A study on the factors affecting english listening skill of the firstyear english major students at hung yen university of technology and education

HUNG YEN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY AND EDUCATION
FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

---------------------------------------

GRADUATION PAPER
FIELD: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS

A STUDY ON THE FACTORS AFFECTING ENGLISH
LISTENING SKILL OF THE FIRST-YEAR ENGLISH
MAJOR STUDENTS AT HUNG YEN UNIVERSITY
OF TECHNOLOGY AND EDUCATION
(NHỮNG YẾU TỐ ẢNH HƯỞNG TỚI KỸ NĂNG
NGHE ĐỐI VỚI SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ NHẤT
CHUYÊN NGÀNH NGÔN NGỮ ANH- TRƯỜNG ĐẠI
HỌC SƯ PHẠM KỸ THUẬT HƯNG YÊN)

Supervisor: Nguyen Thi Bich Hanh, M.A
Student: Nguyen Thi Quynh Mai
Student number: 11317036

Hung Yen - 2021


HUNG YEN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY AND EDUCATION
FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

---------------------------------------

GRADUATION PAPER
FIELD: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS

A STUDY ON THE FACTORS AFFECTING
ENGLISH LISTENING SKILL OF THE FIRST-YEAR
ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT HUNG YEN
UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY AND EDUCATION
(NHỮNG YẾU TỐ ẢNH HƯỞNG TỚI KỸ NĂNG
NGHE ĐỐI VỚI SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ NHẤT
CHUYÊN NGÀNH NGÔN NGỮ ANH- TRƯỜNG ĐẠI
HỌC SƯ PHẠM KỸ THUẬT HƯNG YÊN)

Supervisor: Nguyen Thi Bich Hanh, M.A
Student: Hoang Thi Quynh Mai
Student number: 11317036

Hung Yen - 2021
i


i

DECLARATION
I confirm the thesis entitled “A study on the factors affecting English listening skill of the firstyear English major students at Hung Yen University of Technology and Education” is the
result of my own research and the substance of this thesis had not been submitted for a degree
to any university or institution.

Signature

Hoang Thi Quynh Mai

ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I have a deepest respect and gratitude to the teacher who spend much enthusiasm, time, and
efforts so as to help me to finish the study.
At the outset, I am a great honor for me to give the best thanks to my supervisor, Mrs.Nguyen
Thi Bich Hanh, M.A, for her precious advice, enthusiastic assistance, and encouragement in the
accomplishment of this study.
What is more, my sincere thank is also to all my teachers at Faculty of Foreign Language at
Hung Yen University of Technology and Education participating in the study survey and
provided me with valuable suggestion and criticism, especially students of 2 classes 113202.1
and 113202.2 for their openness and assistance during the process of data collection.
As a final point, I do really express my thankfulness to all classmates, my family who supported
me both mental and physical inspiration during of completing this study process.


iii

ABSTRACT
This study deeply finds out the factual situation of teaching and learning listening skill as well
as the factors which effect on the student’s learning listening of the Freshman English major at
Hung Yen University of Technology and Education and then propose techniques and solutions
to improve listening skill. This study was conducted in the light of qualitative and quantitative
methods, including the survey questionnaires, informal interviews. Among those survey
questionnaires serves as the major method for data collection while interview is applied with an
aim to get more information for any confirmation of the findings.
After conducting the survey and informal interview for both students and teachers, the data of
the study is analyzed carefully. It was found out that listening skill was considered as the biggest
difficulty for most of the Freshman English major and there were some common problems for
them. Through analyzed data, the study presented that most of students have been coping with

two mains factors-outside factors (objective factors) and inside factors (subjective factors) in
learning listening skill such as: being distracted by background noise, lacking equipment in the
Labs, having poor background knowledge,trying to understand every word, having problems
with different accents, getting tired, lacking of stamina, having poor vocabularies, having
mistakes with weak forms, long or short vowels, linking words. This affects students’ interest
and results during learning.
To deal with these issues, the teachers have used some techniques and methods to inspire student
to learn better. With the desire of improving the present situation, the researcher recommends
some techniques for both teachers and students to be better in teaching and learning this skill
more effectively.


iv

TABLES OF CONTENT
❖ DECLARATION…………………………………………………………………......i
❖ ACKNOWLEDGEMENT…………………………………………………….……..ii
❖ ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………..........iii
❖ TABLES OF CONTENT …………………………………………….………...........iv
❖ LIST OF ABBREVITION……………………………………………………..……..v
❖ LIST OF TABLES AND CHART…………………………………………...............vi
CHAPTER1: INTRODUCTION………………………………………………................
1.1 Rationale of the study …………………………………………………………………..1
1.2 Purposes of the study …………………………………………………………………...2
1.3 Methodology of the study ……………………………………………………………....3
1.4 Scope of the study and Limitation……………………………………………………....3
1.5 Structure of the Thesis ………………………………………………………………….4
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW …………………………………………………
2. Background theorems of listening ……………………………………………………….
2.1. Definition of listening skill …………………………………............................................

2.2 The significance of listening skill …………………………………………………………
2.3 Nature of listening comprehension ……………………………………………………….
2.4 Types of listening skill ……………………………………………………………………
2.5. The Listening skill process ………………………………………………………………
2.6 Teacher’s roles in teaching listening ……………………………………………………..
2.7 Factors affecting listening skill ……………………………………………………………
2.8. Summary ……………………………………………………………………………….....
CHAPTER 3: THE STUDY
3. Participants of the study …………………………………………………………………….
3.1 The teachers ……………………………………………………………………………….
3.2 The students ……………………………………………………………………………….
3.3. Survey questionnaire ……………………………………………………………………..
3.4. Interview ………………………………………………………………………………….


v

3.5 Procedures of data collection ……………………………………………………………...
3.6 Data analysis …………………………………………………………………………….
3.6.1 The distribution of participants …………………………………………………………
3.6.2 Number of year’s students has been learning ………………………………………….
3.6.3 Teachers’ and students’ real situations of teaching and learning listening skill ……….
3.6.3.1 Students’ real situations of learning listening skill …………………………………...
3.6.3.2 Student’s opinions on facilities and classroom conditions …………………………...
3.6.3.2 Teachers’ real situations of learning listening ……………………………………….
3.6.3.4 Teachers’ opinion on facilities and classroom conditions ……………………………
3.7. Students’ difficulties in listening skill……………………………………………………
3.8 Cause affecting English listening skill …………………………………………………...
3.9.1 Student’s recommendation to improve listening skill ………………………………….
3.9.2 Teachers’ techniques which they often us to improve students’ listening skill ……......

3.10 Data from students’ interview …………………………………………………………..
3.11 Finding of study …………………………………………………………………………
3.12 Discussion of the findings ……………………………………………………………….
3.13 Recommendation ………………………………………………………………………..
3.14.1 Recommendations for teachers
3.14.2 Recommendation for students
3.15 Summary
CHAPTER 4: CONCLUSION
4.1. Conclusion of the study
4.2. Limitations of the study
4.3. Suggestions for further study
REFERENCE
APPENDIX 1: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE FOR STUDENTS
APPENDIX 2: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE FOR TEACHERS.


vi

APPENDIX 3: INTERVIEW FOR STUDENTS.

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
M.A: Master of art
UTEHY: Hung Yen University of Technology and Education
FFL: Faculty of Foreign Language


vii

LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS
Tables

Table 1: Numbers of year’s students have been learning English………………………...….23
Table 2: Students’ opinion and attitude of listening skill …………………………………….25
Table 3: Students’ habit of practicing listening……………………………………...……….27
Table 4: Lower schools’ teaching curriculum and Students’ ability of listening skill ……...28
Table 5: Students’ opinion on facilities and classroom conditions ……………………….....30
Table 6: Teachers’ opinion on facilities and classroom conditions ……………………..…..31
Table 7: Teachers’ opinion and Students’ view on factors as well as difficulties that
students meet in listening skill. ………………………………………………………….......34
Table 8: Students’ techniques to improve their listening skill………………………….…….38
Table 9: Teachers’ techniques which they often use to improve students’ listening skill……40
Charts
Chart 1: Students’ attitude and opinion on listening skill in learning English………….……24
Chart 2: Teachers’ opinion how your students feel about listening skill …………………….26
Chart 3: Teacher’s opinion about the traditional teaching English from the Primary school to
High school which are affecting on your students’ listening skill at present ………………..29
Chart 4: Teachers and Students’ view toward the different accent affecting result …………32
Chart 5: The factors as well as difficulties that students often have when learningEnglish ...34
Chart 6: The subjective factors affecting the students’ learning listening skill …….…….....37


1

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1 Rationale of the Study
A great number of non-English speakers as well as native English speakers use English as an
important medium of international communication in every part of the world. English is no
longer the language used solely in English speaking countries; rather it is internationally used.
As the English language has become an essential factor in strengthening trade and travel in
many countries, the necessity of knowing and using this communication medium is
increasing. Besides, English is widely used in communication through modern technology

and media communication devices such as mobile telephones, electronic mail, and the
Internet. Undoubtedly, people around the world need English as the main medium of their
communication via such devices.
As a consequence of its importance as an international language as mentioned above, it is
necessary for Vietnamese students to be able to use English effectively. there will definitely
be much more opportunity than now to use English in order to communicate with people all
over the world. Without a doubt, the ability to communicate in English in real life situations
will remain essential, and students are expected to be able to communicate in the English
language. The purpose of learning English is, thus, to communicate in English efficiently in
the real world. To interact with each other, the learners need to master of four skills: listening,
speaking, reading, and writing. Nevertheless, listening skill is believed to be the most
challenging due to the complex and subtle nature of listening comprehension in a second or
foreign language.
As a researcher, I would like to offer the thesis title “A study on the factors affecting English
listening skill of the first-year English major students at Hung Yen University of
Technology and Education” for several reasons.
For the first reason, listening is an important skill for the person who is learning English
because in verbal communication we can not communicate with each other without listening
to speakers’ utterances and understanding them.


2

1.2 Purposes of the Study
This study investigated the factors affecting in learning listening skill of the Freshman English
Major Students at Hung Yen University of Technology Education (UTEHY) and the
techniques to improve listening. The results obtained are expected to be used as a beneficial
guideline for English teachers and students to use in teaching listening appropriately. In
particular, this research is aimed at investigating the factors which the students are facing in
listening skill. The purposes of this study were put in details as follow:

To find out the student and teachers’ opinion on teaching and learning listening skill
To pinpoint the factors, difficulties that the first year English major students have in learning
listening comprehension.
Suggest the solutions for both teachers and students, especially it is the first year English
students so as to improve the listening skill.
Research questions of the study
This study is implemented to find answers to the following research questions:
1. What are the teachers and students’ opinions about teaching and learning listening skills?
2. What factors do the first year English major students face in learning listening skill at
UTEHY?
3. What are some solutions to help the first year English major students to improve their listening
skill?
1.3 Methods of the study
The main methods of this study are quantitative and qualitative methods. Survey questionnaires
and interviews are designed for both teachers and students at UTEHY.
1.4 Scope of the Study and Limitations
This study investigated the factors affecting in learning listening skill for the Freshman English
major students at UTEHY and offer some solutions to improve their listening skill.
1.5 Structure of the Thesis
The study is carried out into four parts:
CHAPTER 1: Introduction
This part includes the rationale, the purposes, the research questions, the scopes, and methods
of the study.


3

CHAPTER 2: Literature Review
This chapter reveals the concepts relevant to the research topics such as the importance of
listening, definition of listening skill, classification of listening, three stages of listening

situation and teacher’s roles in teaching listening.
CHAPTER 3: The Study
This chapter presents the opinion of learning and teaching listening skill of First –year English
major student at UTEHY. It also includes careful description of subjects, data collection
instruments, research methods, data collection procedure and data analysis procedure.
Besides, questionnaires, interview’s responds are analyzed to find out the factors affecting on
the first year English major and give several effective solutions so as to push them better in
listening skill.
CHAPTER 4: Conclusions
This part summarizes all the key issues as well as the limitation and recommends the techniques
to help the first year English major better in listening skill.


4

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
2. Background theorems of listening
2.1 Definition of listening
Listening is considered as one of the most important parts of the oral communication. The
term is used in order to make oral communication effective. There was an idea that “Students
spend 20 percent of all school related hours just listening. If television watching and one-half
of conversations are included, students spend approximately 50 percent of their waking hours
just listening. For those hours spent in the classroom, the amount of 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 Bullentin (1952) conceived listening as an active process in which a listener
selects and interprets information, which comes from auditory and visual clues to define what
is going on and what the speakers are trying to express.
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 and pronunciation,

the speaker’s grammar and vocabulary, and comprehension of meaning. An able listener is
capable of doing these four things simultaneously.
What is more, Wolvin and Coakley (1991) points out that listening is “the process of receiving,
attending to and assigning meaning to aural stimuli’’. This definition suggests that listening is
a complex, problem –solving skill. The task of listening is more than perception of sound. This
view of listening is in accordance with second – language theory which listeners focus on
selected aspects of aural input, construct meaning, and relate what they hear to existing
knowledge.
Besides, Anderson & Lynch (1988) provides the definition of listening is as follows: “Listening
Comprehension means understanding what the speaker has said. Listeners have particularly
important role in the process by listening to diverse use their knowledge to analyze what he
heard to be able to understand the speaker’s spokesman.”
Theoretically, O'Malley and Chamot (1989: 418) viewed listening comprehension as "an active
process in which individuals focus on selected aspects of aural input, construct meaning from
passages and relate what they hear to existing knowledge".


5

Purdy (1991) defined listening as “the active and dynamic process of attending, perceiving,
listening, remembering and responding to the expressed verbal and non–verbal needs,
concerns and information offered by the human-beings.”
A study defined by Oxford (1993: 206), "Listening is a complex, problem solving skill" and it
is "more than just perception of the sounds. Listening includes comprehension of meaning
bearing words, phrases, clauses, sentences and connected discourse".
In this study, the researcher would like to mention Howatt and Dakin’s definition of
listening, this definition exposes that listening is the ability to identify and understanding.
what others saying. It is also a complex activity, and help students comprehend what they
hear by activating their prior knowledge. Listening is the active process because listening is
not just matter of hearing, listening include many proccess.

2.2 The significance of listening
There are so many reasons to advocate the importance of listening skills.
First, suggested that a new language learner should learn listening at the initial stage of
language learning in the same manner as a child learns a mother language because learning
listening skill in the beginning is the natural process of human in acquiring a new language
Listening is regarded as a premise in order to understand what is being said and pick up the
general idea of what is being discussed.
Second, listening takes a more important role than other skills in overall communication.
Rivers (1981) stated that listening comprehension is of primary importance in communication
because communication will not take place unless people understand the language to which
they are exposed. Further, Wilt (1950) suggested that we always spend a longer time listening
during communication than speaking, reading and writing. To support the claim, Wilt provided
information that when people communicate, they spend 45 percent of the time in listening, 30
percent in speaking, 16 percent in reading, and 9 percent in writing. Third, listening can
enhance speaking skill. Postovsky (1976) posited that the key to increase speaking ability is to
develop proficiency in listening comprehension. He further suggested that speaking skill would
be developed automatically when learners improve their listening skill. Therefore, it is
necessary to develop listening skill in the initial stage of learning to become a good speaker.
Additionally, Listening is an important skill for the person who is learning English because in


6

verbal communication we can not communicate with each other without listening to speakers’
utterances and understanding them listening takes a more important role than other skills in
overall communication.
Furthermore, listening is also an important condition for developing other skills, especially
speaking skill as Doff (1988) suggests that we can not develop speaking skill unless we develop
listening skill. Thus, if we want to speak well, we firstly must listen to what others say and
understand them clearly.

With the above reasons presented above, it is reasonable to say that listening is an important
skill a second language learner needs to improve. To sum up, listening skill has taken a very
essential part in learning English. It is the most communicative and practical skill that needs to
be developed as much as possible.
2.3. Nature of listening comprehension
According to Wang Shouyuan (2003), listening is the most important component in the four
aspects of English competence: listening, speaking, reading, and writing, it deserves particular
attention. Educators must actively explore the nature and process of listening comprehension
and study the theory and methodology of listening comprehension in order to improve listening
teaching outcomes and make students recognize that listening comprehension is the crucial
aspect of English learning. From the point of view of constructivist linguistics, foreign language
teaching should focus on language form and structure, thus, listening teaching is undertaken in
each of the four aspects of language form. The goals of listening teaching model from the
“bottom-up” is to help students understand the meaning of vocabulary by discriminating sounds,
to understand sentence meaning, and to control the meaning of discourses by understanding
sentence meaning. Since the 1970s, with the development of functional language theory, there
has been an emphasis on the research of language function in society. Functional linguistic
experts recognize language as a communicative tool, but not an isolated structure system.
Consequently, the teaching of listening is not simply intended to make students hear a sound, a
word, or a sentence, rather, the goal is to cultivate students’ abilities to understand speakers’
intentions accurately and communicate with each other effectively.
2.4 Classification of Listening


7

As we know, there are a lot of different types of listening. It depends on listening purposes, the
roles of the listener, situation of listener, and the kinds of text being listened to.
2.4.1 Specific Listening Types:
o Discriminative and comprehensive listening are prerequisites for specific listening types.

o Listening types can be defined by the goal of the listening.
o The three main types of listening most common in interpersonal communication are:
o Informational Listening (Listening to learn)
Whenever you listen to learn something, you are engaged in informational listening. This is
true in many day –to-day situation in education and at work, when you listen to the news, watch
a documentary, when a friend tells you a recipe or when you are talked-through a technical
problem with a computer –there are many other examples of informational listening too.
o Critical Listening (Listening to Evaluate and Analyze)
We can be said be engaged in critical listening when the goal is to evaluate or scrutinize what
is being said. Critical listening is a much more active behavior than informational listening and
usually involves some sort of problem solving or decision making. Critical listening is akin to
critical reading, both involve analysis of the information being received and alignment with
what we already know or believe. Whereas informational listening may be mostly concerned
with receiving facts and/or new information-critical listening is about analyzing opinion and
make a judgment.
Relaxing or Sympathetic Listening (Listening to Understand Feeling and Emotion)
In reality you may have more than one goal for listening at any given time – for example, you
may be listening to learn whilst also attempting to be empathetic.
o General Listening Types:
Discriminative Listening (listen following the short and detail paragraph)
Comprehensive Listening (listen the whole of the text or the contend)
Selective Listening (selective listening occurs when we only listen what we want, is a listening
technique that filters and summarizes to achieve comprehension).
2.4.2 Classroom Listening
Classroom listening is divides into intensive listening and extensive listening.
Intensive listening


8

Intensive listening is the careful, focused listening to a short passage for detailed informationor
full comprehension, such as, listening to a dialogue on the tape to study its structures, intonation
patterns in an English class.
Extensive listening
Extensive listening is free and more general listening to natural language for general ideas ,not
for a particular detail and not necessary under the teacher’s direct guidance .The listening
passage for extensive listening can be long or short .The language that is used in the type of
listening is often within the students’ current ability so that they find it pleasing and interesting
when they are listening .With this type of listening ,students are not reinforcing a structure or
practicing a grammar point linked to the rest of the course .
2.5 Stages of listening skill in classroom.
Listening lessons attempt so as to push students listening skills such as intensive and extensive
listening. Structure of a listening lesson includes three stages: pre-listening; while-listening and
post-listening.
2.5.1 Pre-listening stage
Pre-listening stage is one of the vital stages it leads students to the listening passage they are
going to listen, arouses students’ interest and provides students with the aims of listening.
Underwood (1989:30) defined pre-listening stage follows: ‘‘Before listening, students should
be ‘‘turn in’’ so that they know what to expect, both in general and tasks. This kind of
preparatory work is generally described as ‘‘Pre–listening work’’ or just ‘‘Pre –listening’’.
As for her, Pre –listening work can consist of a whole range of activities, including: the teacher
giving background information, the students reading something relevant, the students looking
at pictures, discussion of the topic or situation, a question-and-answer session, written exercises
and following the instructions for the while listening activity and consideration of how the
while –listening will be done.
These activities may provide a teachers play vital roles in the lives of the students in their
classrooms. Teachers are best known for the role of educating the students that are placed in
their care. Beyond that, teachers serve many other roles in the classroom. Teachers set the tone
of their classrooms, build a warm environment, mentor, and nurture students, become role
models, and listen and look for signs of trouble. opportunity for students so as to gain some

9

knowledge which help them to follow the listening text .Furthermore, each of these activities
help students focus their mind on the topic by narrowing down the things that students expect
to hear .However ,the teacher when choosing an activity should consider the factors which
Underwood (1989) mentions: The time ,the material is available or not ,the interest of the class
and the teacher ,the place in which the work is being carried out ,the nature and the content of
the listening text itself . If one of these is forgotten, the whole process of activity can be failed.
She especially emphasizes on the importance of the listening text because each listening text
itself has an especially appropriate type of activities. When the teacher pays attention to this
factor properly, the activity chosen for students will be more specific and effective.
2.5.2 While–listening stage.
The while –listening stage involves of activities that students are asked to do during the time
they are while –listening stage. The purpose of while listening activities is to help students
develop their skills of eliciting messages from spoken language. Rixon (1986) pointed out the
aims of while –listening stage is to challenge and guide students to handle the information and
the message from listening text. Activities of this stage must be interesting and carefully
chosen. They must vary at different levels and in different cases.
At the early stage, students need to learn how the language sound. How to distinguish or be
aware of the relationship between written words and their spoken forms.
As students listen, they usually apply the skills, the same uses in listening in their mother
tongue, predict what they will hear and try to match them with the things they actually hear.
Therefore, in teaching listening, the teacher should try to give practice in interpreting,
matching, and predicting to help students fulfill their task less complicatedly.
The topic and the content of the listening text plus the students’ interest decide the success of
the while-listening activities. Students may get bored if they have to do the same kind of work
over again. Thus, for each purpose and on different occasions, various activities are needed.
Moreover, it is advisable to have activities which are locally relevant, of the common interest

and not too long or laborious.
Activities of this stage should be suitable with the students’ ability. This means that whilelistening activities can be done by most of students, from the slow students to the best ones.


10

Because failure can quickly discourage students to listen, in the early-stage activities which are
tricky should be used sparingly, but sometimes it is necessary to give students some challenges.
2.5.3 Post-listening stage
Post-listening
Post-listening activities in post-listening stage are done after the listening is completed. Some
post-listening activities are extension of the work done at the pre-listening and while –listening
stage and some relate only loosely to listening text itself.
According to Underwood (1989), the first purpose of post-listening activities is to check how
well the students understood and whether they have completed the listening task .The teacher
may give an answer orally ,showing the answer on the board or on the over-head projector or
ask students in order to check again the answer in the book .Students can work in pairs to check
each other’s answer or work in group to discuss any problem related to the listening text .The
second purpose of post-listening work is to reflect on why some students have failed to
understand or miss parts of the passage .
Another purpose of post-listening activities is to expand the topic or the language of the
listening text. Students are asked to deal with activities which are more or less general language
learning activities. From time to time, this does not mean that they should not be done, but it
should be recognized they do not give practice in listening skill, although the additional
language learning can well enable students to listen more successfully in the future.
The fourth purpose is to give students opportunity to consider the manner and attitude of the
speaker in the listening text. This is also important because the listeners can see the aims of the
speakers based on his /her attitude.
Additionally, the general factors listed in pre-listening and while-listening, Underwood (1989)
indicates that the attention should be given to the following factors in selecting post-listening

activities:
▪

The amount of language works the teacher wish to do in relation to the particular listening
text.

▪

The time which is followed to do post-listening.

▪

The speaking, reading or writing skills should be included in the post-listening work.

▪

The students should work in pairs or in groups.


11

▪

The chosen activity should be made motivating.

It is obvious that learning language program contains four skills: listening, speaking. reading,
and writing. In practice, speaking, writing, and reading can arise from listening, especially from
post-listening work. The order and organization of a language lesson are usually not decided
at the same time integrating these into other language skill work. For example, the students
listen and respond in writing, the teacher ask students to answer orally. Therefor, listening

exercises always involve in the rest three skills.
2.6 Teacher’s roles in teaching listening
Teachers play vital roles in the lives of the students in their classroom as well as in teaching
listening English.Teachers are best known for the role of educating the students that are placed
in their care. They supply necessary and clearly intrusion and guide students the useful way in
order to finish listening to tasks effectively.
Michael Rost (2016) stated that “language teachers need to provide various types of support to
their learners to help them develop listening skill. This includes talking to learner in the target
language, raising learners’ awareness of their listening styles and strategies and introducing a
range of materials, speaking styles, and listening situations”.
Consequently, teachers are the same as the main pillar of spine in teaching listening for the
students.
They help the students:
✓

So as not to be lost the topic or not disappointed whenever the listening text is so long, so
difficult.

✓ In order to motivate the mood and the attitude of the students to be better
✓ Determine what an utterance or conversation is about.
✓ Give suitable activities and employ different techniques.
✓ Assist students think about what they will listen to
So, the students feel secure and relaxed and unthreatened by the listening tasks.
2.7 Factors affecting listening skill.
In learning a language, listening is always considered as the most difficult of four skills for
the learner as well as for the first year English major. What are factors for this problem? Firstly,


12

the objective factors (outside factors) are listening to itself. Secondly, the subjective factors are
the listeners themselves. Those factors affect on the first year English major.
❖ Outside factors (objective factors)
Traditionally, the curriculum education as well as teaching methods have been not
concentrated on listening lesson. Almost of the teaching time is spent in grammars, structures,
models, vocabulary, pronunciation, ect. Especially, theory is always much more than practice.
As a result, we can say that the student has been strong affected by traditional teaching
environment, from Primary school to the High school. That have made student are worse
listening skill than other ones. That have extended in a long time causing for poor listening
skill interaction for students.
Besides, linguistics factors, almost of the schools in Vietnam have not much invested in
teaching English. Most of English teachers are Vietnamese teachers, not foreigner teachers
who are trained well. The Vietnamese teacher’s accent as well as their pronunciation are not
standard as the native teachers. Therefore, when the students listen tape or listen directly from
native speaker that make them having drawbacks. Moreover, most learners cannot understand
fast, natural native speech. Normally, in English classrooms, learners usually ask their teachers
to speak clearly and slow down. So, they can listen to the word or sounds in isolation.
Similarly, educational Vietnam have not had much modern equipment, and facilities, or
material for students in listening teaching. Maybe, somewhere, it is local or remote areas have
still not applied any modern equipment. Factually, there have still been lots of school in remote
communes, remote areas, from primary schools to high schools, have low facilities for studying
English, some old radios serving for listening lessons, even have not any higher quality ones,
teaching listening lesson’s texts will be read by directly English teachers. Thus, that have
affected seriously on ability’s listening of students.
In general, these objective factors will set up a poor background knowledge of listening English
or low-quality studying listening English environment. That cause a root of poorer ability in
listening skill for the students.
❖ Inside factors (subjective factors):
In fact, there are inside factors affecting listening skill of students:
Lack of vocabulary

13

One problem that students encounter in listening comes from their insufficiency of vocabulary.
Due to lack of practicing in listening, they are slow to respond to some of the words in listening.
When listening they have to stop to think as they meet new words and then they will miss the
A number of students tried to look up words in bilingual dictionary to find their meanings or
definitions when they encounter new words. Moreover, some students may require teachers to
give meaning and grammatical function for words that they do not know. Even though students
realize the importance of vocabulary when learning listening, most of them learn vocabulary
passively.
Lazy to practise listening. That means many students spend little time for practicing listening
every day.
English grammar is too complicated for students to realize their meaning when listening, for
instance between negative and positive format. Especiall, for the first year English major usually
have poor knowledge of grammar. They cannot understand all the natural talk with a lot of
different structures or modality. Informal speech also tends to be somewhat ungrammatical such
as unfinished clause or sentences are common.
Furthermore, background knowledge about the world is not heterogeneous, which causes
difficulty in understanding the discourse of the listening text. It is not easy for the first year to
get it correctly.
In addition, there are lots of other inside factors like: linking word, stress, speed, and so on .
2.8. Summary
In this chapter provides the theories concerning the subject matter of the study:
• First, it talks about different definition of Listening.
• Then the significance of listening
• Nature of the listening comprehension
• Classification of listening
Listening skill process

• Teacher’s roles in teaching listening.
• Lastly, the factors affecting learning listening skill.


14

The following chapter will put on the methodology and finding of the researcher under the
light of all above.


15

CHAPTER 3: THE STUDY
Chapter 3 provides the information about participants, research methodology, and research
method and data collection of the study.
3. Participants
3.1 Teachers
The Faculty of Foreign Language (FFL) at Hung Yen University of Technology and Education
(UTEHY) has 30 teachers including 2 Chinese teachers. Their ages are around 26 to 54 years of
age. The majority of them graduated from the Faculty of Foreign Language of Hanoi National
University or Hanoi University. At current, there are two postgraduates - one post-graduate in
Britain, another post-graduate in Vietnam, and rest ones are masters. The interview was carried
out to English teachers who have been teaching in listening skill to collect more specific facts
for this study.
3.2 Students.
The research was evaluated with the participation of 65 students who were surveyed from 80
Freshmen in the foreign language department at UTEHY.
The students are around 18 to 21 years old. Almost their destination is from the Red River Delta
(in the neighborhood provinces: Thai Binh, Hung Yen, Hai Duong, Ha Nam, Bac Ninh …)
where teaching English education system has been not really grown, so students have had very

few opportunities to practice English Skill. As a result, when attending UTEHY, most of them
have to meet with many difficulties in studying English, especially in listening skill.
3.3 The survey questionnaires.
*15 interviews have been carried out for teacher’s survey. Its purposes are to find out the real
situation of teaching listening skill, student’s difficulties, and techniques in order to improve
listening skill for the first year English major students.
*The questionnaire for students consists of 15 questions, including closed and opened questions.
Its aims to find out student’s real situation and habit of practicing listening, background
knowledge, material, Freshman’s attitude forward learning listening. Their difficulties causing
in having trouble in listening skill. Additionally, giving techniques to learn more effectively.
3.4 The interviews


16

There are 4 questions for individual interviews participated by students who are chosen at
random among the participants, for collecting student’s drawbacks when they learn listening
skill and giving some practical solutions to get better in listening skill.
3.5 Procedure
- 65 questionnaire copies were openly delivered to the first year English major students of two
groups 113202.1 and 113202.2 through contacting with them in direct. Assuredly, all of them
were given restricted time in order to finish the questionnaires.
- The interviews was interacted to teachers to get the information.
- Collected copies from the questionnaires will be placed into classification which are fit for the
research questions. The qualitative data from closed questions will be displayed of charts or
tables and qualitative from open- ended question will be showed in the form of list.
Data from interviews will be revealed by analyzing and discussing relevant responses from the
participants.
3.6 Data analysis
3.6.1 The distribution of participants

The participants included 65 students from 113202.1 and 113202.2 age group from 20 to 21
years of age and teachers of English department at Hung Yen University of Technology and
Education. The distribution of participants is presented below:
Based on the chart above, the majority of first-year English majors are female.
3.6.2. Number of year’s students have been learning English.
Number of years

< 10 years

10 years

> 10 years

Number of students

5

35

25

Percentage

8

54

38

Table 1: Numbers of year’s students have been learning English.

According to the data presented in the table above, there is a significant number of 35 partakers
who have been learning English for 10 years, accounted for 54 % of the participants. It is easy
for us to see that the number of students whose having studying English for more than 10 years
is nearly 7 times higher than those who spent less than 10 years learning English (38% contrast