(Tiểu luận) graduation thesis find out factors affecting the listening skills by english major sophomore at industrial university of ho chi minh city

MINISTRY OF INDUSTRY AND TRADE
INDUSTRIAL UNIVERSITY OF HO CHI MINH CITY
FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES
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GRADUATION THESIS
STUDENT: LÂM THỊ THU THỦY
CODE:

17023131

CLASS:

DHAV13B

COURSE:

2017 – 2021

SUPERVISOR: NGUYỄN VŨ MẠNH HOÀI, M.A.

HCMC, 5/2020

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MINISTRY OF INDUSTRY AND TRADE

INDUSTRIAL UNIVERSITY OF HO CHI MINH CITY
FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES
------

Student’s name : LÂM THỊ THU THỦY.....................................................................
Student’s ID

:17023131............................................................................................

Class

:DHAV13B..........................................................................................

Course

:2017-2021...........................................................................................

Student’s declaration: I declare that this graduation report is my own work and
does not involve in plagiarism or collusion. I accept heavy penalty for any
cheating or plagiarism.

Date submitted : ....................................................................................................
Signed
Word count

: ....................................................................................................
: .............................................................................................

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Firstly, I would like to say thank the Faculty of Foreign Languages at the Industrial University
of Ho Chi Minh City for generating chances for me to know how to work on the final
proposal.
Secondly, I am sincerely grateful to Mrs. Nguyen Vu Manh Hoai who instructed me on how
to do the Final Proposal. He spent most of his own spare time focusing on our group study,
gave me sincere suggestions, and comments that supported my product is more reliable and
valid. Thanks to his help, I feel my knowledge of English richer and larger.
Thirdly, I would like to say thank you to my peers, who worked with me and always gave me
heartfelt suggestions when I got problems during completing the final proposal.
Last but not least, I would like to express my great appreciation to my parents who always
take
care of me and give me the strong power to do everything.
In brief, I want to thank all people who gave me the power to overcome obstacles and let me
get the final step of graduation.

Title: Find out factors affecting the listening skills by English major sophomore at

Industrial University of Ho Chi Minh City
ABSTRACT
The purpose of this study was to Find out factors affecting the listening skills by English
major sophomore at Industrial University of Ho Chi Minh City. The quantitative was utilized

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in which there were certain tools were employed encompassing questionnaires in this research
paper. The participants of this study were 85 students of sophomor. The findings clearly show
that there were some mainly factors affecting listening skill including :limited vocabulary,
linguistic challenges, the inability to concentrate. As well as the solution to each of the
proposed causes such as practice listening every single day through English films, English
songs; enhance the vocabulary by reading English document.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT
Pag
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1. 1. RATIONALE:..........................................................................................................................2
1.2. RESEARCH OBJECTIVES:....................................................................................................2
1.3. RESEARCH QUESTION:.......................................................................................................3

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1.4. SCOPE OF THE STUDY.........................................................................................................6
CHAPTER 2:LITERATURE REVIEW..........................................................................................7
2.1. OVERVIEW OF LISTENING.................................................................................................8

2.1.1. Definition of listening ...........................................................................................................9
2.1.2. The importance of listening skill.........................................................................................10
2.1.3. Factors affecting English listening .......................................................................................9
2.2. RESULT OF PREVIOUS STUDIES........................................................................................8
2.2.1……………….........................................................................................................................9
2.1.2. ………...................................................................................................................................9
2.1.3………….................................................................................................................................9
2.1.4……….....................................................................................................................................9
CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH DESIGN...........................................................................................12
3.1. RESEARCH SITE..................................................................................................................13
3.2.PARTICIPANTS......................................................................................................................13
3.3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AND RESEARCH METHODP......................................143
3.4. PROCEDURES......................................................................................................................13
3.5.DATA ANALYSIS...................................................................................................................13
CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION...........................................................................14
4.1. RESEARCH FINDINGS........................................................................................................15
4.1.1. General information.............................................................................................................16
4.1.2. Factors affecting listening skill ...........................................................................................16
4.1.3. Method and strategies in learning listening skill ................................................................16
4.1.4. Suggest solFactors affecting listening skill ........................................................................16
4.2. RESEARCH DISCUSSION...................................................................................................15
4.1.1. The real state of learning listening skill by English major sophomore at

Industrial University of Ho Chi Minh City………………………………………………16
4.1.2. Factors that affected on listening skill……………………………………………………………….. 16
4.1.3. The strategies in learning listening skill……………………………………. 16
4.1.4. Recommendations................................................................................................................16
CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION......................................................................................................17
5.1. SYNTHESIS OF RESEARCH...............................................................................................18
5.2. SUGGEST SOLUTION........................................................................................................18

APPENDICES

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Submitted by: Lâm Thị Thu Thủy

ID number: 17023131

CHAPTER 1:
INTRODUCTION

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1.1 Rationale
Nowadays, listening skill plays an essential role in learning language. However, it is
also the most challenge for English major learner. Because of the complexity and the
subtle nature of listening to a second foreign language.
As a researcher, I would like to present the thesis “Find out factors affecting the
listening skill by English major sophomore at Industrial University of Ho Chi
Minh City”
Listening is one of the four language skills and of the two receptive skills. It is an
essential skill that we use in our day to day lives. Listening entails recognizing voice
patterns and converting them into phrases and sentences. When we listen, our ears pick
up individual sounds (letters, stress, rhythm, and pauses), which our brain then
translates into signals that we understand. Listening also has a major role in the
academic circumstances. Listening and reading skills are also help learners absorb
information through what they read or listen. However, when reading, learners can
easily grasp information by underline key word or back to the text for clearly
understanding, which a listener can not do it in most listening context such as
discussion or Tv programme...
In addition, listening is one of the most significant ways that people communicate their
thoughts and ideals to each other. To become a fluent speaker in English, you need to
develop strong listening skills. Listening not only allows you to comprehend what
others are talking to you. It also makes it easier to communicate with others. It helps
you how to correctly pronounce phrases, how to use intonation, and where to put
emphasis in words and sentences.
Therefore, the researcher decided to deeply work on this investigation in order to make
a contribution to the improvement in learning listening skill of students.
1.2 Research Objectives
Firstly, the study is carried out in order to survey the state of learning listening skill by
English major sophomore at Industrial University of Ho Chi Minh City so that find out
the reasons for those difficulties.

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Secondly, I would like to help students find out factors that effecting directly and
indirectly on listening skill.
Finally, because of difficulties,the majority of students are not interested in learning
listening skills, so that this study gives some suggestions for effective listening.
1.3 Research Questions
1. What are the real state of learning English listening skill for English major
sophomore at IUH?
2. What are the casual factors that English-majored sophomores made in their
listening?
3. What are strategies and suggest some solutions to improve their English listening
skill?
1.4 Scope of the study
The study about factors affecting the listening skills by English major sophomore at
IUH. Because of the limited time and understanding, research cannot cover all the

difficulties students face in listening skills.It only focus on common difficult that
student get in listening skill.

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Chapter 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

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2.1. Overview of listening
2.1.1.Definition of listening
Listening is one of the most important skill. Through the listening people can speak what they
want to say.Listening as a language bridge that using in communication. In the eyes of many
researchers and learners of English, listening is complex and active mental process that
involves perception, attention, cognition, and memory. So, the term “Listening” has defined
by different authors.
Howatt and Dakin (1974) stated listening is the ability to identify and understand what others
are saying. This involves understanding a speaker’s accent or pronunciation, his grammar and
his vocabulary, and grasping his meaning.
According to Postovsky (1975), listening differs in meaning from sound discrimination to
aural comprehension. Pearson (1983) stated “Listening involves the simultaneous
organization and Combination of skills in Phonology, Syntax, Semantics, and knowledge of
the text structure, all of which seem to be controlled by the cognitive process. Thus it can be
said that though not fully realized, the listening skill is essential in acquiring language
proficiency”.
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Goss (1982) defined listening as a process of understanding what is heard and organizing it
into lexical elements to which meaning can be allocated. Besides, Bowen et al. (1985)
demonstrated that listening is understanding the oral language. Students hear oral speech,
divide sounds, classify them into lexical and syntactic units, and comprehend the message.
Listening is a process of receiving what the speaker says, making and showing meaning,
negotiating meaning with the speaker and answering, and creating meaning by participation,
creativity, and empathy. Hirsch (1986) gave another definition: "Listening as an aspect of
skills: involves neurological response and interpretations of sounds to understand and to give
meaning by reacting, selecting meaning, remembering, attending, analyzing and Including
previous experience". Bentley and Bacon (1996) stated that listening, an important part of the
second language learning process also has been defined as an active process during which the
listener constructs meaning from oral input. According to Brown (2001), listening is "not
merely the process of unidrectional receiving of audible symbols. He supposed that one aspect
of listening comprehension which is "the psychomotor process of receiving sound waves
through the ear and tansmiltting nerve impulses to the brain". Hence, listening comprises of
three elements: the sender, the message and the listener
As defined by Oxford (1993) listening is a complex problem solving skill and it is more than
just perception of the sounds. Listening includes comprehension of fundamental language
skills. It is a medium through which children, young people and adults gain a large portion of
their information, their understanding of the world and of human affairs, their ideals, sense of
values, and their appreciation.
Scott Shelton defined listening effectively is a demanding and involved process. One must be
able to deal with different accents or pronunciation, unfamiliar lexical items and syntactic
structures, competing background noise, and also make a conscious effort to not 'switch off' or

become distracted while listening. All of this must be achieved and dealt with more or less
simultaneously in order to identify and understand the meaning in any given message.
To summarize, all of the definition are given in order to understand the natural of the listening
capacity, which is needed in the course of learning a native or foreign language. In addition,
the aforementioned concepts of listening comprehension differ to some degree. Listening
comprehension is a complex, unconscious, and unobserved mental operation that develops
spontaneously as part of the language learning process. So, we can say listening is the skill
helping us receive and identify information from others.It plays an important role in
communication helping to connect everyone in the world. It is also a complex skill. Because
listeners have to deal with many different accent . Listening is determining the meaning and
the message of the sound.
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2.1.2. The importance of listening skill
Listening has an important role both in daily life and in academic contexts as it is crucial for
people to sustain effective communication. Listening skill known as receptive skill and make
up 60% all communication. In real life, everyone often listen more than speaking. We can

listen in everywhere, for instance, we listen music , new, listen in conversation, students listen
lecturer teaching. It is clear that listening is the most important vital way to express the feeling
of a conversation in real life. Listening is the first language mode that children acquire. It
provides the foundation for all aspects of language and cognitive development, and it plays a
life-long role in the processes of communication. According to Nord (1980) listening is the
way of acquiring language. Learners will receive information from which to build the
necessary knowledge to use language .Once sufficient knowledge is built, learners can begin
to speak.Listening is the time of observation and learning that provides basic information for
other skills such as speaking and writing. In this, we can see that Nord thinks listening is the
approach to language. Thank to listening , we can exchange as well as receive information
and extend the knowledge about language.
A study by Wilt (1950) finds that people listen 45% of the time they spend communicating.
According to Coakley & Wolvin (1997), listening is the fundamental language skill which is
central to the lives of students throughout all levels of educational development. Listening 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, 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 an crucial role in students’
language developmen. Krashen (1985) argues that people acquire language by understanding
the linguistic information they hear. In other words, language acquisition is achieved mainly
through receiving understandable input and listening ability is the critical component in
achieving understandable language input. According to Oxford (1990), reading, listening,
speaking and writing are four major skills in English study which are closely connected and
interact with each other. It is impossible to communicate if you do not listen well and people
seldom write well without reading. Very often a language user involves in using a
combination of skills. Our ultimate aim is to foster the student’s ability to communicate. If
their listening is poor, it will have a negative effect on the fulfillment of the other
requirements for reading, speaking and writing. Therefore, it is important for teachers to help

students to improve their listening skill.
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In summary, listening is important in foreign language learning since it is used as the main
means of learning at all levels in language learning. Furthermore, listening not only makes
students understand what others are speaking to them, but it also helps them talk clearly to
others.
2.1.3 Factors affecting the English listening
According to Yagang (1994), the problems in listening were accompanied with the four
following factors: the message, the speaker, the listener and the physical setting. Furthermore,
a numbers of research have been carried out to pick out the problem in listening. The
problems were believed to cause by the speech rate, vocabulary and pronunciation (Higgins,
1995). As Flowerdew & Miller (1996) assumed that the problems of the students were for the
speed of delivery, new terminology and concept, difficulty in focusing and the physical
environment.
Rubin (1994) synthesizes the existing research on factors influencing listening comprehension
and identifies five major factors that researchers believe to be the most influential in listening

comprehension: 1) text characteristics such as speech rate, pause phenomena and hesitation,
level of perception, stress and rhythmic patterning perception, L1/L2 difference, syntactic
modifications, redundancy, morphological complexity, word order, discourse markers, and
visual support for texts; 2) interlocutor characteristics such as gender and language
proficiency; 3) task characteristics such as task type; 4) listener characteristics such as
language proficiency level, memory, attention, affect, age, gender, learning disability in L1,
and background knowledge; and 5) process characteristics such as top-down, bottom-up, and
parallel processing, listening strategies, and negotiation of comprehensible input.
Hamouda (2013) studies Saudi students’ problems in listening comprehension and finds out
seven factors, some of which are similar to Underwood (1989). Besides, he indicates that
unclear pronunciation, inability to apply listening strategies, poor knowledge of grammar,
lack of 292 familiarity with the topic, and the length and difficulty of listening materials are
among the factors that hinder listening comprehension most.
Quyen and Dan (2018) investigate first-year English major students at some universities in
Mekong Delta and they state that students have to face lots of difficulties while learning
listening comprehension. These main problems are related to listening materials, linguistic
features, listening process, speakers, listeners, psychological characteristics and lack of
concentration. They also claim that unfamiliar vocabularies, pronunciation and accent of
speakers, the effect of tape recorder, lack of concentration and lack of practice are main
causes of the problems.
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Most Vietnamese students do not have the environment to practice English,during their high
school years they only focused on learning grammar. Furthermore, everyday we use mother
language for communication so it is difficult to expose English. It is obviously that
pronunciation has a direct effect on a student's listening skills,it will be difficult for the
listener to recognize the sound when listening .Students should be understand about the
sounds‟ word and give interpreting the meaning from what they hear . On the other hand,
students don’t have strategy to practice listening or not learning to listen properly. As for that,
i am doing this research not only to help students with better listening but also to contribute a
small part to enrich the listening research which has been done so far.
In conclusion, various scholars have established various causes influencing listening
comprehension; however, a significant number of researchers conclude that the majority of
listening comprehension difficulties are linked to the listening materials, the verbal attributes,
the speaker from the listening material, the narrator, the listener's psychological
characteristics, and the listener's attention.
2.2 Result of previous studies
2.2.1. The research “FACTORS AFFECTING ENGLISH LISTENING COMPREHENSION:
PERCEPTIONS OF ENGLISH-MAJOR STUDENTS AT HUFI” was carried out by Nguyen
Thi Xuyen. This research investigated listening skill, especially listening comprehension,
plays an important role in the process of learning a foreign language in general, and English
language learning in particular. The research associated with learning and teaching English
listening skills has been of increasing interest in Vietnam recently. However, research with
respect to factors affecting English listening comprehension of English-major students at
HUFI is still limited. This study is conducted with the aims to investigate listening
comprehension problems encountered by first year English major students at HUFI.
Questionnaires and focus-group interviews are used as main instruments to collect data. Based

on the findings, the study proposes some recommendations for teachers and students to help
students develop more effective learning strategies and eventually improve their English
listening comprehension. The findings indicate that the students are well aware of the
importance of listening comprehension while they consider it the most challenging language
skill to acquire. Therefore, the English major freshmen at HUFI have a lot of listening
comprehension problems which are related to English linguistic features, listening materials,
the speaker, the listener, and the learning environment at HUFI. Among the surveyed factors,
the main causes of problems are speaker’s fast rate of speech, listener’s limited knowledge of
English linguistic features such as pronunciation, contraction, accents and discourse markers,
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listener’s lack of listening strategies and concentration, and the effect of noisy classrooms
resulted from badly-equipped classrooms.
2.2.2 The research “LISTENING COMPREHENSION: FIRST YEAR ENGLISH-MAJOR
STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS AND PROBLEMS” was conducted by Nguyen Ngoc Quyen
and Thai Cong Dan. This article is to report on a study which attempts to investigate the first
year English- major students’ perception of the role of listening skill development and find

out the problems that they frequently encounter while learning listening comprehension. The
participants are 115 of the first year English-major students who are studying at some
universities in the Mekong Delta. The data were collected from questionnaires, interviews,
and observations. The results indicated that most of students held positive awareness toward
the role of listening skill development and the listening comprehension problems including
accent, pronunciation, speed of speech, insufficient vocabulary, different accent of speakers,
lack of concentration, anxiety, and bad quality of recording were the major ones encountered
by the first year English- major students.
2.2.3 The research “AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE CAUSES OF DIFFICULTIES
ENGLISH LISTENING SKILLS ENCOUTERED BY FIRST YEAR ENGLISH MAJORS
AT FACULTY OF ENGLISH, THUONG MAI UNIVERSITY” was conducted by Nguyen
Thi Thuy Linh. The researcher indicated that listening skill is one of the most necessary skills
to communicate in the real life Everybody knows that in order to listen to a message is not as
simple as hearng it, so the listener has to understand the message and respond in the right
maner.The thesis will study the subjective and objective difficulties of the students in learning
the listening skill. Then, it would like to find out the reasons for those problems and the
solutions for students in leaming the listening skill Therefore, applied the qualitaive and
quantitanive methods to do the research So the collecting data instruments like questionnaires,
interviews were used to do the study. The results of the research will point out the difficulties
that students meet when they learn the listening skill More importantly, the study helps me
find out the causes of those difficulties so that I can work out the right soluñons to the
problems. With the hope of improving students listening competence.
2.2.4 The research “ A STUDY ON SECOND YEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENT’S
DIFFICULTIES IN LISTENING COMPREHENSION SKILLS AT HPU” was conducted by
Bui Thi Thuy Trang. This study was conducted with thirty of Second year English major
students at Hai Phong private University with the aim of investigating their English listening
problems and listening proficiency. Questionnaire, and Interview were used in this study as
tools to collect data. As a result, the data will be analyzed by using SPSS. The result of the
study revealed that students that the main reason that caused listening problem for the
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students is the listening text. However, the factors that mostly caused listening problems were
lack of practicing listening skill and lack of exposure to different kinds of listening materials.
The finding of this study would be great information for teachers to recognize students
listening problems. Regarding to the research studies, the findings of this study would be
useful to probe the listening problems in a deeper level. On the contrary, this study would be
helpful for the material developer to design effective listening materials for university
students.

Chapter 3: RESEARCH DESIGN

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3.1. Research site
The research took place at Faculty of Foreign Languages in Industrial University of Ho Chi
Minh City. I have been studying here for more than 3 years. Because I have studied 3 courses
of listening skills so I understand the curriculum as well as I realize the difficulties that I
encounter while studying. Therefore, I choose this place to be a research place so that I can
contribute to finding out factors that affect listening skills and offering methods to help
students improve listening skills.
3.2. Participants
The participants of this study are 85 second years English major students from K15 in Faculty
of Foreign Languages at Industrial University of Ho Chi Minh City. They age from 20 to 21.
The study was conducted at the end of the second semester after the students had finished two
listening skills courses entitled ‘Listening 1” and “Listening 2” . I choose them as my
participant because they have just completed two subjects of listening 1 and listening 2, they
have recognized the difficulties that they have encountered during their listening courses, thus
suggesting the methods to improve those difficulties.
3.3 Research methodology and research methods
In the light of the nature of the research questions,quantitative research was applied in this
study and data were collected through the questionnaire.
 Research methodology
In terms of methodology, this research was quantitative in nature. Quantitative research
method is adopted because it allows the researcher to get the facts and not abstract about the

aim of dissertation (Bryman and Bell, 2007). According to Matthews & Ross (2010)
quantitative research methods are basically applied to the collection of data that is structured
and which could be represented numerically. Generally quantitative data is collected when
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researcher has adopted the positivist epistemological approach and data is collected that can
be scientifically analysed. Quantitative research is adopted as a research strategy for this
dissertation. Quantitative research generates statistics through the use of large-scale survey
research, using methods such as questionnaires or structured interviews. If a market
researcher has stopped you on the streets, or you have filled in a questionnaire which has
arrived through the post, this falls under the umbrella of quantitative research. This type of
research reaches many more people, but the contact with those people is much quicker than it
is in qualitative research.


Research methods

The questionnaire is used to get information about the perception of students of

the

difficulties the students face when studying FFL listening as well as to provide methods for
improving students' listening skills at IUH. The questionnaires is a popular way of collecting
data, we can collect data from more people without too much work. This helps to give the
reliability of
numbers but leaves open the question whether the data collected are valid. The research use
questionnaire included closed-ended and opened-ended questionnaires. To survey on a large
number of subjects, I choose questionnaire as the main instrument due to their considerable
advantages. It allows me to collect information about some matters that are not easily
observed and a great deal of data is given by a large group of subjects in a short period of
time. Besides, participants can answer question comfortably, easily and quickly. This makes it
easy to analyze and present results in an understandable way.
The questionnaire consists of three sections which are specified in the research question. The
first part are designed for collecting general information of students, questions of part II aim
at finding out the student’s difficulty in learning listening skill, questions from part III mainly
seek for giving solutions to improve students' listening skills.
3.4. Procedures
The data collection in the study is derived from students who are in major second year at
Faculty of Foreign Languages in Industrial University of Ho Chi Minh City. To collect
information about the issues of learning English listening skill of second year English major
students at IUH. There are two main stages in collecting data. First of all, 85 copies of survey
questionnaires were handed out to students and when the data collection was accomplished,
the data analysis was initiated. Finally, the results of the survey was included in the analysis.
3.5. Data analysis
The data collected through the questionnaire. It is organized and analyzed using
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Microsolf Excel. Microsoft Excel allows to manipulate, manage and analyze data, helping
assist in decision-making and creating efficiencies that will directly affect your bottom line.
Whether you’re using it for business or to help manage personal databases and expenses,
Microsoft Excel gives you the right tools to enable you to accomplish all your needs.
Microsolf Excel analyze large amounts of data to discover trends and patterns that will
influence decisions. Microsoft Excel’s graphing capabilities allow you to summarize your
data, enhancing your ability to organize and structure your data. With powerful filtering,
sorting, and search tools, you are able to quickly and easily narrow down the criteria that will
assist in your decisions. Combine these tools with the tables, pivot tables, and graphs, and you
can find the information that you want quickly and easily, even if you have hundreds of
thousands of data items.
The questionnaires are computed for means, modes, medians and standard deviation (SD) in
order to reveal the problems in learning listening skill perceived by FFL learners at IUH. Data
which is provided during the performance of various statistical calculations. Therefore, this
software helped me has an overall look, count the number of participants for each option and
then convert them into percentages.

Chapter IV: FINDINGS AND
DISCUSSION

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4.1. Research Findings
4.1.1. General information
Participants in this study are English major sophomore at Industrial University of Ho Chi
Minh City . The number of participants involved in this study is 85. Questionnaires were
distributed randomly to learners. Descriptive statistics was run to measure about the
perceptions of the sophomore year English-major students towards factors affecting the
listening skills and the listening problems that the students face while learning listening skill.
The first question in the questionare for students is that how long they have been studying
English.

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29.00%

7 years
9 years
More than 9 years

57.00%

14.00%

Chart 1: Number of years students have been studying English
As presented in chart 1 it can be clearly seen that the majority of students have learned
English for more than 9 years (57%) . This fact is completely understandable because they
have learned English as a compulsory subject at school or as extra classes before learning
English officially at school, ie formal education program in Vietnam. They have been
pursuing the process of learning English for so long, surely they have developed a deep
awareness of listening to English. Meanwhile, there are 29% of them have learned English for

7 years. And, there are only 14% of students said that they have learned English for 9 years.

15.50%

7.10%
46.40%

Listening
Speaking
Reading
Wri琀椀ng

31.00%

Chart 2: Which skills do you focus on most?
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ID number: 17023131

It’s clear from the chart, 46% students considered that listening as the skill they focused most
on. When asked about the reason why they chose listening as the skill they focused most on,
most of these student appreciate the role of listening skills in the development of
communication skills. They hope that their increased listening proficiency will help them to
be more confident in communicating with foreigners. In addition, they state that listening can
complement their pronunciation and widen their vocabulary resource. While only have 31%
of them chose speaking as the skill they focused most on. The next two skill that students
focus on most including reading and writing, at 16% and 7%, respectively.
However, most of students consider listening the most challenging skill to acquire. The
following pie chart illustrates student’s opinion of listening skill.

1.00%

2.00%

40.00%
53.00%

Unimportant
A li琀琀le importan
Important
Rather important
Very important

4.00%

Chart 3: Student’s opinion of the importance of listening
As the pie chart present, over 50% students considered that listening is very important. When
asked about the reason, they said listening has an important role not only in daily life but also
in classroom settings. This is vital in the language classroom because it provides input for the

learner. Without understanding input at the right level, any learning simply cannot begin. 4%
students deemed that listening is rather important and 40% of them thought that it was of
importance. In spite of the reason stated above, 3% students still underestimated the
magnitude of listening including 2% thought that listening a little important and 1% judged
that this skill was completely unimportant.

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33.00%

ID number: 17023131

2.00%

10.00%
Normal
Di昀฀cult
Very di昀฀cult
Easy

55.00%

Chart 4: The students’ assessment of learning listening skill.
As the pie chart shows, only 2% students considered listening skill easy to learn. The rest did
set clear , over a half of them, namely 55%, stated that listening skill is difficult to learn.
When asked about the reason they added when listen word or everything pass so quickly so
they can not pick up the sounds and after listening many times, they feel headache and
depressed because they do not understand and when listen to a whole conversation, but only
hear the other 1 or 2 words, and all of the information is over passed. Therefore they are not
patient enough to listen and feel that listening is really difficult 33% of students believed that
listening skills are extremely difficult to learn. Finally, 10% students considered learning

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listening

ID number: 17023131

to

be

normal.

33.33%
36.94%
1 hour
2 hours
3 hours
Other answer

9.51%

20.22%

Chart 5: How much time do you spend listening skill in everyday?
As pie chart shows , nearly 40% of students spend an hour practicing English listening every
day. When asked about the reason they said, they comment an hour is enough for their
listening skills because it does not make them feel pressured to listen to English actively like
relaxing . 33% student have other answer for speding time to learn listening skill, while 20%
for 3 hours , and 10 % for 2 hours . When asked how to practice listening daily, most of them
answered that they mainly practice listening skill through English songs, Youtube channel or
application . Because it has a melody that makes them not feel as boring and pressured instead
of when they have to focus on doing academic listening lessons.

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ID number: 17023131

33.3

Map

42.9

Short answer ques琀椀on

38.1

Summary comple琀椀on

46.4

Mul琀椀ple choice

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

Chart 6: What types of exercises do you usually encounter when learning listening skill?
It is clear from the chart, 46.4% of students choose multiple-choice questions as the main type
of exercise they encounter. They also said that because multiple-choice questions appeared in
part 1 of the IELTS listening test and were the easiest part, they encountered the most. 42.9
percent believe they are commonly encountered on short answer question exercises . Besides,
38.1% of learners said that summary completion is the type of exercise they usually
encountered. In other hand, they feel that map is the most difficult type of exercise that
usually appeared in part 2 or 3 of the IELTS test with 33.3% of participants choose .
4.1.2. Factors affecting listening skill by English major sophomore at IUH
This part presents finding about factors affecting listening skill by English major sophomore
at IUH. A detailed comparison of the factors affect students' listening skills between their own

assumptions is drawn below.

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