An investigation on listening skill of english major freshmen at tay do university by extensive listening

TAY DO UNIVERSITY
FACULTY OF LINGUISTICS AND LITERATURE

AN INVESTIGATION ON
LISTENING SKILL OF ENGLISH
MAJOR FRESHMEN AT TAY DO
UNIVERSITY BY EXTENSIVE
LISTENING
Supervisor: Dang Thi Hanh, MA
Student’s name: Chau Hong Thuy Trang
Student’s code: 13D220201083
Class: English 8B

April 2017


ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The success and final outcome of this study required a lot of guidance and
assistance from many people.
First of all, I respect and thank my supervisor, Ms. Dang Thi Hanh, MA at
Tay Do University for providing me all support and guidance with her
enthusiastic, thoughtful and informative instruction.
Secondly, I want to show my special thanks to Faculty of Literature and
Linguistics for giving me the opportunity and permission to carry out proposal
research.
I also would like to thank all participants of this study for having helped me
to complete survey and interview.
Finally, I want to give my gratefulness to my family for the loves and
supports. This is the motivation that helps I accomplish this study.

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COMMENT
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TABLES OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT …………………………………………………….i
COMMENT……………………………………………………………………ii
TABLE OF CONTENT………………………………………………………..iii
ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………v
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ...................................................................... 1
1.1 Rationale .................................................................................................. 1
1.2 The significance of study ......................................................................... 1
1.3 The organization of study......................................................................... 1
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ........................................................... 3
2.1 Definition of listening and its importance................................................ 3
2.1.1 Definition of listening ....................................................................... 3
2.1.2 The importance of listening skill ...................................................... 4
2.2 Listening strategies................................................................................... 4
2.2.1 Nature of strategies ........................................................................... 4
2.2.2 Categories of listening ...................................................................... 5
2.3 Factors affecting listening skill ................................................................ 7
2.3.1 Vocabulary ........................................................................................ 7
2.3.2 Grammar ........................................................................................... 8
2.3.3 Pronunciation, intonation and accent ................................................ 8
2.3.4 Background knowledge ................................................................... 10
2.4 The term of extensive listening .............................................................. 10
2.4.1 The definition of extensive listening ............................................... 10

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2.4.2 Benefits of extensive listening in learning English ......................... 11
2.5 Previous studies ...................................................................................... 13
CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH AIMS - RESEARCH QUESTIONS –
HYPOTHESIS ................................................................................................. 15
3.1 Research aims ......................................................................................... 15
3.2 Research questions ................................................................................. 15
3.3 Hypothesis .............................................................................................. 15
CHAPTER 4: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ............................................. 16
4.1 Design..................................................................................................... 16
4.2 Participants ............................................................................................. 16
4.3 Instruments ............................................................................................. 16
4.4 Procedure ................................................................................................ 17
CHAPTER 5: EXPECTED OUTCOME ......................................................... 18
REFERENCES ................................................................................................
QUESTIONNAIRE .........................................................................................

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ABSTRACT
This survey research presents the process of the study about “AN

INVESTIGATION ON LISTENING SKILL OF ENGLISH MAJOR
FRESHMEN

AT

TAY

DO

UNIVERSITY

BY

EXTENSIVE

LISTENING”. The participants of this research are the freshmen from Bachelor
of English class at Tay Do University about 40 students of class English 11B,
course 2016 – 2020. In study process, questionnaire is used as instruments to
collect the data. The results of the research will explain how EL is able to help
learners overcome some of the barriers they face in listening English by
extensive

listening.

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
In this chapter, the researcher would like to present the rationale, significance
and the organization of the study.
1.1 Rationale
Language is our primary source of communication. It is the method through
which people share their ideals and thoughts with others. There are thousands of
languages in this world. Countries have their own national languages. Therefore,
people need a general language to exchange information. As a result, English is
considered as the international language because it is the official language in a large
number of countries and it is taught in other countries as a foreign language. In
Vietnam, English is taught as a subject in school and it is an indispensable factor to

get a good job.
When learning English, students often concentrate on four basic skills. They
are listening, speaking, reading and writing. Among these skills, listening is an
important skill which needs to be developed.
This research is made to figure out an investigation on listening skill of
English major freshmen at Tay Do University by extensive listening.
1.2 The significance of study
The research is conducted to help the freshmen majoring in English recognize
their listening skill by extensive listening.
1.3 The organization of study
The investigation consists of five chapters:
Chapter 1: Introduction.
Chapter 2: Literature review.
Chapter 3: Research aim-Research questions-Hypothesis.

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Chapter 4: Research methodology.
Chapter 5: Expected outcome.

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CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1 Definition of listening and its importance
2.1.1 Definition of listening
Listening is receiving language through the ears. Listening involves
identifying the sounds of speech and processing them into words and sentences.
When we listen, we use our ears to receive sounds (letters, stress, rhythm and

pauses) and we use our brain to convert these sounds into messages that mean
something to us.
Different from other skills, listening needs to deal with spoken language which
is often unplanned and typically exhibits short idea units. Despite of being a
difficult concept to define in the eyes of researchers, some of them have introduced
definitions of listening from various perspectives. According to Howatt and Dakin
(1974), “listening is ability to identify and understand what others are saying. This
process involves understanding a speaker's accent or pronunciation, the speaker's
grammar and vocabulary, and comprehension of meaning”. An able listener is
capable of doing these four things simultaneously. Ronald and Roskelley (1985)
define “listening as an active process requiring the same skills of prediction,
hypothesizing, checking, revising, and generalizing that writing and reading
demand”. Purdy (1991) defines listening as “the active and dynamic process of
attending, perceiving, interpreting, remembering and responding to the expressed
verbal and nonverbal needs, concerns and information offered by the human
beings”. Described listening as a set of activities that involve “the individual” is
capacity to apprehend, recognize, discriminate or even ignore. Buck (2001) wrote
that “listening help us a personal and individual, and a series of process which begin
with deciphering incoming sounds and later make meaning out of them”.
In short, listening is a broad term used to refer to complex affective, cognitive,
and behavioral processes. Affective processes include the motivation to attend to
others; cognitive processes include attending to, understanding, receiving, and

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interpreting content and relational messages; and behavioural processes include
responding with verbal and nonverbal feedback.
2.1.2 The importance of listening skill
Listening is a skill of critical significance in all aspects of our lives - from

maintaining our personal relationships, to getting our jobs done, to taking notes in
class, to figuring out which bus to take to the airport. Regardless of how we're
engaged with listening, it is important to understand that listening involves more
than just hearing the words that are directed at us. In a study conducted in 1950, it
has been found that when we communicate, 45% of this comes from listening, 30%
from speaking, 15% from reading and 10% from writing. People develop sound
judgment from their experiences and this can be shared to others in the form of
communication. With the highest percentage of involvement in the exchange of
information, listening has to be considered an English language forerunner. As
humans communicate at about 71% of their waking time, it can be concluded that
listening is utilized in most parts of the day.
In summary, listening plays a vital role in learning English. That is the reason
why students majoring in English should pay attention skill.
2.2 Listening strategies
2.2.1 Nature of strategies
The word "strategy" appears as an essential part of learning. Discussing about
t origin of the word, Oxford (1990) cited that it "comes from the ancient Greek
word "strategies”, which means steps or actions taken for the purpose of winning a
war” (p.21). The control and goal-directedness remain in the modern version
Oxford (1990) defines language learning strategies as "approaches or techniques the
learners use to enhance their progress in developing L2 skills" p22). From this
definition, Li (2010) concluded that foreign language learning strategies refer
behaviors or thinking in learning process to make it effective.

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2.2.2 Categories of listening
The term "listening strategies include ways to strengthen language learners'
motivation” (Vandergrift, 2005) and “techniques during learning” (Rahimi & Katal,

2012). They are evaluated through outcome of each listening section (Zhang& Liu,
2008).
Through

listening

comprehension

"three-phase

model

proposes

that

comprehension happen to learners include perception, parsing, and utilization"
(Anderson, 1995 cited in Goh, 2000, 56). The first phase is perception, which is
defined as the encoding of oral message. The second step is parsing where meaning
of words are understood basing on meanings of segments. The last but most
important step is utilization. These segments are then recombined to express a
meaningful representation of the original sequence (Goh, 2000). In term of merging
categorizations of listening strategies together according to its importance, there are
three main types of listening strategies adapted from Dornyei (2005).
Metacognitive listening strategies involve clarifying objective, preparing mind
requesting progress, guessing unfamiliar accents, checking what part students
confuse, double checking answers, being and correcting them reflecting on
problems, evaluating understanding, and taking notes.
Cognitive listening strategies deal with learning vocabulary before listening,
identifying content words, inferring missing words by prior knowledge, listening to

main ideas, predicting on text, guessing meaning basing on context, and visualizing
lesson by charts or diagrams.
Social-affective listening strategies include behaviors and control of emotional
conditions and experiences that shape learners' learning improvement.
2.2.2.1 Metacognitive of listening skill
Metacognitive strategies are used to prepare, monitor, and evaluate learning
(O'Malley and Chamot, 1990). First, preparation and planning can improve students'

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listening. Prior to listening, students must think about their goals and steps set to
accomplishing them (Zhao, 2013). Secondly, during listening, metacognitive
strategies would control cognitive strategies as well as increase learners' selfconfidence and motivation because they adjust what listeners have to do. Goh
(2008) also confirms that, active monitoring, regulate and organize important events
to achieve a goal. Finally, learners use the strategies to evaluate the listening result
by comparing their real achievement with the initial goal then draw experience for
later use. To sum up, metacognitive listening strategies are vital tools to facilitate
listening process (zhao, 2013; Liu& Goh, 2006; Rahimi& Katal, 2012; Vandergrift,
2004). Therefore, developing students' metacognitive listening strategies is the
responsibility of both teaching and learning process.
2.2.2.2 Cognitive of listening skill
The strategies relate directly to processes of listening, in other words, steps of
acquiring listening knowledge for reasoning, analyzing, summarizing, and
practicing a listening task. Understanding processes of listening, language learners
know firmly about their duties in their learning process. In English language's
receptive skills (listening and reading), knowledge of the notions, bottom-up, topdown is seriously indispensable. The nature of differences between the two terms is
revealed by their impact on listening activities. Cognitive strategies assist learners
to combine two cognitive processes: top-down and bottom-up in one listening
process. On the one hand, top-down strategies such as listening to main ideas,

predicting or make hypotheses, guessing meaning, are used to construct the
speaker's original meaning by using background knowledge to understand meaning
of tasks (Nunan, 1999, Brown, 2006 Ohata, 2006, and Norris, 2002). On the other
hand, bottom-up strategies, including identifying content words or noticing on
transitional signal, are used to decode the sounds that one hears from the smallest
meaningful units (or phonemes) to complete texts (Nunan, 1999: Hedge, 2 Brown,
2006: Field, 1999: Eysenck, 2001). In some tasks requiring general information,
top-down is in the upper hand over bottom-up. In other cases, such as filling in

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blanks or finding out specific information, bottom-up is paid more attention. In
general, learners use the processes simultaneously well will be successful listeners.
2.2.2.3 Social effective strategies
The strategies include factors affects learners' behavior and learning quality,
such as emotions and attitudes (Oxford, 1990). Habte-Gabr (2006) stated that
different from the two strategies mentioned above socio-affective strategies which
were non-academic in nature involve stimulating learning. It is essential for
listeners to know how to reduce the anxiety, feel confident in doing listening tasks,
and promote personal motivation in improving listening competence (Vandergrift,
1997) According to O'Malley& Chamot (19990), among the strategies. Socialaffective strategies in listening comprehension influenced the learning situation
immediately. To sum up, good mood and motivation provide learners with energy
for working out an activity. Therefore, a good listener must understand thoroughly
their learning level and be calm from the beginning till the end of a listening task.
2.3 Factors affecting listening skill
2.3.1 Vocabulary
Vocabulary is the key to understanding what people hear and read, and to
communicating successfully with other people. The more words people know, the
more information can be exchanged. “Vocabulary knowledge is heavily implicated

in all practical language skills” (Meara and Jones, 1988). Many students find it hard
to acquire vocabulary. Lack of vocabulary is an obvious and serious obstacle for
students who learn English as a second language. It causes the problems that they
cannot know what the words are. Therefore, they might miss the important
information when listening. That is the reason why students should study
vocabulary as much as they can in other to improve their skills in English and
successful in communication.

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2.3.2 Grammar
“English grammar is the structure of expressions in the English language. This
includes the structure of words, phrases, clauses and sentences” (Wikipedia, the free
encyclopedia). Shanklin (1994) suggested that grammatical proficiency is both an
important pedagogical skill and an important part of target language proficiency.
Besides, grammar is the structural foundation of our ability to express ourselves.
The more we are aware of how it works, the more we can monitor the meaning and
effectiveness of the way we and others use the language. “It can foster precision,
detect ambiguity and exploit the richness of expression” (Luca Lampariello).
In short, we can compare all parts of the body as rules of the grammar and
movement of the body parts as the usage. In the same way one will be successful
listener when he knows all rules of grammar to listen effectively. Therefore,
grammar plays a significant role in listening English accurately.
2.3.3 Pronunciation, intonation and accent
“Pronunciation carries an important link to communication through listening
and speaking” (Gilbert, 1984) .This means that pronunciation is vital to listen to
English because the incorrect use of pronunciation inevitably leads to the message
being misunderstood by the speaker. In fact, pronunciation is a common problem
that many listeners have. This often results in their facing difficulties in listening.

Hinofotis and Baily (1980, pp. 124-125) notes that “up to a certain proficiency
standard, the fault which most severely impairs the listening process in major
English learners is pronunciation, not vocabulary or grammar”. “Another important
aspect is learner with good English pronunciation inclines to highlight and adds
value to an individual listening English. In a situation where a student’s grammar
and vocabulary is exceptionally good, he or she may be able to write good English.
But, if that same student lacks a fundamental knowledge of pronunciation despite
having an excellent knowledge of grammar, etc. his or her communication in
English will be severely impeded. He or she will be able to write in English, but

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will not be able to understand a meaningful sentence when listening and thus fails at
communicating a message” (Stevick E, 1978). If students use new ways of hearing
and new ways of using their organs of speech, it is too difficult to change such
habits which listeners have obtained since their childhood or at least it needs very
long years to be changed and after also very long time and regular practice. “So the
points mentioned that the listener confuses such sounds and replaces each of them
with other sounds” (O’Connor, 2003). Beside students also have problem about
intonation and accent. "Intonation describes how the voice rises and falls in speech.
The three main patterns of intonation in English are falling intonation, rising
intonation and fall-ris intonation" (Cambridge dictionary).
Students may confuse or even irritate when hear the whole sentence. One
common example of inappropriate intonation is repeatedly using high rising
intonation at the end of most speech chunks and sentences. Although high rising
intonation is common in casual conversation. The purpose of intonation, according
to Gilbert (1994), is "helping the listener to follow." It is a navigation guide for the
listener. She goes on to note that "L2 learners have difficulty hearing
intonation"(p.43). Indeed, most of freshmen, when listening to English, pay more

attention to sounds, vocabulary, and grammar that make them cannot understand
what they are hearing. Another important aspect is making students aware of
different native speaker accents. Accented English is characterized by numerous
deviations from native English. "American accent is quite different from British,
Canadian and Australian, for example. Students tend to be used to their teacher’s
accent or to the standard variety of British or American English. They find it hard to
understand these speakers with other speaker. This becomes obstacle for English
majored freshmen learning listening subject. Therefore, it is necessary to have
students deal with these different accents, especially in external listening" (Harmer,
2001. p. 228).

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2.3.4 Background knowledge
Listening is an important language skill to develop. Language learners want to
understand target language speakers and they want to be able to access the rich
variety of aural and visual texts available via network-based multimedia.
Furthermore, “listening is at the heart of learning and the development of listening
skills which has demonstrated a beneficial impact on the development of other
skills” (e.g. Dunkel 1991; Rost 2002). Therefore, “it is important to develop
listening competence; yet, in spite of its importance, learners are rarely taught how
to listen effectively” (e.g. Mendelsohn 2001, 2006; Berne 2004; LeLoup & Pontiero
2007). According to them, the main reason is that one receives input through
listening to instructions or explanations prior to responding orally or in writing.
“Listening is not an easy skill to acquire because it requires listeners to make
meaning from the oral input by drawing upon their background knowledge of the
world and of the second language” (Byrnes, 1984; Nagle & Sanders, 1986; Young,
1997) and “produce information in their long term memory and make their own
interpretations of the spoken passages” (Murphy, 1985; Mendelsohn, 1994; Young,

1997). In other words, “listeners need to be active processors of information”
(Young, 1997). Meanwhile, Vandergrift (1996, 1997, and 2003) “asserts that
listening is a complex, active process of interpretation in which listeners try to suit
what they hear with their prior knowledge”. To sum up, background knowledge
plays a significant role in students' learning English listening. “Learning is effective
when it is possessed with meaningful material related to knowledge that learners
already possess” (Ausubel, 1968).
2.4 The term of extensive listening
2.4.1 The definition of extensive listening
In a recent article that appeared in the ELT Journal (Renandya& Farrell,
2011), define extensive listening as referring to:

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All types of listening activities that allow learners to receive a lot of
comprehensible and enjoyable listening input. These activities can be teacherdirected dictations or read-aloud or self-directed listening for pleasure that can be
done outside the classroom. The key consideration here is that learners get to do a
lot of meaningful listening practice. (p. 56)
As can be seen from the above definition, extensive listening can be done as
an in-class or out of class activities, but the important thing to remember is that
students get to do a lot of meaningful listening practice. In order for the students to
be willing to engage in sustained listening practice, the language must be
comprehensible and the contents of the materials interesting and enjoyable. It is
believed that this kind of sustained practice can provide learners with a cognitive
map, i.e., a network of linguistic information from which learners can "build up the
necessary knowledge for using the language" (Nation& Newton, 2009, p. 38)
In addition, from the perspective of a skill learning theory (e.g., Dekeyser,
2007), language learning takes a lot of practice. The kind of practice afforded by
extensive listening enables L2 learners to move from the slow and controlled

processing of language elements (e.g., sounds, words, phrases) to the faster, and
automatic processing of these elements. This is particularly important where lower
proficiency learners of English are concerned. While they have acquired some basic
listening skills, their bottom-up processing skill is still at a level that is not efficient
enough to process normal speech. In order to be able to process spoken language at
normal speed, the students' bottom-up processing skills will have to be automatized
through repeated practice so that its use becomes "fully spontaneous, effortless, fast,
and errorless" (DeKeyser, 2007, p. 3). Extensive listening is well-suited to provide
the kind of practice needed to develop this automaticity in L2 listening.
2.4.2 Benefits of extensive listening in learning English
Extensive listening can improve our students' listening comprehension
primarily because it enables them to process spoken language more accurately and

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fluently. In a chapter on extensive listening (Renandya, 2011: 32-33), he discusses a
number of language learning benefits associated with extensive listening, some of
which are listed below:
First, it can enhance learners' ability to deal with normal speech rate, which
for many beginning L2 learners is perceived to be too fast. Beginning students often
complain about the difficulty of understanding spoken language, not because the
content is difficult or the language is too hard, but because it is too fast (Renandya,
2012).
Second, it can improve their word recognition skill. Students report that they
can often recognize words in writing, but not in speech. Again, lower proficiency
students seem to have problems recognizing words in speech and frequent listening
practice seems to facilitate the development of automaticity in sound-script
relationships.
Third, it can enhance their bottom-up listening skills, in particular the skills of

recognizing word boundaries. In speech, words often take on different forms from
when they are said in isolation. Speech phenomena such as assimilation (e.g., in
class ing class), contractions (e.g., going to gonna), resyllabification (e.g., bend it
ben dit) are common in speech and known to cause listening problems to lower
proficiency learners.
Finally, extensive listening can give students a lot of opportunities to
experience a high level of language comprehension. Students experience a deeper
degree of comprehension when they listen to a spoken text, because it is this type of
comprehension that is more likely to lead to acquisition. Some research evidence
that shows that repeated listening of the same material (called narrow listening) can
lead to deeper comprehension. Dupuy (1999), for example, found that for her
beginning learners of French as a foreign language, a higher degree of
comprehension (95% and above) is possible only after the third or fourth listening.

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In short, Extensive listening has an important role in the development of
learner’s aural comprehension ability, particularly in situations where students need
exposure to large amounts of comprehensible input. For most learners, especially
those EFL settings, thistype of input is most readily available through extended
listening. Since learners all have different learning styles, providing opportunities to
engage in EL should benefit a wider range of learners than in the case of intensive
or classroom listening. With access to the internet now nearly universal in many
areas, opportunities to find appropriate listening texts of a suitable level of difficulty
and interest should become increasingly easy.
2.5 Previous studies
In the other research, the researchers are also study about some problems
affected extensive listening.
According to Wm. R. Holden III was study the topic “Extensive Listening: A

new approach to an old problem” said that the best way to master something is to
do it regularly for an extended length of time. The participants was a few Japanese
English students. And the result will explain how EL is able to help learners
overcome some of the barriers they face in learning a second language, examine EL
for the challenges it poses L2 learners, and provide a few guidelines for instructors
who wish to incorporate extensive listening as a component of a language teaching
program.
About the topic, “The Effects of Extensive Listening for Pleasure on the
Proficiency Level of Foreign Language Learners in an Input-based Setting” by
Emrah BOZAN to examine the relationship between extensive listening for
pleasure/extra practice and English as a foreign language proficiency in an inputbased setting. For the study, 85 college students whose proficiency levels were A1
or A2 were recruited. They took a pre-test including listening and use of English
sections (grammar and vocabulary) at the beginning of the Spring 2015 semester.
After a semester, they took a post-test, which was the same as the pre-test, and

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completed a listening habits questionnaire. The results also suggest that there is a
positive relationship between extensive listening and proficiency level, which
means the more learners do extensive listening, the more they improve their global
language skills.

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CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH AIMS - RESEARCH QUESTIONS –

HYPOTHESIS
3.1 Research aims

This investigation aims to find out listening skill of English major freshmen at
Tay Do University by extensive listening. The most important purpose of this
research is to help them recognize that extensive listening is an effective ways to
improve their listening ability.
3.2 Research questions
The research is expected to figure out how to improve listening skill of
English major freshmen at Tay Do University by extensive listening. Therefore, this
research is required to answer the following research question:
Does extensive listening help English major freshmen at Tay Do University
improve their listening skill?
3.3 Hypothesis
According to most of English majored students at Tay Do University listening
is the most difficult skill. Students have faced difficulties in vocabulary, grammar,
pronunciation. They do not apply rightly listening strategies. Lack of background
knowledge is also a big problem which needs to be concentrated. This research is
supposed to be a tool which will find out ways to improve in listening skill by
extensive listening.

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CHAPTER 4: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
4.1 Design
That is a combination of Quantitative. The questionnaire will be given to all
participants. The data from participants will be collected through the questionnaires.
The collected information will be analyzed to show the investigation that freshmen
majoring in English faced.
4.2 Participants
The participants of this study are freshmen majoring in English, course 11 at
Tay Do University. Their ages ranged from 18 to 22 who come from different areas,

both rural and urban. They speak Vietnamese as mother tongue and English is
considered as their foreign language. They have been learning English for 8 to to
13 years. The main material of English listening at university is Interaction 1, silver
edition (Cheryl Pavlik; Margaget Keenan Segal; published by McGraw-Hill
ESL/ELT, a business unit of the McGraw-Hill Companies). They will be given
questionnaires in order to get information about their investigation with studying
listening.
4.3 Instruments
Questionnaire is used to collect the participants’ idea about the investigation in
learning listening subjects. The students share their opinions which are essential in
the research process. Thus, the questionnaire is used as the instrument in this
research.
The questionnaire includes 8 questions and 7 statements and it is classified
into the following groups:
Group

Summary question group’s content

a. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Students’ background

b. From 9 to 15

An investigation of student faced in listening

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4.4 Procedure

Duration (12 weeks)
Step 1: from the 1st week to 4th
week

Activities in study process
- Designing the framework of the
research.
- Designing questionnaire and
interview.

Step 2: from the 5th week to 7th
week

- Delivering the questionnaire to
students and interview to students.
- Collecting the data from the
questionnaire and interview.

Step 3: from the 8th week to 12th

- Analyzing the collected data from

week

questionnaire and interview.
- Completing the paper.

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CHAPTER 5: EXPECTED OUTCOME
Listening plays an important role in learning a language. Students majoring in
English, especially freshmen, usually face many problems when listening. This
research aims to find out investigation in listening skill of English major freshmen
at Tay Do University by extensive listening have to face in listening including:
Lack of vocabulary will be a big obstacle to most freshmen in listening
comprehension their vocabulary about fields; topic they hear will limit to
understand the message from speakers. Complex grammatical structures which
always interfere with student's listening comprehension are partly due to the
structural component of the text because English and Vietnamese belong to
different language families. The listening problems students face stem from
unfamiliarity with certain pronunciation features. They cannot apprehend properly
due to the pronunciation of the speakers with different accents such as American,
British...They do not capture the significance of specific patterns of stress. In
addition, they have difficult in understanding what they hear that intonation suffers.
About listening strategies: Students often translate all things they hear into
their mother tongue. They have a tendency to pay a lot of attention to details, facts,
or words, rather than meaning or the main ideas of the context. In addition, they are
not interested in the speaker. They assume they know and understand what other
people are saying and only vague messages are interpreted. Students sometimes
wait for the speaker's ideas; they can be pushed into passive listening.
Background knowledge has a significant effect on listening. Providing the
learners with background knowledge as well as systemic knowledge provide,
learners with the necessary information to facilitate listening on a preciously
unfamiliar topic. Helping students develop listening proficiency has always been a
particularly difficulties aspect of foreign language teaching, not least because
listening involves of a number of complex, interrelated cognitive processes which

18

must occur simultaneously within fractions of a second for a message to be
interpreted correctly.

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