The reasons that English language students are weak in listening comprehension skills

THE REASONS THAT ENGLISH LANGUAGE STUDENTS ARE
WEAK IN LISTENING COMPREHENSION SKILLS
Nguyễn Thị Minh Tâm, Nguyễn Tường Ví, Nguyễn Duy Khánh, Lê Sĩ Ngọc Hiền
HUTECH Institute of International Education, HUTECH University, Vietnam.
Instructor: MA. Nguyễn Vũ Thanh Phương

Abstract
There are some concerns about the background knowledge of English language students, especially about their
listening comprehension skills (Bakhtiarvand & Adinevand, 2011). Studies show that today’s students are
facing many difficulties in listening comprehension and it affects their listening skill test (Chau, 2018). This
study aims to clarify the reasons English language students are weak in listening comprehension skills in
identifying listening and listening comprehension terms, reviewing and posing listening comprehension
problems, then surveyed students at Hutech Institute of International Education, Ho Chi Minh City University
of Technology- HUTECH. Finally, the survey concludes with the most prominent issues affecting Listening
Comprehension in their listening exam.
Keywords: problems, factors, listening comprehension, listening skill, listening exam, English major,
HUTECH.
Introduction
The English language includes listening, speaking, reading and writing skills. For students majoring in the
English language, mastery of all four skills is essential. According to a number of reports and studies, currently,
listening comprehension skills are considered as prerequisite skills for the remaining three skills (Reiss et al.,
1983). In a similar position, Gilakjani claims that English listening comprehension is a necessary skill for
college students. However, this competence is considered quite difficult for linguistic learners. According to
the survey, plenty of linguistic students from freshman to third-year at Institute of International Education, Ho
Chi Minh City University of Technology- HUTECH have significant problems and barriers to English listening
comprehension. This affects the ability to acquire knowledge from specialized subjects. Our research is aimed
at understanding and determining the causes of students' weak listening comprehension skill, therefore, some
solutions for the above causes. The identified causes that negatively affect the listening comprehension of
language learners are analyzed based on theoretical bases.
In this article, important issues related to the listening comprehension ability of HUTECH Institute of
International Education students will be considered. Based on the available theories and methods, this study

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identifies the terms listening and listening comprehension, explains the problem components of the listening
comprehension process based on the survey's parameters, thus, in the last it gives conclusions about listening
comprehension in listening exams for HUTECH students.
Theoretical framework
Listening
According to research papers by Pourhosein Gilakjani & Sabouri in 2016 and Rost in 2009, listening is a series
of positive mental activities including auditory discrimination, sound grammar, selection of essential
information, memorization and connection it with the process between sound and form of meaning.
Listening Comprehension
There are various reports and documents that define the term "Comprehension". According to Nadig (2013)
"listening comprehension" includes distinguishing speech sounds, understanding the meaning of each word,
and understanding the syntax of sentences. Hamouda (2013) states that this is a matter of understanding what
the listener has heard and their ability to repeat the text despite the fact that the listener can repeat the sound
without actually listening comprehension.
Listening Comprehension Problems
Psychology
Underwood (1989) said that there are some causes of obstruction to effective listening comprehension. First,
the listeners lack control of the speed of a speaker. Underwood claimed, "many English language learners
believe that the greatest difficulty with listening comprehension is that the listener cannot control how quickly
a speaker speaks". Second, the listener may fail to recognize the pronunciation. According to Lund (1991, p.
201) “listening comprehension exists in time, rather than space – it is ephemeral in nature” and that “the sound
system of the second language poses a significant problem”. English learners can face a difference between
sound and spell, which is a difference between the spoken and written form of words. (Osada, N,2004). Third,
listeners do not have enough vocabulary; according to Osada (2004) said, “listeners who do not know all the
vocabulary used by the speaker, listening can be very stressful as they usually start thinking about the meaning
and as a result of this they miss the following information”. Fourth, the listeners are not familiar with the
contextual and background knowledge of the speaker’s experience such as indigenous speech or technical

terms. In particular, if the listeners only understand the surface meaning of the context, it may be difficult to
comprehend the whole meaning of the message (Underwood, 1989; Ur, P.,1984).
Environment and physical

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Besides the effects coming from psychology and physics, the listening skill is also influenced by environmental
life, which contains both elements above. In the research named “Influence of Environments on the English
Learning of Students in India”, Dr. Shruti Agarwal and Ram Krishan Thakur (2014) pointed out that
environment is a complex concept that is able to affect the external of humans, and from thence it performs the
thinking internallIn this study, we use environmental factors such as noise, external influences, and school
education as problems that make HUTECH language students weak in listening.
Last researches
Based on all theories from the latest research relating to listening comprehension, the conclusion is that many
different factors influence listening comprehension. Although there were various methodology studies, Nadig
(2013) and Hamouda (2013) concluded that notwithstanding what the reasons are, the listening ability is
dominated by both internal and external. Usually, the problem, starting with the interior, commonly relates to
the psychology of learners, and the studies of (Underwood, 1989), Lund (1991), Osada, N (2004) have proved
this. On the other hand, the study of Dr. Shruti Agarwal and Ram Krishan Thakur (2014) mentioned that the
impact of the environment, which regards the external factor, also be able to dominate and limit the listening
comprehension of learners. Our research was performed based on available theories to find the reasons and
contribute to the method, which helps to improve the listening skill of non-EFL learners.
Methodology
a. Research Setting and Participants
This scientific article is limited to English language students studying at the Institute of International Education,
Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology- HUTECH. There were 44 students, who had been learners of the
English curriculum at HUTECH University and had received English knowledge since grade three,
participating in this research. There are 25 junior students (56,8%), 9 sophomores (20,5%) and 10 first-year
students.

b. Instruments
This study used a closed-ended questionnaire, online and offline survey equipment. Both types of survey have
the same content questionnaire, which 10 items are used to detect students' listening comprehension problems
in the Listening exam. Participants will rate these 10 hypothetical causes on 5 levels of influence, respectively,
0% (Never), 25% (Rarely), 50% (Occasionally), 75% (Usually) and 100% (Always)
c. Data Collection and Analysis
Before conducting data collection, it informed the respondents about the purpose and meaning of the research
paper, then they were explained by our research team on how to fill out the survey questionnaire. For those
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who took the paper survey (offline), they completed the survey in about 10 minutes and returned the answer
sheet. For sophomores and freshmen surveyed on Google Forms, they returned impact results in 5 minutes.
The questionnaires for both methods were similar, descriptive statistics, including frequencies (F) and
percentages (%). The data collected through the survey will be manually entered and calculated by Excel, then
the data table is fed into the WPS application to be exported into the bar chart below. In addition, 3 of the online
survey respondents commented on other problems they encountered in the Listening exam.
d. Questionnaire and result

Table 1: Questionnaire results on the influence of listening comprehension problems.

Table 2: Bar charts describe the parameters of the impact of listening comprehension problems.
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The bar chart, which is based on survey data, describes the frequency of problems in the Listening
Comprehension of 44 HUTECH students. In general, they assumed most problems to be occasional.
In the bar chart, many participants admitted that they sometimes could not recognize all sounds in the listening
passage . However, the number of people who acknowledge the rarity of this problem is also quite high . In
Question 2, no one said that the problem of fast speech never happened to them, so this problem happens and

affects them a lot with 25 people saying it happens occasionally . Meanwhile, online surveys are rare and never
have these problems. In Question 5, external influences sometimes distracted the number of people who
admitted that peaked at 63.64% or 28 people. The reason for weak listening is that of the educational program
they go through. 38.64% of people think it affects them sometimes. The rating levels of those surveyed are also
not quite 50% biased, like the previous ones. The number of people who think that noise from outside factors
always 100% affects their listening comprehension in the Listening exam reaches 25%. To answer this question,
a few online surveyors commented they were really dissatisfied with the noise and expressed their wish to the
research team that the school should improve the audio transmission. Instead of using speakers in the Listening
exam, the school should invest in headphones for candidates.
Conclusion
Based on survey data, issues 3, 5, 7 and 9 are believed to affect most and most frequently most OUM students
when they take the Listening exam. First, they have problems in thinking critically and analyzing information
that leads them to miss the next piece of information (“Chapter 7: Critical Thinking and Evaluating Information
| EDUC 1300: Effective Learning Strategies”, n.d.). Second, extraneous factors sometimes distract them. Third,
noise was found to have the most profound effect on their listening comprehension progress (Yang et al., 2017).
Finally, there is a problem with the content of the listening test, which is said to have too many specialized
words, slang words, and local words.
Something still limited this study for several reasons. First, the size of the paper is still not detailed enough
because of the limitations of time, funding and the experience of the research team. Second, the research team
could not access many sources of theories about EFL Students. Third, the research survey tools used by the
group are not very accurate and not enough to serve this topic. Finally, suggestions for improving the listening
comprehension of OUM and HUTECH students have not been mentioned. In the future, it is appropriate to say
that it should explore this problem in more detail.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The team would like to give special thanks to the Instructor and the participants of this survey. This study and
the figures would not be complete without their wonderful help. We sincerely thank you!
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