Factors causing challenges in learning listening skills faced by first-year non-English major students at Hanoi University of Industry

Factors causing challenges in learning listening
skills faced by first-year non-English major
students at Hanoi University of Industry

Nguyễn Thị Minh Hạnh

Trường Đại học Ngoại Ngữ
Luận văn ThS. Chuyên ngành: English Linguistics; Mã số: 60 22 15
Người hướng dẫn: Dr. Tô Thị Thu Hương
Năm bảo vệ: 2010

Keywords: Tiếng Anh; Kỹ năng nghe; Nghe hiểu; Phương pháp dạy học

Content:
PART I: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale
It cannot be denied that English has been taken up by people in all walks of life,
especially in companies, academic institutes and so on in Vietnam. People are eager to learn
English and wish to acquire it at an early age. Also, in order to speed up the country’s economy
and to improve the living standards as soon as possible, it is necessary for engineers, technicians,
scientists, etc. to learn and acquire English to keep up to date with the latest developments in
technology in the world. To meet the requirements of these people in learning English, now more
and more teachers of English who have teaching qualifications are needed in Vietnam. In brief,
nowadays more and more Vietnamese people want to learn English, and more and more teachers
of English are needed to meet the social requirements.
In learning and teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) in Vietnam, the macro skill
of listening is of great importance and it draws the attention of both teachers and learners as Brett
(1997) states that “listening is a key language skill, it has a vital role in the language acquisition
process”(p.39). Compared to the other language skills, research on listening suggests that on
average people can expect to listen “twice as much as we speak, four times more than what we
read and five times more than we usually write” (Morley, 2001, p.70).

As listening being a vital skill for oral interaction, it is, therefore; the most important
medium for input in learning a foreign language (Lewis, 1993) and by increasing our students’
ability to perceive speech, the amount of input they receive will increase and thus aiding
students’ language acquisition; which is true to the students of Hanoi University of Industry
(HaUI). Hence, it is essential for them to acquire the ability to listen to spoken English
effectively. However, despite the teachers’ and students’ efforts, the students, especially the first
year non – English majors often have a lot of difficulties in learning listening comprehension.
Many students fail to take the listening input so they can hardly understand the spoken messages.
That is the reason why lots of them find it challenging to learn listening well or they become
stressful in listening lessons. Therefore, as a teacher teaching English listening, it is necessary
and motivating for the writer to carry out a study on factors causing challenges to the first year
non – English major students at HaUI in learning English listening comprehension. Furthermore,
this thesis is expected to provide insights for teachers and students in learning and teaching
English listening so that even more successful ELT in Vietnam or elsewhere could be achieved.
2. Aims of the study
The general aim of this study is to seek useful information that can help to solve the
problems of non – English major students in learning English listening comprehension and to
suggest possible measures that could contribute to planning a lesson taking the learners’
problems into consideration.
The specific aims of the study are:
1. To identify factors causing challenges for the first year non-English major students at
HaUI in learning English listening comprehension.
2. To find out which particular factor poses the most difficulty for the non-English major
freshmen at HaUI in learning English listening comprehension.
3. To give some pedagogical implications and suggestions to improve the teaching and
learning English listening comprehension of the non-English major students at HaUI.
3. Research questions
The purpose of the study is to find out factors causing challenges in learning English
listening comprehension faced by the first year non-English major students at HaUI. To this end,
the researcher has formulated the following leading questions to be answered in the course of the

study:
1. What factors cause challenges for the first year non-English major students of HaUI in
learning English listening comprehension?
2. Which particular factor poses the most difficulty for the first year non-English major
students of HaUI in learning English listening comprehension?
3. What could be done to improve the teaching and learning of English listening
comprehension of the non-English major students at HaUI?
The study, therefore, tries to seek answers to the three above questions.
4. Significance of the study
Awareness of the factors causing problems that EFL learners encounter in learning
English listening would benefit both the learners and the instructors. After this study is
completed, the finding may help instructors to become aware of the problematic areas of
listening skill so that they can take necessary treatment measures, which are suggested as an
implication of the study. More specifically, the study derives its importance from the context it
explores, i.e., it tries to give an account of the difficulties EFL learners of HaUI encounter in
listening classes. These particular learners, as the researcher observed them in the past, had
listening problems when they engaged in EFL listening activities. Understanding their listening
difficulties will permit the instructors to modify their teaching practices.
The study would also help learners to identify their difficulties of learning English
listening skill to ascertain what further learning strategies are necessary. Learners need to be
aware of the factors which contribute to their difficulties in listening; when listeners know
something about their own problems, they will be able to improve their listening practices and
become better listeners.
The finding would also encourage material designers (instructors) to conduct needs
analysis, and to revise modules or course contents in order to adjust the materials in such a way
that they address the learners’ listening deficiencies, which are indicated as an implication of the
study. Hopefully, this information can probably be used as additional evidence for sources of
difficulties that Vietnamese college students have in learning English listening.
5. Scope of the study
Dealing with all factors causing challenges in all aspects of learning English listening of

EFL learners is too broad for a study of this size. Therefore, this study focuses on investigating
the factors causing challenges in learning English listening comprehension, especially with the
course book series “New Headway”. Also, due to the constraints of time, this study just involves
a sample of non-English major freshmen at HaUI.
6. Design of the study
The study is divided into 3 parts:
The first part, Introduction, presents the rationale, aims, research questions, significance,
scope and design of the study.
The second part, Development, is the main part of study, consisting of three chapters.
Chapter 1 discusses the role of listening in language learning and teaching. Then, it reviews
previous studies on listening problems faced by language learners in general and in Vietnamese
context. Finally, it deals with theories on common potential problems in EFL listening
comprehension.
Chapter 2 introduces the context of Hanoi Univesity of Industry where the study is conducted. It
also describes the methodologies employed in the study in terms of the research questions, target
population and sampling, the data gathering instruments and data analysis.
Chapter 3 presents the results, discussion of major findings on factors causing challenges faced
by the non-English major freshmen at HaUI and the particular factor posing the most difficulty
for them in learning English listening comprehension.
The third part, Conclusion, summarizes what are addressed in the study and makes a
brief summary of major findings as well as gives some recommendations. The limitations and
suggestions for further study are also included in the last section.
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