A study on dificulties and solutions in self studying english skills ò junior english majored students at hong duc university

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would like to express my sincere thanks to many people who assisted me
in my research work.
First of all, I wish to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor Ms.
Hoang Thu Ha, the English teacher of Faculty of Foreign Language, who has
always been willing to give me valuable advices and suggestions in order that I
can complete successfully this study.
Secondly, I am so thankful to students of K20A of Foreign Language
Department, who encouraged and helped me a lot with my work.
My sincere thanks to all the lectures in Foreign Language Department for
their valuable support and contributive remarks that encouraged and enabled me
to fulfill this study.
Last but not least, my particular thanks are given to my parents for their
encouragement and support which played an important role in my graduation
paper.
Many thanks also go to all of you, to anyone I have forgotten to mention
here.

Thank you very much!

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ABSTRACT
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
hearing it, so the listener has to understand the message and respond in the right
manner. 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 both teachers and students in teaching
and learning the listening skill. Therefore, I applied the qualitative and

quantitative 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 solutions to the problems. With the
hope of improving students' listening competence, I have tried my best to do this
thesis by my own experiences and knowledge in English teaching methodology.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT ..................................................................................... i
ABSTRACT .......................................................................................................... ii
List of tables ......................................................................................................... vi
PART ONE: INTRODUCTION ........................................................................... 1
1.Rationale............................................................................................................. 1
2.Objectives of the study ....................................................................................... 2
3. The scope of the study. ...................................................................................... 2
4. The methods of the study. ................................................................................. 2
5. Research questions. ........................................................................................... 2
6. Design of the study. ........................................................................................... 3
PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT ........................................................................... 4
Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW .................................................................... 4
1. Overview of listening. ....................................................................................... 4
1.1. Definition of listening. ................................................................................... 4
1.2. The importance of English listening skill. ..................................................... 5
1.3. Types of listening. .......................................................................................... 6
2. Difficulties in learning English listening skill. ................................................. 8
2.1. What problems do students have with English listening? ............................. 8

2.2. What makes listening so difficult? ................................................................. 9
3. Factors affecting English listening. ................................................................. 10
3.1 Quality of Recorded Materials ...................................................................... 11
3.2 Cultural Differences ...................................................................................... 11
3.3 Accent ............................................................................................................ 11
3.4 Unfamiliar Vocabulary.................................................................................. 11
3.5 Length and Speed of Listening ..................................................................... 12
4. Summary. ........................................................................................................ 13
Chapter 2: DEVELOPMENT OF THE STUDY ................................................ 14
1. Data collection instruments. ............................................................................ 14
1.1. The survey questionnaire. ............................................................................ 14
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1.2 Data collection procedures ............................................................................ 14
2. Data analysis and discussion. .......................................................................... 15
2.1. Student's real situations of learning English listening skill. ...................... 15
2.1.1.The difficulties. .......................................................................................... 15
2.1.2. The important of English listening skill.................................................... 17
2.1.3. The problem in English listening skill. ..................................................... 17
2.1.4.The kinds of listening text which students practice more .......................... 18
2.2. Cause affecting English listening skill. ........................................................ 20
2.2.1.The difficulties that students often have when learning English listening
skill. ..................................................................................................................... 20
2.2.2.The factors have influence on the interested in English listening skill. .... 20
2.3.Activities for improving English listening skill. ........................................... 22
2.3.1 The activities students like most in listening English class. ...................... 22
2.3.2The activities students should do before and while listening in class. ....... 23
3. Main findings and discussion. ......................................................................... 25
3. 1. Opinions of students about English listening skill. ..................................... 25

3.2. Current situation in teaching and learning English listening skill. .............. 25
Chapter 3: SOLUTIONS………………………………………………………26
1. Suggestions for improving English listening skills. ....................................... 26
2. Recommendations. .......................................................................................... 28
2.1. For students. ................................................................................................. 28
2.2. For teachers. ................................................................................................. 29
PART THREE: INCONCLUSION..................................................................... 30
1. Summary of the study. .................................................................................... 30
2. Limitation of the study. ................................................................................... 30
3. Suggestions for the further study. ................................................................... 31
REFERENCES .................................................................................................... 32
APPENDIX ........................................................................................................ 35

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List of charts
Chart 1: The students’ assessment of learning the listening skill ....................... 15
Chart 2: The students’ interest in learning listening skill ................................... 16
Chart 3: Student’s attitudes toward the importance of English listening skill . 17
Chart 4: The frequency of student having problems in learning English listening
skill ...................................................................................................................... 18
Chart 5: Students’ interest in extra listening activities ....................................... 19
Chart 6: Difficulties in students’ listening .......................................................... 20
Chart 7: Factor motivating students’ learning the listening skill ........................ 21
Chart 8: The subject factor affecting the students’ learning listening skill ........ 22
Chart 9: What students should do before listening ............................................. 24
Chart 10: What students should do while listening........................................27

List of tables

Table 1: Students’opinion about the activities that they like most in listening
English ................................................................................................................. 23
Table 2:solutions to difficuties when learning listening skills ......................... 30

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PART ONE: INTRODUCTION
1.Rationale
In the process of learning English, learners always encounter difficulties
related to the four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. Of the four
skills, many learners often have difficulty with listening. As a researcher, I
would like to present the thesis title " A study on Difficulties and solutions in
self-studying English listening skills of Junior English – majored students at
Hong Duc University” for several reasons.
First of all, listening is the most important skill in communication in the
real life. Listening and speaking are two major parts of communication. They
are closely interdependent. We are able to talk sensibly when we understand
what is said to us. If we fail to understand spoken language, we may miss
important information and respond in a funny way.
Moreover, in learning a language, listening is a useful means of providing
students with comprehensible input, which is an essential component of the
whole language learning process. And teaching listening skill in classroom helps
students make transition from classroom English to real-life English more easily
and effectively.
Last but not least reason is that listening skills are often not focused in the
process of learning English in junior high school or high school. Second-year
students majoring in pedagogical English at Hong Duc University also have
many difficulties in learning to listen. Through the survey as well as through the
statistic of the semester summary, the midterm and final English listening skills

tests are often lower than the scores of speaking, reading and writing skills.
From the above mentioned reasons, this study is done with the aim of
finding out the difficulties in learning to listen at home of second-year students
majoring in pedagogical English at Hong Duc University and the solutions they
have used to improve listening skills.

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2.Objectives of the study
This study sets the objectives as follows:
The study is carried out in order to survey the real state of teaching and
learning English listening skill in HDU so that I could work out the reasons for
those difficulties.
Most students find it difficult to learn listening skill so I would like to find
the common difficulties that the students face when they learn English listening
skill at HDU.
Because of the difficulties, many students are not interested in learning
and practicing this skill at the class, therefore the study would like to suggest
some possible solutions to those difficulties.
3. The scope of the study.
The study is about learning listening skill for second-year students in
English faculty at HDU. Because of the limitations of time and knowledge, the
shortage of reference materials, this study can not cover the whole issue of
listening skill. It only focus on exploring common difficulties students get in
listening skill
4. The methods of the study.
The study will be conducted using quantitative, qualitative methods. The
study includes survey questionnaires and interview questions for students only
of K22 at the FFL.

After getting the results, the researcher will use the tables and charts for
presenting the collect data.
5. Research questions.
This study is carried out with the purpose of finding out the answers to the
following research questions:
1. What are the difficulties in the second-year students Faculty of English
at HDU?
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2. What are some solutions to improve their English listening skill?
6. Design of the study.
The study is organized into three parts:
Part one is the introduction. It includes the rationale of choosing the topic,
the objectives of the study, the scope of the study, the research questions as well
as the methods to be applied.
Part two is the development. This part consists of two chapters as follows:
+ Chapter one discusses the literature review. In this chapter, the author of
this study presents the theories difficulties to be resolved in study. Theoretical
background related to English listening skill, difficulties in English listening
skill, strategies of English listening skill
+ Chapter two deals with the development of the study. This chapter
summarizes the research questions and gives the discussion of the study.
Finally, the study closes with part three, the conclusion, which gives a
summary of the whole study, carries out the limitation of it and provides
suggestions for further study.

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PART TWO: DEVELOPMENT
Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
1. Overview of listening.
1.1. Definition of listening.
Listening is considered one of the most important parts of the oral
communication The term is used in order to make oral communication effective.
Obviously, it is believed that listening is a significant and essential area of
development in a native language and in a second language; therefore, there
have been numerous definitions of listening and listening skill.
According to Howatt and Dakin (1974),

listening is “the ability to

perceive and understand what is being said. This process includes speech
perception, pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and transmitted content.”
In addition ,Wolvin and Coakley (1982) regarded listening as "the process
of receiving, attending to and assigning meaning to aural stimuli".
Pearson (1983) stated that "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".
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".
Bentey and Bacon (1996) stated that listening, an important part of the
second language learning process has also been defined as an active process
during which the ate W listener constructs meaning from oral input.
In Helgesen (2003), listening is “an active and purposeful skill; when

listening, people not only grasp what they are hearing, but also connect them
with information they already know.” Furthermore, this author also points out
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that when we listen, we do not simply hear words, we need to hear the
implications behind those words.
Recently, Lindsay and Knight (2006) argue that listening is a skill of
acquiring language rather than creating language. However, listening is not
entirely a passive skill. Whether listening carefully is active or passive depends
on the listener. The above two authors also give examples to illustrate their
definitions. When a listener participates in a conversation, the listening skill is
said to be active because then the listener has the right to pause that conversation
to ask questions for the speaker, but when listening to a message on the radio or
local area. By means of mass media, listening becomes more passive.
Thus, we can see that Listening comprehension is a complex problemsolving skill. So listening comprehension is an active skill with the purpose of
identifying the messages of words as well as linguistic elements around words
including vocabulary, grammar and phonetics.
1.2. The importance of listening skill.
Listening is one of the necessary life skills which are defined as "skills
which can provide you with a better perspective on life, skills which can allow
you to maintain a higher awareness of both yourself and the world around you".
It is one of the most vital ways that human beings feel the life and live.
Everyone, in the real life, often listens more than speaks, reads or writes. We
listen everywhere and every time. We listen to everything and everybody. For
instance, at home, we listen to the news, watch films or talk with others. At
school, students listen to the lecturers teaching. At a meeting, the staff listens to
the new plan from the director, etc. Without listening, the man becomes
backward in each minute of their lives. It is obvious that listening is really
important in the real life.

As it is mentioned in the differences between hearing and listening,
hearing is a part of five senses (hearing, smelling, tasting, touching and looking)
but listening is choice to hear and understand i. As an integrative skill, listening
5


plays an important role in the process of language earning or acquisition and
facilitating the emergence of other language skill. According to Nord (1980),
listening is the way of learning the language. "It gives the learner information
from which to build up the knowledge necessary for using the language. When
this knowledge is built up, the learner can begin to speak. The listening-only
period is a time of observation and learning, which provides the basis for the
other language skills" (Nation, 1990). Most learners will spend more time
listening to the foreign language than producing it themselves. Failing to
understand spoken language, people may miss important information presented
to them or respond in a funny way. So training in listening is really necessary. It
helps students make the transition from classroom English to the real-life
English more easily and effectively.
1.3. Types of listening.
Almost the learners of English will sooner or later, find themselves in a
training variety of situation where they need or want to listen to English being
used in the real-life for arrange of purposes. However, they have to face many
difficulties because there is the big difference between the listening activities in
the classroom and actual situations. In the class, the learners listened to the very
grammatical standard dialogues, conversations or presentations. The speakers
often speak at perfectly controlled speed, with perfect voice tone, accent and
correct grammar. The learners even had the preparation allready and knew
clearly about the topic that they are going to listen to.
That is the reason why the learners can listen very well. Whereas, in the
real-life conversations, learners encounter various people speak with different

accent, speed and voice tone without paying attention to grammar. The speakers
also can use the difficult words, idioms, proverbs, or even the slang words, etc.
As a result, the learners cannot listen to perfectly.
In the real-life, different situations call for different types of listening, and
as your listening skills evolve, so will your ability to hear what someone is
6


really sayıng. There are many types of listening. However, in general and
according to Adian (1995), there are two ways, which people often listen in the
real- life. They are "casual" listening and "focused" listening. "Casual" listening
(in another word, we call it "Appreciative Listening"). This is one of the most
enjoyable types of listening, and it comes naturally for many people.
According to Rixon (1986) and Hublard and others (1984), “there are
two main kinds of listening in classroom, they are intensive listening and
extensive listening. Intensive listening (Comprehensive/ Informative Listening)”.
That means students listen carefully for the detailed information, full
comprehension or the content of the message. Anytime students listen to
instructions or to a lecture from an instructor, listening to the announcement or
weather forecast, they are using informative listening. The important aspect of
this type of listening is whether the listener understands the message being
relayed by the speaker. If the listener misunderstands or does not pay close
attention, informative listening is affected.
This kind of listening helps learners develop their listening skill or
knowledge of the language in their effort to do exercıses or other activities. The
passage should be short so that learners have chances to get to grip with the
content. They also feel it easy, interesting and encouraging when they listen to a
short passage. In contradiction, Extensive listening (Appreciative listening) is
free and general listening to natural language for general ideas, not for particular
details. It is the art of listening for pleasure and interest. When people enjoy a

concert, speech, short jokes or poems, etc, they are experiencing appreciative
listening. They are not asked to do any language work and they can do their
listening freely without any pressure. Moreover, the topics are various and
entertaining, therefore they are motivated to develop their listening skill.
Wolvin and Coakly (1988, 1993) have introduced another categorization
of listening. They identified five types of listening:
(1)Discrimination listening
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(2)Listening for comprehension
(3) Therapeutic (empathic) listening
(4)Critical listening
(5)Appreciative listening
2. Difficulties in learning the listening skill.
2.1. What problems do students have with listening?
Another point of view has been expanded by Willis (1981, p.134) who
lists a series of skills for listening dealing with problems, which she calls
'enabling skills'. To quote a few are:
- Predict what people are going to talk about.
- Guessing at unknown words or phrases without panicking.
- Using one's own knowledge of the subject to help one understand.
- Understanding inferred information
My personal classroom experiences and those of many writers that I
have read on the subject seem to suggest that difficulty in listening come from
four sources: i) the message to be listened to, ii) the speaker, ii) the listener, and
iv) the physical setting. Most students find it difficult to listen to a message than
to read the same message written in their text book, or elsewhere. Since they can
not control the speed of listening, it becomes a problem, whereas, they can take
their time with reading, stopping and going back over the message at will. They

can even consult a dictionary if they so choose. Giving dictations or having the
students dictate to each other, I find there are some specific areas of vocabulary
that give special problems. My students have problem hearing the past tense of
regular verbs ending in voiceless sounds such as, 'work, wish, or watch'. The
final /t/ sound of 'ed' sound is usually omitted when taking dictation so that the
sentence, "I worked hard yesterday." Comes out as "I work hard yesterday." The
students fail to hear the final voiceless 't'. Another problem is liaison (the linking
of words in rapid speech). "What are you going to do tonight? sounds like,
8


/Whadiyagunnadotanight ?/ For the untrained ear liaison presents an awesome
problem.
Up to this point, I have dealt with problems students have with listening.
It is now time to tum to suggesting techniques for helping them develop more
effective listening skills. Foreign-language students usually devote more time to
reading than to listening, and so lack exposure to different kinds of listening. It
is tiring for students to spend much of their listening time on interpreting
unfamiliar words and sentences for long periods of time.
2.2. What makes listening so difficult?
There are eight characteristics of spoken language which makes listening
difficult (Brown, 2001).
- In spoken language, due to memory limitations we break down speech
into smaller groups of words. They are called clustering. For examples: "a lot of,
"a number of', etc. Therefore when listening, earners have to learn to pick out
manageable clusters of words, avoiding trying to listen to every word of the
speech. It is not necessary and makes earners become distracted.
-Moreover, spoken language has a great number of redundancies. They
are the result of rephrasing, repetitions, elaborations and some insertions such as
"As I have said" and so on. At first, learners may get trouble with this. They are

easy to be confused.
-However, with some training learners can take advantage of
redundancies to have more time and extra information. may be On the other
hand, spoken language also has many reduced forms. phonological,
morphological, syntactic or pragmatic like "you're" instead of "you are", 'won'ť"
instead of will not, or "can't" instead of "cannot". These are", "won't instead of
"will not", or "can't" instead of "cannot". These reductions are really significant
difficulties to the learners, especially beginners when they start getting to know
the full form of English language.

9


- The next characteristic of spoken language is performance variables.
As a result of unplanned action, spoken language consists of a lot of hesitations
("er", "uhm"), false starts, pauses and corrections. They make the listeners
confused.
- Colloquial language is another problem that can interfere listeners in
real life listening because they are familiar with standard written language. In
monologues and dialogues, the appearance of idioms, slang, reduced forms and
shared cultural language are common.
- In listening, learners need to comprehend language delivered at
varying rates of speed and delivered with few pauses because they do not have
opportunity to stop speaker and listen again many times.
- English is a stress-timed language so it is very important for learners
to understand its prosodic features. By stress, rhythm, and intonation, listeners
can interpret more subtle messages like sarcasm, endearment, insult, solicitation,
praise, etc.
- The last but not least, interaction is also an element that plays a large
role in listening comprehension. Language learners should be taught the

instruction in the two-way nature of listening. They have to learn to continue the
process of comprehending. Some rules of interaction are negotiation,
clarification, attending signals, tum-taking, topic nomination, maintenance, and
termination. In short, it is necessary for language learners to understand all of
these characteristics of spoken language in order that they get more ease in
interaction in general and in listening in particular.
3. Factors affecting the English listening.
According to Azmi Bingol, Celik, Yidliz, and Tugrul Mart (2014), there
are a lot of difficulties that learners may encounter in the listening
comprehension processes and the purpose is to be aware of these problems and
try to solve them. Some of these problems are as follows:

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3.1 Quality of Recorded Materials
In some classes, teachers use some recorded materials that “do not have
high quality. The quality of sound system can impact the comprehending of
learners’ listening” (Azmi Bingol, Celik, Yidliz, & Tugrul Mart, 2014).
3.2 Cultural Differences
Learners should be familiar with the cultural knowledge of language that has
a significant effect on the learners’ understanding. If the listening task involves
completely different cultural materials then the learners may have critical problems
in their comprehension. “It is the responsibility of teachers to give background
knowledge about the listening activities in advance” (Azmi, Celik, Yidliz, & Tugrul,
2014).
3.3 Accent
Munro and Derwing (1999) expressed that too many accented speech can
lead to an important reduction in comprehension. According to Goh (1999),
66% of learners mentioned a speaker’s accent as one of the most significant

factors that affect listener comprehension. Unfamiliar accents both native and
non-native can cause serious problems in listening comprehension and
familiarity with an accent helps learners’ listening comprehension. Buck (2001)
indicated that “when listeners hear an unfamiliar accent such as Indian English
for the first time after studying only American English will encounter critical
difficulties in listening.” This will certainly interrupt the whole listening
comprehension process and at the same time an unfamiliar accent makes
comprehension impossible for the listeners.
3.4 Unfamiliar Vocabulary
According to Azmi Bingol, Celik, Yidliz, and Tugrul Mart (2014), “when
listening texts contain known words it would be very easy for students to them”.
If students know the meaning of words this can arouse their interest and
motivation and can have a positive impact on the students’ listening
comprehension ability. A lot of words have more than one meaning and if they
11


are not used appropriately in their appropriate contexts students will get
confused.
3.5 Length and Speed of Listening
Azmi Bingol, Celik, Yidliz, and Tugrul Mart (2014) stated that the level
of students can have a significant role when they listen to long parts and keep all
information in their mind. It is very difficult for lower level students to listen
more than three minutes long and complete the listening tasks. Short listening
passages make easy listening comprehension for learners and reduce their
tiredness. According to Underwood (1989), speed can make listening passage
difficult. If the speakers speak too fast students may have serious problems to
understand L2 words. In this situation, listeners are not able to control the speed
of speakers and this can create critical problems with listening comprehension.
According to Underwood (1989), there are some barriers to effective

listening comprehension process. First, listeners cannot control the speed of
speech. The biggest problem with listening comprehension is that listeners are
not able to control how quickly speakers talk. Second, listeners cannot have
words repeated and this can cause critical difficulties for them. Students cannot
replay a recording section. Teachers decide what and when to repeat listening
texts and it is very difficult for teachers to know whether or not their learners
understood what they have heard. Third, listeners do not have high vocabulary
knowledge. Speakers may select words that listeners do not know them.
Listeners may face an unfamiliar word which can stop them and think about the
meaning of that word for a while and miss the next part of the speech. Fourth,
listeners may lack contextual knowledge. Mutual knowledge and familiar texts
can make communication easier for listeners. Listeners can sometimes
comprehend the surface meaning of a passage but they can have substantial
problems in understanding the whole meaning of a passage unless they are
familiar with it. Fifth, it is not very easy for listeners to concentrate on the
listening text. Sometimes a shortest break in attention can prevent
12


comprehension. If the listening passage is interesting for listeners, concentration
will be easy for them.
4. Summary.
In conclusion, this chapter mainly summarizes the theories, ideas,
opinions related to the listening skills. It has presented the relevant literature,
which has helped to form the theoretical can conceptual framework for
graduation paper. The following chapter will display the methodology and
finding of the research under the light of all above.

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CHAPTER 2: DEVELOPMENT OF THE STUDY
1. Data collection instruments.
1.1. The survey questionnaire.
The questionnaires were designed for students because the researcher
finds them easy to summarize and analyze the collected data. Questionnaires for
students consist of 14 questions which are specified in the three research
questions. Therefore, the survey questionnaires for students was delivered to 80
major second-year students of K22 at Faculty of Foreign Languages, HDU to
find information for the two research questions. Among the 14 questions, the
first part are designed for collecting general information of students, questions
of part II aim at finding out the students' attitudes towards rewriting English
sentences; questions from part III mainly seek for the current techniques of
teaching and learning in listening English sentences for second- year students of
K22 at Faculty of Foreign Languages, HDU.
To guarantee the reliability and the validity of the samples, the
questionnaires for learners were directly distributed for learners of K22 during
their break time in the class and collected right away. That meant these learners
could pay most attention to answer the questions related to what they had just
experienced. Before asking the learners to do the survey questionnaire, the
researcher briefly stated the purpose and significance of the study and clarified
any misunderstanding about the survey questions. Beside the written instructions
on the handout, oral the instructions and explanations in Vietnamese were
presented to avoid any ambiguity. In the end, there were 80 students
participating in giving responses to the survey questionnaire
1.2 Data collection procedures
The data collection in the study is derived from students who are in the
major second year at Faculty of Foreign Languages. To collect information
about the issues of learning English listening skill of second year English major

14


students at HDU, first of all, 80 copies of survey questionnaires were handed out
to students .
When the data collection was accomplished, the data analysis was initiated.
The results of survey questionnaires revealed students' techniques they use in
listening skill.
2. Data analysis and discussion.
2.1. Student's real situations of learning English listening skill.
In the part personal information, most of students come from rural areas.
It means that many of them did not have much chance to practice English skills
at high school. In addition, students recognize that they have learnt English from
7 to over 9
2.1.1.The difficulties.
The 80 copies of the questionnaire delivered to the learners. The data are
analyzed in this part of the study in the below tables and charts which shows the
responses for the questions in the questionnaires. Besides, the first question the
questionnaires bring a result that according to students' opinion, listening skill is
very difficult.
3%
13%

15%

`

Very difficult
Difficult
Normal

Easy

69%

Chart 1: The students’ assessment of learning the listening skill
It can be seen obviously in the chart that the listening skill is a difficult
skill to learn. 69% of the learners suppose that listening is difficult. For the
15


students, listening to English and learning this skill is really a problem
Moreover, the number of learners who agree that learning the listening skill is
very difficult took 13%. It is the same as the number of the learners who find
learning listening normal (15%) or easy (3%). In fact, as what can be seen by the
observation, the learners who confirm that it is easy to learn the listening skill
are the best students. In short, the survey prove the assumption about the
difficulty of listening to English and learning it.
Whether these difficulties can make the students uninterested in i or not?
This matter was clarified by the next chart which shows the learners interest in
learning the listening skill at class.
60%

52%

50%
40%
30%

28%
20%

20%
10%

0%

0%
like very much

like

don't mind

don't like

Chart 2: The students’ interest in learning listening skill
The column chart shows a surprising result which is very contrary to the
author's subjective assumption. Normally, the difficulties bore the listeners.
However, the survey indicates the contrast. In spite of the difficulties of learning
the listening skill 20% of the learners still like this skill very much and 52% of
them like it. Listening is not as boring as many people thought. As it can be
seen, in the English class, earning listening is interesting. No. one dislikes it.
Only 28% of the learners do not mind learning this skill. For them, learning
listening might be neither interesting nor boring or it depends on each lesson. In
16


conclusion, listening English is a' favorite subject of the students and it is
difficult for students and very difficult for teachers.
2.1.2. The important of listening skill

To research more clearly the opinion of students at Faculty of Foreign
Languages, HDU, the second question in the questionnaire is designed to find
out their assessment on the importance of listening
0%

16%

4%
Very important

80%

Important
Quite important
Not important

Chart 3: Student’s attitudes toward the importance of English
listening skill
It can be seen clearly , most of the students agree that learning listening
skill is very important as well as very important is 80%. Meanwhile, there are
only 4% of them reckon that it is quite important. This chart shows that most of
students at Faculty of Foreign Languages, HDU claim that English listening skill
has an important role in learning English with a lot of fields in life.
In conclusion, listening skill is one of the most necessary skills to
communicate in the real life. In learning a foreign language, it is more and more
important to learn this skill.
2.1.3. The problem in listening skill.
To have more details about the students' real situation in learning English
listening skill, the seventh question of the questionnaire is designed. The result
is shown on the chart below.

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49%

50%
40%

31%

30%
Students

18%

20%
10%

2%

0%
Always

Often

Sometimes

Rarely

Chart 4: The frequency of student having problems in learning English
listening skill
Statistics provide in Chart 4 shows the frequency of students' having
problem when learning listening skill. According to the collected data, 49%
students who are very often and 31% of them always have trouble when
listening; in addition, 18% sometimes make this and just 2% rarely. While only
have 31% think that they always have problem.
To sum up, students always have problems in listening English and this is
thing that students need repairing.
2.1.4.The kinds of listening text which students practice more
The question 8 of questionnaire for students mentioned to the kinds of
listening text which students expect to practice more. The collected data has
shown in the below chart:

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66%

46%
34%

38%

24%
16%

30%

34%

26%

14%
14%

20%

18%
10%

4%

6%

Chart 5: Students’ interest in extra listening activities
As it can be seen from the above bar chart, most of the students liked
listening to the dialogues. Listening to the dialogues are the most favorite
activities of 66% of the students. Only 6% of them are not interested in this
kind. In contrast to the dialogues, listening to the news, speeches or kctures
bored the most students (46%). As a consequence, 4% of them find interested in
these kinds of monologue. Besides, listening to the songs seems interesting. But,
it is surprising when only 16% of the learners love them. Moreover, one third of
them (34%) are not excited about the songs. Watching films or listening to the
stories is accepted because 38% of them suppose those are their favorite
activities and 14% affirm those are their most favorite activities. Additionally,
34% of them think those activities normal. In conclusion, most of the students,
like listening to the dialogues, conversations and interview.

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2.2. Cause affecting English listening skill.
2.2.1.The difficulties that students often have when learning English
listening skill.
To find the techniques to improve listening skill for second-year English
major students at HDU, the author wants to find out the reasons which make you
difficult to learn English listening. The sixth question in the questionnaires is
designed for researching this thing. Below is the chart of the difficulties in
students' listening.
3%
Poor- quality CDs and
CD player

7%

Unfamiliar content
listening text

28%

22%

Limited practice time
Fast speaking speed

40%
Other factors

Chart 6: Difficulties in students’ listening

The chart shows that the poor quality of CDs and CD players is not a big
problem. Only 3% of the leamers think i made them difficut to listen. There are
23 of the 80 students (28%) chose the factor unfamiliar content listening text.
The most number of the students (40%) find that the main reason for the
difficulties in listening is the limited time of practicing at class. Besides, 22% of
leamers think that the speaking speed is very fast. Except those factors, 7% of
the leamers also point some other factors affecting their listening are teaching
methods, their background knowledge, pronunciation practice.
2.2.2.The factors have influence on the interested in English listening skill.
To find out the factors have influence on the interested in English listening
skill, the question 7 of questionnaire is mention about it. The researcher give 4
factors that influe nce in this skill, students give their opinion in this thing.
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