DIFFICULTIES IN TEACHING LISTENING COMPREHENSION IN THE COURSE BOOK

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PART I: INTRODUCTION

1. Rationale of the study:

English has now become the most popular language in the world. In Vietnam, it has been more
appreciated especially after the country joined WTO. Children learn the language even from
kindergarten school. Recently, the government has decided English to be the only foreign
language for post graduation study. In accordance with the trend, at Hanoi Open University,
Economics Department, English has been taught as a compulsory subject for more than ten
years. The course books were carefully chosen out of many commercials available on the
market. They are “Business Basics” for first year students; “Head for Business” for second
year ones and ESP course books for the third year. However, both teachers and students have
found various difficulties with different parts of the course book “Head for Business”, such as
Reading, Listening, Speaking… for ex for example, some topics are too strange, language structures
in listening and reading comprehensions are too difficult for students to understand, etc… for ex

Being a listening teacher, I really find it necessary and motivating to carry out the research on
“Difficulties in Teaching Listening Comprehension in course book “Head for Business” to 2nd
year students at Economic Department, Hanoi Open University and some solutions”. With an
insight into the given matter, this thesis is expected to help me work out the most appropriate
methods to improve the quality of my teaching when working with students in the listening
skill.

2. Aims and significance of the study:

This study aims at:

(1) Investigating difficulties that Listening teachers face with when teaching the Listening
Comprehension part of the course book ‘Head for Business’.

(2) Suggesting some solutions to improve the efficiency of the Listening comprehension.

The study is carried out with the hope that it will be theoretically and practically helpful to
both teachers and students at Hanoi Open University, Economics Department.

3. Research questions:

In order to achieve the above aims, the study seeks answers to the two following research
questions:

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(1) What are difficulties that teachers face when they are working with the Listening
Comprehension part of the course book ‘Head for Business’ applied to the second year
students at Hanoi Open University, Economics Department?

(2) What are some suggested solutions to improve the efficiency of the Listening
comprehension?

4. Scope of the study:

The course book ‘Head for Business’ consists of Vocabulary, Listening, Reading, Language
study, Speaking, Language in Use, Writing and Case study/activity. Each part has its own
advantages and disadvantages for teaching and learning. Due to the restraints of time and
ability, this thesis only covers the difficulties facing teachers and second year students at
Hanoi Open University who are working with the Listening Comprehension section of the
course book ‘Head for Business’.

5. Methods of the study

The study is carried out in terms of both theory and practice. The theoretical background of the
study mainly comes from published books and Internet Websites on Listening Comprehension
and related matters.

Besides, the combination of both qualitative and quantitative research method is adopted in
this study. That is all comments, findings and suggestions given in the thesis are based on:

i. Analyzing the results of questionnaire obtained from second year students,
Economics Department, Open University;

ii. Analyzing the information gathered from formal interviews with teachers from the
teaching staff, Economics Department, Open University.

6. Design of the study

The study is organized into three parts: introduction, development and conclusion.

Part I presents the rationale, aims and significance, research questions, scope, methodology
and design of the study.

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Part II: consists of three chapters

Chapter 1 reviews the theoretical background of Listening Comprehension. It also provides a
brief overview of the Listening section of the course book ‘Head for Business’ and the current
teaching and learning situation at HOU, Economics Department

Chapter 2 describes the methodologies employed in the study, research design, research
method, research procedure and information about participants involved in the research

process.

Chapter 3 analyses data and discusses the findings of the study. Major solutions and
recommendations are also presented in this chapter.

Part III: offers conclusions and limitation of the study. Moreover, it states suggestions for
further study.

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PART II: DEVELOPMENT

This part consists of three chapters. The first chapter presents the basic theories related to
Listening Comprehension and brief information about the course book “Head for Business” as
well as the current teaching and learning situation at HOU, Economics Department. The next
chapter is about methodology which the author applies to conduct the research. In chapter
three, data analysis and discussion of the major findings are presented.

Chapter 1: LITURATURE REVIEW

1.1. The nature of Listening Comprehension (LC):

Listening Comprehension plays a very important role in learning English. During a lesson,
learners spend most of the time listening to teachers, classmates and tape. However, most
students complain that they do not understand or understand the text very little. Therefore, this
skill receives special attention of Listening teachers who want to improve the effectiveness of
their lessons. In order to do this, teachers must understand the nature of listening
comprehension.

There are different controversies on the nature of LC. According to Anderson and Lynch

(1988), there are two influential views: traditional view and alternative view. Traditional view
regarded the listeners as a tape – recorder and the listener took in and stored aural message in
much the same way as a tape – recorder. Anderson and Lynch criticized this view as
inappropriate and inadequate. This notion is not a tenable one. Alternative view considered the
learner as an active model builder. This kind of listener could combine the new information
with their own knowledge to reach full comprehension of what had been heard. Both
researchers agreed with this view. It emphasized the active interpretation and integration on
incoming information with Anderson and Lynch. Many scholars supported this view.
O’Malley and Chamot made a conclusion by doing a research on LC in 1989:

Listening Comprehension is an active and conscious process in which the listener constructs
meaning by using cues from contextual information and existing knowledge, which relying
upon multiple strategic resources to fulfill the task requirement”

(O’Malley, J. M. & Chamot, A. U., 1989, p. 420)

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Clark and Clark (1977, pp.43-44) defines LC as follows:

Comprehension has two common senses. In its narrow sense it denotes the mental processes
by which listeners take in the sounds uttered by a speaker and use them to construct an
interpretation of what they think the speaker intended to convey… compre comprehension in its
broader sense, however, rarely ends here, for listeners normally put the interpretations they
have built to work.

From these definitions, we can conclude that the nature of LC means that the learners should
be encouraged to concentrate on an active process of listening for meaning, using not only
linguistic cues but also his nonlinguistic knowledge.

1.2. Characteristics of spoken English.

There are many difficulties facing English teachers when they teach listening. The difficulties
come from different sources such as students’ abilities, teachers’ methodology, teaching
facilities… for ex Among them, the most troubling factor is the characteristics of spoken English. In
the book “Teaching by principle”, Brown summarized eight characteristics of spoken language
as suggested by several authors as follows:

 Clustering: in teaching listening comprehension, teachers must help students to pick

out manageable clusters of words. These clusters will play important roles in helping students

to get the idea of the whole utterance.

 Redundancy: spoken language has a great deal of redundancy such as the rephrasing,

repetitions, elaborations and little insertions of “I mean” and “you know”. Such redundancy

helps the hearer to process meaning by offering more time and extra information. It is

teachers’ task to help listening learners aware that not every new sentence or phrase will

necessary contain new information by looking for the signals of redundancy.

 Reduced forms: beside redundancy, reduced forms like phonological reduction

(“Djeetyet? – did you eat yet?); morphological contractions (I’ll – I will); syntactic

(elliptical forms like “when will you be back?” – “tomorrow, maybe”); or pragmatics (a child

says, “Mum, phone!) These reductions pose significant difficulties, especially for classroom

learners who may have initially been exposed to the full forms of the English language.

 Performance variables: Hesitations, false starts, pauses and correction are variables that

prevent learners from getting the correct idea. Learners have to train themselves to listen for

meaning in the midst of those distractions.

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 Colloquial language: learners who have been exposed to standard written English

and/or “textbook” language sometimes find it surprising and difficult to deal with colloquial
language such as idioms, slang, reduced forms… for ex

 Rate of delivery: virtually every language learner initially thinks that native speakers

speak too fast. In facts, there are many factors help slow down the speed such as pauses,
hesitation… for ex

 Stress, rhythm and intonation: the prosodic features of the English language are very

important for comprehension. Because English is a stress-timed language, English speech can

be a terror for some learners as mouthfuls of syllables come spilling out between stressed

points. Also, intonation patterns are very significant not just for interpreting straightforward

elements such as questions, statements, and emphasis but for understanding more subtle

messages like sarcasm, endearment, insult, solicitation, praise, etc.

 Interaction: interaction plays a large role in listening comprehension. Conversation is

especially subject to all the rules of interaction: negotiation, clarification, attending signals,

turn taking, and topic nomination, maintenance, and termination. So, to learn to listen is also to

learn to respond and to continue a chain of listening and responding.

(Dunkel 1991; Richards 1983; Ur 1984; as cited in Brown, 2000, pp 252-254)

Obviously, recognizing these factors during listening and taking advantages of them to
understand what are spoken are very significant for any listening learners to improve their
listening skills.

Beside characteristics of spoken language, teachers should also help students to aware of the
body language the speakers use, such as gestures, eye contact … for ex Those variables are very

important in comprehending.

1.3 Strategies to teach listening comprehension:

Listening strategies are techniques or activities that contribute directly to the comprehension
and recall of listening input. Basing on how the listeners process the input, researchers have
classified them into two types of strategies: bottom – up processing and top – down
processing.

Bottom up processing is text based. The listeners rely on the language in the message such as
the combination of sounds, words and grammar to create meaning. In other words (Rubin,
1994, p.210), the listeners make use of “his knowledge of words, syntax, and grammar to work

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on form”. This process is closely associated with the listeners’ linguistic knowledge. If we
apply this processing, we can ask students to:

 Listen for specific details

 Recognize cognates

 Recognize word order patterns

However, bottom up processing has its own weak points. Understanding a text is an interactive
process between the listeners’ previous knowledge and the text. Efficient comprehension that
associates the textual material with listeners’ brain does not only depend on one’s linguistic
knowledge.

Top – down processing is listener based. It is evoked “from a bank of prior knowledge and
global expectations” (Morley, 1991, p. 87) and other information that the listeners bring to the
text. These strategies are more concerned with the activation of schemata, with deriving
meaning, with global understanding and with the interpretation of a text. According to Buck
(2001), LC is a top down processing in the sense that the various types of knowledge involved
in understanding language are not applied in any fixed – order. They can be used in any order
and they are all capable of interacting and influencing each other. It is possible to understand
the meaning of a word before decoding its sound, because we have many kind of knowledge,
including knowledge of the world around us. If we apply this processing, we can ask students
to:

 listen for the main idea

 predict what is happening

 draw inferences

 summarize

Obviously, top-down processing attaches importance to listeners’ background knowledge
about the text. But, if the listeners only depend on their background knowledge, they may fail
to understand unfamiliar information. In this case they can only depend heavily on the
linguistic knowledge in LC.

In order to overcome the disadvantages of both processes, a combination of both strategies has
been accepted since the early 1980s named the interactive processing. The process means,
listeners use both of his background knowledge information, contextual information and
linguistic information to make comprehension and interpretation. When the content of the
material is familiar to the listeners, they will employ the background knowledge to make

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predictions. In contrast, if the listeners are unfamiliar with the content of the listening text and
deficient in language proficiency, they can only depend on their linguistic knowledge,
especially the lexical and syntactical knowledge to make sense of information. Moreover,
students can interact with each other before or after listening to get knowledge from each
other.

1.4. An overview of the course book “Head for Business”

“Head for Business” is written by Jon Nauton, a freelance teacher and materials writer. It is
published by Oxford University Press in 2000. At Hanoi Open University, Economics
Department, the course book “Head for Business” is introduced to second year students of two
majors: Accounting and Business Management. The book contains 15 units but only 12 units
are taught to students. Each unit consists of Vocabulary, Listening, Reading, Language Study,
Speaking, Language in Use, Writing and Case Study/ Activity. The total time for this material
is 150 periods (= 10 credits) divided equally into two terms of the academic year which cover
the first 12 units. Each week, students have 6 periods and each one lasts 45 minutes. Each unit
lasts from 8 to 12 periods, depending on the length and difficulty of its content.

As listening is one of the four skills which receives much emphasis in the book, teaching the
listening comprehension part accounts for one-fourth of the total time provided. Other skills
are taught in an integrative way during class contact hours.

1.4.1 Objective of the course book:

“Head for Business” is a tightly – structured comprehensive course for students of Business
English. It is particularly useful for students with little or no work experience who are
intending to work in a business environment on completion of their studies, but it is also
suitable for in-work professionals. “Head for Business” provides students with the relevant
specialist language and professional skills they will need in the work place. It does not make
assumptions about students’ business knowledge and presents the language relating to business
and theory in lively, interesting and accessible contexts.

1.4.2 Objective of the listening skill

At Hanoi Open University, Economics Department, teaching and learning English have
received special attention from the Department managers. It is a compulsory subject lasting
from Year 1 to Year 3 of the university course. The department managers and teachers often
sit together to decide the objective of each skill for each year. For the second year, the

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objective of the listening skill is to develop students’ ability in listening for main ideas which
is expected to enable them to communicate well in similar situations.

1.4.3 A brief description of the listening comprehension section

The Listening Comprehension section comes the second in each unit. The situations are largely
drawn from or based on authentic sources such as real situations in companies, in markets or
good examples of successful businessmen. The chosen topics are interesting and motivating
for those students with little or no exposure to the business world and easy for them to access.
The content of Listening comprehension section is often presented in the form of interviews,
phone dialogues, conversation, lectures, meeting or mono - talk. In my opinion, the LC
sections are quite long with a lot of new words, phrases and structures. This perhaps prevents
students from comprehending the text correctly. Besides, the speaking speed is quite fast and
with a lot of hesitation, pauses, and redundancies… for ex This troubles students in the
comprehension process. The next feature is about types of exercises. Each listening
comprehension lesson often begins with some topic – related questions for students to
brainstorm and discuss. After that students will have to complete some exercises given in the
book such as questions answering, True/ False, gaps filling, matching, … for ex In the end, students
will have follow-up exercise which is normally pair / group discussion about the topic or
related topics.

1.5 Current teaching and learning situation at HOU, Economics Department

1.5.1 Teaching staff and teaching methods.

The English teaching staff in the Department consists of 8 teachers whose age ranges from 26
to 31 and two 44 year-old co-teachers. All of the teachers are female and hold B.A degrees

from different universities in Vietnam. At present, 4 out of 10 teachers have MA degree, and
the rest are doing an MA course at College of Foreign Language, Hanoi National University,
and Hanoi University of Foreign Studies.

The academic background of teachers shows that all of them have been exposure to different
teaching methods such as Total Physical Response, communicative method or learner-centered
approach… for ex However, most teachers usually employ the traditional method of teaching
listening. Classes are usually conducted in the form of lectures, with most of the time the
teachers playing the key role in the classroom, being the main speakers working through the
text. The teachers explain new words, terms or structure and then guide students to answer

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warm up questions. Then, they play the tape and check answers from students or correct them.
Discussions are rarely held due to limitation of time.

1.5.2 Students and their background:

The second year students, aged between 18-22, mostly come from cities/ provinces in the
North of Vietnam. Most of them are female (79%). The class size is about 30 – 35 students
each. Most of students had learnt English for at least 3 years at high school before they
entered university. Some have studies for nine years and only few of them one year. However,
they are often doing better at Writing and doing Grammar exercises than other skills. Even so,
they are well aware of their purpose of learning, they become hard working and patient.

In terms of learning needs, each student sets up his/ her own need. Most of them learn English
to enhance their specialized knowledge which is required in their future jobs. Some have
strong pressure to pass exams with high marks. However, a problem on the part of students is
that, many students do not have the habit of learning independently and tend to depend largely
on the given course book and the teachers. They become passive in English class. This urges

teachers to consult students with suitable learning methods at tertiary level.

1.5.3. Teaching and learning facilities:

As presented in the previous part, the class size for an English lesson is about 30 to 35 each but
the class rooms, though being well equipped with a projector, a computer, a cassette player and
two loud speakers at the corner of the room, are designed for 100 student classes which are
actually too big for an English class of a much smaller size. This causes certain problems such
as the sounds and the tape quality. It is often very noisy and the sounds are unclear, too.
Another problem is that all students and four of the six teachers who are teaching the course
book “head for business” have to use unclear, black and white photocopied books. This fact
prevents them from exploiting color, photographs and pictures for learning and teaching.
Because of these matters, teachers sometime have to resort to another Listen task from another
book or format the type of exercises.

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Chapter 2: METHODOLOGY

2.1. Research design:

The purpose of this study is to find out difficulties facing teachers and learners who are
working with Listening Comprehension of the course book “Head for Business”. The
difficulties are identified in terms of the characteristics of the listening text, teachers’
methodology and types of test questions. Once difficulties are clarified, skill development,
practice and classroom activities will be taken into consideration. The research also gives
students the chance to show their preference toward their learning, which proves much help to
recommendations for a more effective teaching and learning Listening comprehension at
Department of Economics, Hanoi Open University.

2.2. Research methods:

To ensure the reliability of the information gathered for the study, qualitative methods of
research were employed with the following instruments:

- Survey questionnaires for students

- Informal interviews with teachers

The questionnaire for students is designed in Vietnamese. It consists of 21 questions, divided
into six parts covering matters related to the listening comprehension section of the course
book ‘Head for Business’. The first part aims at getting students’ personal information such as
age, hometown, and language ability. Results getting from this part will be presented right
below. The second part is about students’ opinion on the objective of teaching Listening
Comprehension. From now on, the rest four parts cover matter related to students’ opinion on
the Listening Comprehension of the course book “Head for Business”, on the exercises in the
LC and requirements for learning listening, on extra practice listening, and on the Listening
test perceptively.

Students are asked to complete it at home so they have time to consider the answers carefully.

Informal interviews with 6 teachers take place during the break time about the same matters as
shown in the questionnaire. Besides, the content of the interview also includes techniques to
overcome the existing difficulties as well as activities to make the listening comprehensive
lessons more effective. Particularly, three questions are used during these informal interviews.

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Question 1 is aimed at investigating teachers’ perception on the LC of the course book “Head
for Business”. Questions 2 aims at investigating difficulties the teachers are coping with in

teaching Listening Comprehension. Questions 3 aims at investigating solutions the teachers are
using and their desires from Dean of Department as well as English teaching staff.

2.3. Participants:

There are two groups of participants: students and teachers.

Group 1: 112 second year students majoring in both Accounting (60) and Administration (52)
took part in the research. They are mainly from cities or provinces in the North of Vietnam.
Most of them have spent from three to nine years studying English at Secondary and/or High
School. 95% of them learn English as a foreign language while only 5% learn a little Chinese,
Japanese and French.

Group 2: 6 English teachers aging from 25 to 33, who are working with the Listening
Comprehension of “Head for Business”, took part in the interview. Three of them have just
finished M.A degree and the other three are completing the same course. They all have been
teaching at the University since 2005.

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Chapter 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION

This chapter deals with the results from the questionnaire to the students and from interviews
with teachers. The findings from those results will lead to the suggested solutions to make
improvement for teaching Listening Comprehension.

3.1 Discussion of the results:

3.1.1 Discussion of the results collected by means of questionnaire

3.1.1.1 Students’ opinion on the objective of teaching Listening Comprehension:

No Questions Options Students’

1 For second year students, the objective of teaching A. Suitable answers (%)
Listening comprehension is to develop students’ 89
ability of listening for main ideas which enable them
to communicate in similar situation. The objective
is… for ex… for ex… for ex… for ex. for your need and desire.

B. Not 11

suitable

Table 1: Students’ opinion on the objective of teaching Listening Comprehension

As shown in the table above, most students (89%) confirmed the suitability of the objective set
by the Department. This proves that the Department has taken up the right orientation of
teaching Listening. Therefore, the objective satisfies the students’ demand for learning
listening.

3.1.1.2 Students’ opinion on the Listening Comprehension of the course book “Head for
Business”

No Questions Options Students’
2. A. easy to understand
answers (%)
6

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Generally, the content of the LC B. normal/neutral 50

section in the material is … for ex… for ex… for ex… for ex… for ex C. Difficult to understand 44

3 In your opinion, topics of the LC in A. Totally strange 12

the material … for ex… for ex… for ex… for ex… for ex… for ex… for ex… for ex. to B. totally familiar 21 C. only some topics are 67
your own knowledge
familiar

4 In your opinion, the length of the LC A. Short 0

in the material is … for ex… for ex… for ex… for ex.. B. Average 22 C. long 78

5 In your opinion, the speaking speed of A. slow 0

the LC in the material is … for ex… for ex… for ex… for ex.. B. neutral /normal 19 C. Fast 81
6 In your opinion. There are … for ex… for ex… for ex… for ex. a. many familiar and easy
21

in the LC in the material. to understand words and

phrases

B. many new and difficult 79

to understand words and

phrases

7 In your opinion, the pronunciations in A. easy to listen and 5

the LC in the material are … for ex… for ex… for ex… for ex.. recognize words

B. difficult to listen and 61

recognize words

C. normal/ neutral 34

8 In your opinion, quality of the tape A. good 0

used in the class is … for ex… for ex… for ex… for ex.. B. noisy 89 C. normal/ neutral 11
9 You … for ex… for ex… for ex… for ex… for ex… for ex. the content of the A. don’t understand
0

LC TEXT during the listening in the anything of

class. B. understand very little 83

C. understand 17

D. understand all 0

Table 2: Students’ opinion on the Listening Comprehension of the course book “Head for
Business”

As for the characteristics of the listening comprehension in the material, students have
different view points on all matters.

In terms of the content, the percentage of students who think it is difficult to understand is
relatively higher than those who think it is normal/ suitable to their knowledge (50%). Only
6% of students agreed that it is easy to understand. This really challenges teachers to find an
effective way to teach listening well.

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In term of the topics, a minority of students (12%) finds all of them totally strange, 21% totally
familiar and the biggest percentage (67%) belongs to those who find some topics are familiar
to them.

In terms of length of the listening texts, no students think that the texts are short. 78%
students think the listening texts are long, 22% belongs to those who thought most of the texts
have medium length. These facts mean that students are not very good at listening and they
perhaps cannot concentrate on the texts which are too long.

The next question shows students’ opinion on the speed. It is not surprising that no students
considered that the speed is slow. The contradictory opinions make up 81%. Some difficulties
may occur with the students because 79% of them find there are too many new and difficult -
to – understand words/structures. The rest finds that the language is suitable for their level of
English to comprehend the text.

Another problem discovered is the quality of the tape. No students agree that the quality is
good. In particular, 89% remark that the quality is very poor. Only 11% confess that it is good
enough. The percentage of those who understand very little amounts to 83% and the rest
belongs to those who can understand most of the texts.

3.1.1.3 Students’ opinion on the exercises in the LC and requirements for learning /
teaching listening.

No Questions Options Students’

answers (%)
10 How far do you find types of exercise A. they completely do not 0

in the LC meet the objective? meet the objective
B. to some extent, they 84

meet the objective
C. they meet the objective 16

11 In your opinion, exercises in the LC B. easy 0

are … for ex… for ex… for ex… for ex… for ex.. C. neutral 36

D. Difficult 64

12 Apart from the exercises in the A. usually 30

material, how often does your teacher B. Sometimes 50

modify or add other exercises for the C. Rarely 16

LC? D. Never 4

13 A. Yes 90

16

In your opinion, is it necessary to B. No 10

modify or add other exercises for

some LC sections in the material?

14 What kinds of exercises do you really A.Question answering 0

enjoy in and can help you to develop B. multiple choice

your listening skill? 35

(you can circle more than one options) C. matching 2
D. Gaps filling
24

E. Dictating 15

F. Listen and repeat 22

F. rearranging/ reordering 2
Others: please specify … for ex… for ex

15 Do you think the present time A. not enough 79

allocation for practice LC in the class B. enough 21 C. redundant 0
is … for ex… for ex… for ex… for ex… for ex

16 Is it necessary to provide A. No
supplementary listening materials? B. Yes 3

97

16.1 The supplementary listening materials A. Usually

should be ........................ used in the 84

listening class. B. Sometimes

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16.2 The supplementary listening materials A. be related to economics, 38

should … for ex… for ex… for ex… for ex… for ex… for ex commerce and finance.

B. not be related to 3
economics, commerce and
finance.

C. depend on the topic of 21
the lesson

D. be related to what are

happening in reality 38

16.3 Should The supplementary listening A. Yes 100

materials aim at developing students’ B. No . 0
ability to listen for main ideas?

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Table 3: Students’ opinions on the exercises in the LC and requirements for
learning/teaching listening.

Regarding students’ opinion on the exercises in the LC and requirements for learning/teaching
listening, the table above shows that:

No one is in favor of the option that the LC completely meets the objective of the Department.
The option that it totally meets the objective accounts for the smallest portion, 16%. It comes
as a surprise that the number of students who think the objective of LC in the material is quite
satisfactory accounts for 64%. Thus, the listening tasks in the material ‘Head for Business’, to
some extent, are practically compatible to the goal of the Department.

As far as the exercise-types are concerned, more than a third of students (36%) choose the
option that the exercises are neutral. Meanwhile, those who think they are difficult account for
64%. Evidently, it is a challenge for students to complete the listening tasks.

As for the teachers’ adaptation for the tasks and/or exercises that are not suitable for learners’
level, it is admitted by the minority of students (4%) that their teachers never modify or add
other task-types for the listening tasks in the material. Half of them think their teachers
sometimes make adaptation, 30% say their teachers often add changes to the exercise and 16%
say their teachers rarely do those jobs. Teachers’ task is to make modification for their
teaching material when necessary. In this case, they have partially fulfilled their task.
Moreover, on looking at students’ expectation from their teachers’ methodology, 90% of them
respond they want their teachers to make adjustment for some tasks in the material or supply
some more tasks of other types.

With regards to the types of exercises students enjoy doing, it can be recognized that the
exercise they like to do most is multiple-choice questions. Ranking secondly is gap-filling,

then listen and repeat, and last on the list is listen and dictate. Matching and reordering
statements account for the same percentage (2%). Only answering question option is not
considered interesting to all students. It should be noted that all these students took a multiple-
choice English test for their university entrance examination. They were trained intensively to
do such a kind of task during their school years. This may account for the preference of
multiple-choice. Meanwhile, some students gave ideas of introducing other task- types
different from the ones in the material such as identifying true or false statements or writing
summary for the text, or naming the topic of the listening text.

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In terms of time allocation for listening skill, no one is for the idea “the time is redundant”.
Only one-forth of students agree that the time allotment is adequate and the reverse goes to the
rest of the respondents.

As for the idea of introducing more supplementary listening material, the majority (97%) is in
favor of it. However, there is a slight difference between the ideas of students who answer their
teachers usually supply additional exercises (84%) and sometimes supply additional exercises
(16%). Similarly, the percentage of students who prefer the supplementary listening text
should be related to the economics and financial field and those who think the supplementary
listening text should be authentic (relating to events which are happening in reality) is totally
the same (38%). However, what the topic of extra listening is does not affect students’
objective of studying listening. 100% confirm that they want the additional materials to help
them develop the ability for listening for main ideas.

In brief, based on the results presented above, we can affirm that students are for the idea that
the exercise - types in the LC, to some extent, help to develop students’ ability to listen for
main ideas. In addition, making modifications to the tasks in the LC parts of the material and
supplying more extra exercises are what they desire from their teachers. Students may think
their listening ability will be improved thanks to teachers’ efforts to adapt the material.

3.1.1.4 Students’ opinion on home practice listening:

No Questions Options Students’

17. Does your teacher ask you to A. never answers (%)
do any Listening exercises at 70
home?

- If you choose option A,
answer questions 18

- If you choose option B or C, B. Sometimes 17
answer questions 17.1, 17.2
C. usually 13

17.1 Exercises for home practice A. from the LC in the material 72

listening are almost B. from other sources (radio, 21

Internet… for ex)

C. Both A and B 7

19

17.2 Requirements of home practice A. Summaring 65

listening exercises are B. Dictating 9 C. practicing pronunciation 26

D. Prepare a listening text at home 0

and present in front of the class

E. others (please specify) 0

18. Do you self – practice A. Never 96

listening at home? B. Sometimes 4 C. Usually 0

19. You think your listening ability A. not improved 0

and knowledge are B. little improved 96 C. much better 4
… for ex… for ex… for ex… for ex… for ex… for ex after self

practicing?

Table 4: Students’ opinions on home practice listening

Home practice is an important part of university study for every subject. However, the majority
of students (70%) confess that their teachers never ask them to do more listening at home. A
large number (96%) says that they never practice at home if the teachers do not require them to
do so. In cases when the teachers require, most of the tasks are from the course book they are
studying and they have to summarize the listening text most often (69%), then listen to
practice pronunciation and the last dictating. It is obvious that the last two types of tasks are
not related to listening for main ideas at all. As a result, only 4% feel that their listening ability
becomes really better after practicing.

3.1.1.5 Students’ opinion on the Listening test

No Questions Options Students’

20 In your A.Question answering answers (%)
0

opinion, the

listening test B. multiple choice 40

consists of C. matching 12

D. Gaps filling 30

E. Dictating 0

F. Summarizing 0

G. Correcting mistakes 6

H. listening and practicing Pronunciations 0

I. Listen and repeat 0

K. rearranging/ reordering 12

L. Prepare a listening text at home and present 0

in front of the class
Others: please specify … for ex… for ex
0

20

21 In your A. easy 0

opinion, the B. Normal/neutral 73 C. difficult 27
content of the A. related to what you have learnt in LC
70

listening test B. not relating to what you have learnt in LC 30

is… for ex… for ex… for ex… for ex… for ex.. B. not suitable for your language level 8 A. suitable for your language level 92

(circle suitable

options in

groups)

Table 5: Students’ opinions on the Listening test

As can be seen from table 5, students recognize four task-types in the test. They are multiple
choices, gap-filling, matching, reordering and correcting mistakes. These types of tasks are
more or less concerning with the objective of the Department. About the content, there are
some differences. No students are in favor of the option that it is easy. The opposite opinion
accounts for 27%. 70% of the answer shows that the content of the test is relevant to what the
students have learnt and 92% are happy that the test is designed suitably with their language
level.

3.1.2 Discussion of the results collected from informal interview with teachers:

3.1.2.1 Teacher’s opinion on the Listening Comprehension of the course book “Head for
Business ”

The first question of the interview is about teacher’s opinion on the Listening Comprehension
of course book they are teaching. The result shows that all the teachers (6/6) like the listening
part because its topics and content are interesting and appropriate to their students. Thanks to
those topics, students are provided with new perspectives and conceptions about the business
world, for example, how famous companies stay ahead in a competition. However, four of
them agree that the listening texts are usually long for students with quite many new words
and phrases meanwhile the listening facility is not really good. There is a lot of noise which
makes it difficult for students to catch the words correctly. The last but not least factor is
students’ books. All of them have to use photocopied books which are only black and white
and unclear. Therefore, teachers cannot exploit them as teaching visual aids. They sometimes
have to modify exercises related to pictures matching.

3.1.2.2. Teacher’s difficulties in teaching listening Comprehension of the course book
“Head for Business":