feel that they have to struggle to listen, not enjoy listening.
2.5.2. Factors related to linguistic features
Linguistics features are claimed to contribute noticeably to the learners’ level
of English listening skill.
The most basic outward shell of language is pronunciation and intonation.
Like a child learning to speak, to understand the meaning of a word, your brain will
approach the pronunciation of that word first. Therefore, the knowledge of
pronunciation must be developed. It takes plenty of time for your ears to become
familiar with the pronunciation of a foreign language, therefore, sometimes you still
have trouble listening to familiar words. Learners may find the pronunciation of a
word familiar but they cannot recognize the word because the pronunciation is
played differently by people in different regions.
In almost any language, there is a tendency for different sounds to be reduced
or to be merged. As found by Bloomfield (2010), “the pronunciation of words may
also differ greatly from the way they appear in print”. If listeners are not used to
hearing connected speech, linking sounds, or swallowing sounds, they would take
much longer time to decipher the ongoing stream of speech.


In addition, slangs and idiomatic expressions are another type of new words
which interfere with English learners’ listening comprehension.
2.5.3. Factors related to the speaker

How the speaker speaks has a direct influence on the quality of listeners’
listening comprehension. This group of factors includes four main items namely the
speaker’s pronunciation, the speed of delivery, the speaker’s accent and pauses.
The first thing that needs to consider is the speaker’s pronunciation.
Pronunciation and forms of connected speech are used in distinctive ways by
different people. Elements consisting of accommodation, intonation, juncture,
elision, liaison, and others affect pronunciation and speech pattern on an individual
basis. As a result, if the speaker pronounces unclearly, listeners’ listening
comprehension can be noticeably impacted. In another case, while the listener finds
their pronunciation different from the speaker’s, they cannot understand what the
speaker says.
Furthermore, people coming from different regions have different accents
because English nowadays is used as the primary language in the world. As stated
by Goh (1999), 66% of English learners mentioned speakers’ accent as one of the
most significant factors that affect listeners’ listening comprehension. Scottish and
Indian speakers have a tendency to possess a strong accent and speak quickly, while
British and American people often talk very slowly and much more monotonously.
Among which, American English is considered the most popular and easiest accent
for listeners to practice listening. In contrast, it would be difficult for the listener to
understand the text if the speaker uses various accents.
Especially, for most English beginners, high-speed speaking is always an
obsession for them when listening to English. They find it hard to catch up with
what is playing. When moving from one point to another, it would be better for
listeners to follow if the speaker has some signals.


2.5.4. Factor related to listener
In order to improve listening comprehension, the listeners need to spend
plenty of time listening to people or recordings. Listeners often find it difficult to
catch keywords, predict the meaning of new words, or take notes when they

encounter a long sentence. The more they practice listening, the faster you can boost
their listening skills.
Before English learners start listening practice, they need to have a listening
strategy suitable for them, which will guide them on the right way. A good listening
strategy will help learners save time and achieve their target more quickly.
Moreover, the topic in the context is the socio-cultural, factual, or contextual
knowledge of the target language. This background knowledge can be an obstacle to
listening comprehension. According to Anderson, Lynch (1988, 35) “Gaps in our
knowledge of the culture, of the associations and references available to native
users, can present obstacles to comprehension.”
During listening, learners may encounter many things in their mind which
interfere with their listening comprehension. They may lose concentration when
they think about the meaning of new words, think of another question, or the text is
too long. Anderson and Lynch (1988) present the role of attention in the listening
performance: “a well-listening performance is affected by the degree of students’
attention towards the input.” Especially, if the topic of the text does not appeal to
them, English learners would not pay attention to listening.
2.5.5. Factors related to physical setting
Factors related to physical setting can be quality of equipment, noise around
where the learner practices listening, or lack of visual clues such as image, slide,
video, etc. The quality of listening comprehension must be immensely impacted if
the loudspeaker or the radio is poor-quality. In addition, noise from another
conversation, the smartphone, or TV will make listeners distracted, then they will
miss the main points of the listening text. While some people are used to listening
without visual clues, other’s listening comprehension is heavily affected by visual
support.


CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH FINDINGS
3.1. Methodology

3.1.1. Research methodology
To achieve the most objective results, the researcher decided to use both
research methods in this study: Quantitative and Qualitative. The study is completed
with the following steps:


Searching some necessary documents related to listening skill on the

Internets (included magazines, e-books, blogs, and the websites of English teaching
organizations)


Reviewing some previous study abroad and in Viet Nam on English

listening skills to find my own approaches.


Conducting a questionnaire for a survey for the first-year students of

English Faculty at TMU. The survey is completed with the participation of 80
English- majored freshmen at TMU.


After getting data from the questionnaire, the researcher analyzed and

evaluated the data based on bars and charts.
3.1.2. Research question
The research aims to answer these three questions:


The first question: Which factors affect the English listening skill of first-

year English-majored students at TMU?


The second question: Which is the most influential factor?



The third question: How to improve the English listening skill of first-year

English-majored students at TMU?
3.1.3. Participants
This study is carried out with the participation of 80 first-year students of the
English Faculty at TMU. The study was conducted at the end of the second
semester 2020- 2021 after all participants finished the subject called “Listening
Skill”. All participants completed the questionnaire survey via the Internet,
therefore the findings are trustworthy and reliable.


3.1.4. Data collection instrument
According to Saul McLeod (2018): “A questionnaire is a research instrument
consisting of a series of questions for the purpose of gathering information
respondents. Questionnaires can be thought of as a kind of written interview. They
can be carried out face to face, by telephone, computer or post.” He extends his
opinion: “Questionnaires can be an effective means of measuring the behavior,
attitudes, preferences, opinions and intentions of relatively large numbers of
subjects more cheaply and quickly than other methods. Often a questionnaire uses
both open and closed questions to collect data. This is beneficial as it means both
quantitative and qualitative da can be obtained.”

Because of its advantages, the researcher decided to apply a questionnaire to
access information about student’s perception of the significance of the English
listening skill, the status of learning this skill of freshmen at the English Faculty of
TMU, as well as the factors affecting their English listening skill.
The questionnaire includes three main sections. Section one consists of 5
questions which are about how students perceive the role of English listening skill
and what they learn this skill for. Section two contains 7 questions with 2
checkboxes questions and 3 yes/ no questions, which is used to collect data about
how students practice their English listening skills. Section 3 includes 27 questions
grouped into 6 categories: Factors related to the listening text (4 items), factors
related to linguistic features (4 items), factors related to the speaker (5 items),
factors related to the listener (6 items), factors related to physical settings (3 items),
and the most influential factor (5 items). The questionnaire uses multiple-choice
grid with the answers ranged from not influential, minor influential, partly
influential, mostly influential to totally influential. Each participant is asked to
choose one in this range to illustrate how the factors influence their English
listening skill.
Both opened and closed questions are designed to collect the most objective
answer. The implementation of the questionnaire over the Internet helps to obtain
data accurately, quickly, and easily.


3.1.5. Data collection procedures
Data needs to be collected from the right subjects: the first-year students of the
English Faculty at TMU. Also, data need to be ensured accuracy, objectivity, and
sufficient quantity. To meet these requirements, the researcher decided to apply a
random sampling procedure in the survey questionnaire. The collection procedures
include the following steps:
 Designing the questionnaire: The questionnaire is designed based on the
common problems that students often encounter when learning a language in

general and in English in particular. There are four sections in this questionnaire:
Students’ perception of the significance of the English listening skill, how students
practice their English listening skills, factors affecting students’ English listening
skills, and private information. A total of 28 questions are designed with many
different formats so that the participants have many ways to answer without
boredom.
 Elaborating questionnaire: This questionnaire is inherently based on the
researcher’s experience and knowledge about the common listening problems when
learning English. Therefore, the researcher is most appreciative of the suggestions
and advice from the lecturer, my friends, and students who are freshmen of the
English Faculty at TMU.
 Collecting data: The questionnaire will be set up on Google form- an
application that allows users to design their own questions based on the available
question formats. After finishing design this questionnaire survey, the researcher
gets a link to this survey, then sends it to those who are first-year students of the
English Faculty at TMU. To obtain the most objective result, the researcher will ask
the participants to pay attention and give honest answers to each question. The
collected data would be automatically summarized in the form of bars, charts.
3.2. Data Analysis
3.2.1. General information
The study is conducted with the participation of 80 first-year students of the
English Faculty at TMU. All of them are the 56th generation student of the
university, taking classes from N1 to N6. They all have different levels of English


and time of learning English, which leads to the research result collected from them
being diverse, objective, and trusty.
3.2.2. The perception of significance of English listening skill
This part is analyzed based on the answers to questions 1 to 6 in part one. It
shows the information about how the first-year students of English faculty at TMU

perceive the role of the English listening skill.

Chart 3.1: The period of time the students have been studying English.
This pie chart shows the difference in the period that Business Englishmajored freshmen at TMU have been studying English. A half of the students spent
more than 10 years to learn and practice English skills. 23.8% of students have been
studying English 7- years, 20% for from 3-7 years and 5% for less than 3 years.
Studying at English Faculty requires students a background knowledge about
English and the nature of language learning, which causes such a large number of
students who have been studying for a long time.
In the 2 next questions, students were asked to rank the importance of English
listening skill and its difficulty compared to other English skills in order form the
most and least. The number of votes for each skill would be converted to a
percentage to get an overall ranking based on the number of points that the skill has.
The number of votes at the 1st place would be given 4 points while the number of
votes at the 4th place would be worth 1 point.


Listening
Percen Votes

Reading
Percen Votes

Speaking
Percen Votes

Writing
Percen Votes

t

t
t
t
1
74%
59
10%
8
75%
60
10%
8
nd
2
24%
19
8%
6
15%
12
19%
15
rd
3
1%
1
42%
34
9%
7

25%
20
th
4
1%
1
40%
32
1%
1
46%
37
Total
100%
80
100%
80
100%
80
100%
80
Table 3.1: The importance of four English skills evaluated by the first-year Business
English-majored students at TMU.
st

35%

33%

33%

30%
25%
20%

17%

17%

15%
10%
5%
0%

Listening

Reading

Speaking

Writing

Chart 3.2: Overall ranking of the importance of four English skills.
The data shows the importance of four English skills ranked by first-year
Business English-majored students at TMU. 74% of students believed that listening
is the most vital skill among the four English skills, which equaled the figure for
speaking skill. In contrast, only 10% of students evaluated reading and writing as
the two most important skills in English acquisition. Reading skill is placed in the
third place when 42% of students believing it to be necessary but not as important
as speaking skills and listening skills. Writing skill, in particular, seems to be the

most neglected skill when 46% which is nearly half of the participating students
evaluating it to be the least important skill. As a result, both speaking and listening
skills are placed in the first position in the overall ranking, at 33% each, meanwhile,
both reading and writing skills are so far behind the two other skills, at 17% each.


Thanks to the statistical data, we can conclude that most first-year students of the
English Faculty at TMU are aware of the importance of improving their English
listening skills.
Listening
Percen Votes

Reading
Percen Votes

Speaking
Percen Votes

Writing
Percen Votes

t
t
t
t
1
31%
25
1%
1

74%
59
26%
21
2nd
34%
27
4%
3
13%
10
33%
26
rd
3
27%
22
12%
10
12%
10
25%
20
th
4
8%
6
83%
66
1%

1
16%
13
Total
100%
80
100%
80
100%
80
100%
80
Table 3.2: The difficulty of four English skills evaluated by the first-year Business
English-majored students at TMU.
st

40%
34%

35%
30%

28%

26%

25%
20%
15%

12%

10%
5%
0%

Listening

Reading

Speaking

Writing

Chart 3.3: Overall ranking of the difficulty of four English skills.
According to the data from table 3.2, most first-year Business English-majored
students at TMU have trouble with the speaking skill while learning English with
only 74% of them believed it to be the most difficult skill. Meanwhile, almost no
one thought that reading is the most difficult skill to learn with only 1% of voters. It
can be explained by the fact that there are many mental obstacles encountered by
students when practicing speaking a foreign language in general and the English
language in particular. Also, English learners have to have a good command of the
English language in order to make a meaningful conversation. Meanwhile, to be
good at reading English texts, English learners nowadays are equipped with many