A study on factors affecting listening comprehension of the eleventh grade students at a high school in bac ninh province

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES


NGUYỄN THỊ HẢI

A STUDY ON FACTORS AFFECTING LISTENING COMPREHENSION
OF THE ELEVENTH GRADE STUDENTS
AT A HIGH SCHOOL IN BAC NINH PROVINCE
(NGHIÊN CỨU NHỮNG YẾU TỐ ẢNH HƯỞNG TỚI KHẢ NĂNG
NGHE HIỂU CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP 11 TẠI MỘT TRƯỜNG THPT
TẠI TỈNH BẮC NINH)

M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS
Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 8140231.01

Hanoi - 2018


VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES


NGUYỄN THỊ HẢI

A STUDY ON FACTORS AFFECTING LISTENING
COMPREHENSION OF THE ELEVENTH GRADE STUDENTS
AT A HIGH SCHOOL IN BAC NINH PROVINCE

(Nghiên cứu những yếu tố ảnh hưởng tới khả năng nghe hiểu của học sinh lớp
11 tại một trường THPT tại tỉnh Bắc Ninh)

M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS
Field: English Teaching Methodology
Code: 8140231.01
Supervisor: Mai Thị Loan, PhD

Hanoi - 2018


DECLARATION

I certify that the minor thesis entitled “A study on factors affecting
listening comprehension of the eleventh grade students at a high school in
Bac Ninh province” is the result of my own work and has not been submitted
in any form for another degree or diploma at any universities or other
institutions.

Hanoi, 2018
Student

Nguyễn Thị Hải

i


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to acknowledge my truthful gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Mai

Thi Loan for her thorough reading, critical comments, invaluable guidance and
precious corrections of the thesis. It was her acute guidance that has enabled me to
find the right way to complete this study.
I also would like to express my sincere thanks to my colleagues at the
school, who have been willing to answer my interviews.
I appreciate the assistance and cooperation of the students in classes from the
eleventh grade at the chosen school.
My special words of thanks are sent to my family, especially my husband who
has given me constant encouragement and support throughout my research work.
Hanoi, 2018

ii


ABSTRACT
The study is concerned with factors affecting listening comprehension
encountered by the eleventh students at a high school in Bac Ninh province. The
main purposes of the study are to find out the factors affecting students‟ listening
comprehension and to offer some solutions to help students overcome their
affective factors. The instruments used in the study were questionnaire and
interviews. The questionnaire was designed for 100 students and the interviews
were carried out with both three teachers and 10 out of the 100 students at the
chosen school. The results showed that learners encountered various kinds of
affective factors on listening problems which were divided into four categories:
factors related to the listening text, factors related to the speakers, factors related to
the listener, and factors related to physical settings. From the findings of the
research, some suggestions were proposed for teachers to help their students
overcome those affective factors such as designing suitable listening materials,
encouraging students to use top- down strategies and encouraging prediction.

iii


TABLE OF CONTENTS
DECLARATION ........................................................................................................i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................................................ii
ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................. iii
LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLE ........................................................................ viii
ABBREVIATIONS...................................................................................................ix
PART A: INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................... 1
1. Rationale of the study ......................................................................................... 1
2. Aims and objectives of the study......................................................................... 2
3. Research questions ............................................................................................. 2
4. Scope of the study ............................................................................................... 2
5. Method of the study ............................................................................................ 2
6. Significance of the study ..................................................................................... 3
7. Organization of the study ................................................................................... 3
PART B: DEVELOPMENT ...................................................................................... 5
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................... 5
1.1. Listening skill................................................................................................... 5
1.1.1 Definition of listening ................................................................................... 5
1.1.2 Importance of listening ................................................................................. 6
1.2 Listening comprehension .................................................................................. 8
1.2.1Definitions of listening comprehension ......................................................... 8
1.2.2 Process of listening comprehension.............................................................. 9
1.3 Listening strategies ......................................................................................... 10
1.3.1 Definition of listening strategies ................................................................. 10
1.3.2 Classification of listening strategies ........................................................... 11
1.4 Potential affective factors on listening comprehension ................................. 12
1.5 Solutions to overcome affective factors on listening comprehension ............ 14

1.5.1 Helping students with vocabulary ............................................................... 14
1.5.2 Helping students get familiar with different accents .................................. 15

iv


1.5.3 Using visuals ............................................................................................... 15
1.5.4 Using the tapes and radios with good quality ............................................ 15
1.5.5 Activating background knowledge .............................................................. 16
1.5.6 Combining “intensive listening” with “extensive listening”; focusing on
listening ............................................................................................................. 16
1.5.7 Combining listening with other skills ......................................................... 16
1.5.8 Evaluate listening effectiveness regularly and further improve listening
approaches ........................................................................................................ 17
1.6 Review of previous related studies ................................................................. 17
1.6.1 Previous studies overseas ........................................................................... 17
1.6.2 Previous studies in Viet Nam ...................................................................... 19
1.7 Summary ......................................................................................................... 21
CHAPTER 2: METHODOLOGY ........................................................................... 22
2.1 Restatement of research questions ................................................................. 22
2.2 The setting of the study ................................................................................... 22
2.3 Participants .................................................................................................... 23
2.3.1 Students ....................................................................................................... 23
2.3.2 Teachers ...................................................................................................... 23
2.4 Data collection instruments ............................................................................ 24
2.4.1 Questionnaire .............................................................................................. 24
2.4.2 Interviews .................................................................................................... 25
2.5 Data collection procedures ............................................................................ 26
2.6 Analysis of data .............................................................................................. 26
2.7 Summary ......................................................................................................... 27

CHAPTER 3: DATA ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS ............................................. 28
3.1 Data analysis .................................................................................................. 28
3.1.1 Questionnaire for the students .................................................................... 28
3.1.1.1 Learners’ perceptions of factors related to listening text ........................ 28
3.1.1.2 Learners’ perceptions of factors related to listeners ............................... 30

v


3.1.1.3 Learners’ perceptions of factors related to speakers .............................. 31
3.1.1.4 Learners’ perceptions of factors related to physical settings .................. 32
3.1.1.5 Learners’ opinions of solutions to overcome those factors ..................... 33
3.1.2 Interview with the students.......................................................................... 34
3.1.2.1 Students’ answers about factors on the students’ listening comprehension
.......................................................................................................................... 35
3.1.2.2 The students’ suggested solutions to overcome those factors ................. 36
3.1.3 Interview with the teachers ......................................................................... 37
3.1.3.1Teachers’ answers about factors on the students’ listening comprehension
.......................................................................................................................... 37
3.1.3.2 Teachers’ suggested solutions to overcome those factors ....................... 38
3.2 Findings and discussion ................................................................................. 39
3.3 Implications .................................................................................................... 42
3.3.1 Designing suitable listening materials ....................................................... 42
3.3.2 Arousing interest and motivating students to attend to the spoken message
.......................................................................................................................... 42
3.3.3 Using pictures and visual aids .................................................................... 42
3.3.4 Encouraging students to use top-down strategies ...................................... 42
3.3.5 Encouraging cooperative listening ............................................................. 42
3.3.6 Encouraging students’ accurate pronunciation ......................................... 43
3.3.7 Encouraging prediction .............................................................................. 43

3.4 Summary ......................................................................................................... 43
PART C: CONCLUSION ........................................................................................ 44
1. Recapitulation................................................................................................... 44
2. Concluding remarks ......................................................................................... 44
3. Limitations of the study .................................................................................... 46
4. Suggestions for the further research ................................................................ 46
REFERENCES ......................................................................................................... 47
APPENDIX 1 ............................................................................................................. I

vi


APPENDIX 2 ........................................................................................................... III
APPENDIX 3 ............................................................................................................ V
APPENDIX 4 ...........................................................................................................VI
APPENDIX 5 ......................................................................................................... VII
APPENDIX 6 ........................................................................................................ VIII

vii


LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLE

Figure 1: Learners‟ perceptions of affective factors related to listening text .............. 27
Figure 2: Learners‟ perceptions of affective factors related to listeners ...................... 29
Figure 3: Learners‟ perceptions of affective factors related to speakers ..................... 30
Figure 4: Learners‟ perceptions of affective factors from physical settings ................ 31
Table: Learners‟ opinions about solutions to overcome those affective factors .......... 32

viii

ABBREVIATIONS
L2:

Second Language

EFL:

English as a Foreign Language

ESP:

English for Special Purposes

ix


PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale of the study
Nowadays, English has become an international language and it is used in
communicating with people all over the world. Therefore, learning English has been
regarded as a vital demand for a huge number of people in Vietnam in particular
and for millions of people in the world in general.
In language learning, listening, together with speaking, writing and reading is
one of the four language skills. Listening relates to any communicative activities of
human. Conversations will take place only when we understand our interlocutor
says. Undeniably, listening is very important in man‟s interaction. Gilakjani and
Ahmadi (2011) are also among the writers who early noticed the importance of
listening. Gilakjani and Ahmadi (2011) reported data on how people spend their

communicative time: of the total time devoted to communication, 40-50% is spent
on listening, 20-30% on speaking, 11-16% of reading, and 9% on writing. From the
data given above, it can be understood that listening skill plays a great role in the
process of communication. In spite of the fact that listening is now well recognized
as a critical dimension in language learning, it still remains one of the least
understood processes. When the amount of research done in all four skills and the
curricula of most foreign language programs are considered, listening skill has
attracted the least attention. According to (Morley, 2001), during many decades,
researchers used to regard listening as a passive skill. However, since the 1980s, it
has been accepted as an active skill. Throughout the 1990s, attention to listening in
language instruction increased dramatically.
Although people pay more attention to listening, it is still regarded as the
most difficult for learners, especially for second language learners. The current
researcher has taken some surveys on the ability of listening and affective factors on
listening comprehension among the eleventh students at a high school in Bac Ninh
province and has found that these students have many troubles in their listening
skill. Many students perform poorly and some of them seem uninterested in
1


listening lessons and unwilling to listen to the recordings. The question arises here
is what affective factors the students face while they study listening skills.
Therefore, in my point of view, it is necessary to find out the factors affecting
students‟ listening and provide them with listening strategies completely and
systematically so that their listening comprehension will make much progress. From
these reasons, this research would be carried out to investigate affective factors on
students‟ listening comprehension, and offer some solutions to overcome those
factors.
2. Aims and objectives of the study
The study aims at investigating the affective factors on listening

comprehension among the eleventh students at a high school in Bac Ninh province.
The objectives of this study are:
- To find out the factors affecting listening comprehension of the eleventh students;
- To offer some suggested solutions to overcome those affective factors.
3. Research questions
The present study focuses on answering the following questions:
1. What are the factors that affect the eleventh students‟ listening
comprehension?
2. What solutions can be suggested to overcome those affective factors?
4. Scope of the study
Listening which consists of many sub- skills is paid a lot of attention by
many researchers. This study is not an exception; however, the current study is
concerned with only factors affecting listening comprehension, not other sub- skills.
It is conducted at a high school in Bac Ninh province. The participants taking part
in the study are 100 eleventh grade students, not all the students of the school.
5. Method of the study
The study was carried out by some steps as follows:
First, the questionnaire for students was employed to find out the factors
affecting listening comprehension of the eleventh grade students. Moreover, the
2


students‟ opinions of the solutions that they and their teachers can do to overcome
the factors were also revealed through the questionnaire.
Second, interviews with both teachers and students were conducted to help
the researcher gain deep information about the affective factors and the reasons
behind them.
After all, the data was collected, sorted, and analyzed quantitatively and
qualitatively to obtain realized results.
To end with, from data collected, recommendations for the solutions to

overcome the affective factors were drawn out.
6. Significance of the study
The current study will help students identify the factors influencing their
listening comprehension. Moreover, some recommendations will help the students
choose the most suitable methods to learn listening and get over the affective
factors to improve their listening ability.
7. Organization of the study
The study is divided into three parts:
Part A: Introduction, the researcher states the problem of the study, aims of the
study, significance of the study, and scope of the study.
Part B: Development. There are three chapters in this part
Chapter 1: Literature review, the researcher reviews the literature related to
listening skill including definition of listening, importance of listening and process
of listening, some theories about listening strategies in terms of definition and
classification of listening strategies, affective factors on listening comprehension,
and some previous studies on affective factors on listening comprehension.
Chapter 2: Methodology, the researcher mentions the issues of methodology
consisting of research questions, study design, participants, and data collection
instruments consisting of questionnaire and interview, data collection procedures,
and data analysis.

3


Chapter 3: Data analysis and findings, the researcher gives a detailed presentation
of data and detailed description of data analysis. This focuses on presenting,
analyzing and discussing the results obtained from the study based on the
questionnaire and interview questions. Besides, the chapter also presents some
discussion and interpretations of the findings of the study, and then gives
suggestions for the teachers and the students in learning listening at the school. The

implications of the study are also given in this chapter.
Part C: Conclusion, the researcher summarizes the key points in the study, provides
implications of the study, discusses limitation, and gives suggestion for further
research.

4


PART B: DEVELOPMENT
This part consists of four chapters. The first chapter presents the basic
theories related to listening and listening comprehension, a brief review of affective
factors on listening comprehension and solutions to overcome the factors. The next
chapter is about methodology which the current researcher applies to conduct the
research. Data analysis and discussion of the major findings are presented in chapter
three. The last chapter deals with discussions and recommendations.
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
1.1. Listening skill
1.1.1 Definition of listening
This section presents several definitions of listening proposed by some
typical researchers in the field of language learning.
Firstly, listening is subset of any communication. “Listening is a powerful
means of communication and influences to talk well” (Buck, 2001). It seems clear
that people can not communicate effectively and actively if they can not listen and
understand what their interlocutors are saying. Every person should know the art of
listening so as to make the communication process complete and meaningful.
Listening is a conscious effort while hearing is an unconscious one. Listening as a
skill is vital for the development of any personality.
Moreover, listening to spoken language has been knowledged theoretical to
consist of active and complex process which determines the level and content of
comprehension. Listeners engage in a variety of mental process in an effort to

comprehend information from oral texts. According to Conaway‟s findings (1982),
poor listening skills were main factors in college failure than the other factors, such
as poor reading skills or low academic aptitude. His opinion can be understood that
students can not learn anything if they can not understand the listening message.
In addition, according to McDonough (1995), listening involves attention to
a continuous stream of speech which is not under the timing control of the listener.
Listeners themselves must punctuate a flow of speech by recognizing irregular
pausing, false, hesitations, stress, and intonation pattern.
5


From another angle, Rubin (1995) conceives listening as an active process in
which listeners interpret information which comes from auditory and visual cues in
order to define what is going on and what the speakers are trying to express.
Another definition of listening indicated by Flowerdew & Miller (2005) is
that listening is considered as an important component in the process of L2
acquisition. Listening helps students gain the acquired knowledge and understand
the input of the lessons. Furthermore, Rost (2002) defined listening as a process of
receiving what the speaker actually says, constructing and representing meaning,
negotiating meaning with the speaker and responding, and creating meaning
through involvement, imagination and empathy. To listen well, listeners must have
the ability to decode the message, the ability to apply a variety of strategies and
interactive processes to make meaning, and the ability to respond to what is said in
a variety of ways, depending on the purpose of the communication. Listening
involves listening for thoughts, feelings, and intentions. According to Rost (1991),
listening really means students remember and understand the meaning of the
listening message immediately when they listen.
From these above definitions of listening, the researcher holds the same
opinion that listening is discriminating the sounds, recognizing words, identifying
grammatical groupings and words, identifying expression and sets of utterances that

act to create the meaning, connecting linguistic cues to non-linguistic and paralinguistic cues, and using background knowledge to predict and confirm meaning
and recalling important words and ideas.
1.1.2 Importance of listening
It can‟t be denied that listening plays a vital role in our daily lives. People
listen for different purposes such as entertainment, academic purposes or obtaining
necessary information.
Rivers (1981) stated that listening is a critical element in the competent
language performance of adult second language learners, whether they are
communicating at school, at work, or in the community. Through the normal course
6


of a day, listening is used nearly twice as much as speaking and four to five times as
much as reading and writing. In a recent study of Fortune 500 Corporations, Wolvin
and Coakley (1991) found that listening was perceived to be crucial for
communication at work with regards to entry-level employment, job success,
general career competence, managerial competency, and effectiveness of
relationships between supervisors and subordinates.
The importance of the listening skill can not be denied, however, different
scholars give their own views about how it is important.
Some practitioners believe that language learning is a linear process, starting
with the spoken language medium (listening and speaking) and then moving to the
written medium (reading and writing). Listening is the means to initiate oral
production, which tends to be an imitation of spoken texts. The second view places
listening along with the other three language modalities (speaking, reading and
writing) in an intersectative mode. All four modalities should be thought
simultaneously, so that practice in one area can reinforce and develop the other
forms of communication (Rivers, 1987).
A third view emphasizes listening as the primary source of linguistic input,
which activates the language learning process. According to Rost (1994), listening

plays an important role in second language instruction for several reasons.
Language learning depends on listening since it provides the aural input that serves
as the basis for language acquisition and enables learners to interact in spoken
communication. Without understanding input appropriately, learning simply can not
get any improvement. In addition, without listening skill, no communication can be
achieved.
Though different linguists give a number of views about the importance of
listening, they all claim that listening play a vital role in communication and in
learning a language. Listening is essential not only as receptive skill but also to the
development of spoken language prophecy.

7


From these above ideas, it can be clearly seen that listening skill is extremely
important in communication. Given the importance of listening in language learning
and teaching, it is essential for language teachers to help students become active and
effective listeners. In the communicative approach of language learning, it is
necessary for students to identify the factors affecting their listening comprehension
and be provided with the solutions to solve these difficulties in order to improve
their listening skill. In addition, students should spend more time self-studying
listening at home and learn how to use listening strategies appropriately and
effectively.
1.2 Listening comprehension
1.2.1Definitions of listening comprehension
The term “listening comprehension” has been defined by different authors.
The following are some representative definitions of listening comprehension.
Dirven and Oakeshott-Taylor (1984) defined listening comprehension as the
product of teaching methodology and is matched by terms such as speech
understanding, spoken language understanding, speech recognition, and speech

perception.
From another angle, Rubin (1995) conceives listening comprehension as an
active process in which listeners interpret information which comes from auditory
and visual cues in order to define what is going on and what the speakers are trying
to express.
Vandergrift

(1999)

has

a

more

detailed

definition

of

listening

comprehension. According to him, listening comprehension is an active process in
which the listener must discriminate between sounds, understand vocabulary and
grammatical structures, interpret stress and intonation, retain what was gathered in
all of the above, and interpret it within the socio-cultural context of the utterance.
Rost (2002) and Hamouda (2013) defined listening comprehension as an
interactive process in which listeners are involved in constructing meaning.
Listeners comprehend the oral input through sound discrimination, previous

8


knowledge, grammatical structures, stress and intonation, and the other linguistic or
non-linguistic clues.
According to Nadig (2013), listening comprehension is the various processes
of understanding and making sense of spoken language. These involve knowing
speech sounds, comprehending the meaning of individual words, and understanding
the syntax of sentences.
To summarize, each definition reflects its author‟s own point of view.
However, all definitions share the same idea is that listening comprehension is a
complex process; it requires a number of sub-skills that the listeners must have in
order to acquire the overall understanding of the listening text.
1.2.2 Process of listening comprehension
It is also necessary to have recognition of the process of listening
comprehension in language learning approach.
Listening is an invisible mental process, which makes it difficult to describe.
However, it is recognized by Wipf (1984) that listeners must discriminate between
sounds, understand vocabulary and grammar structures, interpret stress and
intonation, and retain and interpret this within the immediate as well as the larger
socio-cultural context of the utterance.
Anderson (1983) divided the listening comprehension process into three
stages: perceptual, parsing, and utilization. During the perceptional process,
listeners focus their attention on the oral text and preserve the sound in echoic
memory. In the next stage, the parsing process, listeners constructed meaningful
mental representations by using words and message. They reorganized the
information into a meaningful unit that could be stored in short-term memory. In
the utilization stage, listeners utilized long-term memory in order to link the
incoming message to their existing knowledge. He stated that when the new input
and background knowledge matched, comprehension would appear.

Another opinion, five stages of listening comprehension, was proposed by
Wolin and Coakley (1986). First of all, listeners were motivated to listen to certain
9


aural input. Second, listeners received the non-verbal message from speakers
including facial expressions, gestures, voices, and movements. Next, the received
message must be attended to the short-term memory system. At the same time
listeners were influenced by their background knowledge and prior experiences.
Then, listeners matched the received message to the appropriate prior information.
Unlike these above researchers, Nunan (2002) explained both the bottom-up
and top-down processes. Bottom-up process refers to acquiring the meaning of
message by basing on the incoming language data from sounds, to words, to
grammatical relationships, and ultimately to the meaning. The meaning itself was
derived as the last step in the process. On the other hand, top-down process refers
to utilizing the schemata which was known as learners‟ background knowledge and
global understanding to deduce the meaning from the message. In addition,
listening comprehension is neither top-down nor bottom-up processing. “It is an
interactive, interpretive process where listeners employ both prior knowledge and
linguistic knowledge to make sense of the incoming message (Nunan, 2002). It is
clear that Nunan‟s (2002) explanation mentioned all aspects of listening process
including the combination of personal knowledge and linguistics information.
As discussed above, Nunan‟s (2002) division provided deep insights into
listening process. Hence, the researcher chooses Nunan‟s (2002) idea to conduct the
study.
1.3 Listening strategies
1.3.1 Definition of listening strategies
Listening effectively is difficult because people vary in their communication
skills and in how clearly they express themselves and often have different needs,
wants, and purposes for interacting. As a listener, people attempt to use the listening

strategies which “are efforts to compensate for uncertainties in understanding, and
could include making inferences, realizing where misunderstandings have occurred,
and asking for clarification” (White, 1998).
10


Rubin (1987) states listening strategies are techniques or activities which
contribute directly to the comprehension and recall of listening input. This
definition seems to stress that students use listening strategies as crucial tools to get
the meaning of listening message.
According to Young (1997, p.1) listening strategies are steps taken by
learners to help them acquire, store, retrieve, and/ or use information. Namely,
listening strategies are helpful tools which help the learners listen effectively so that
they could communicate easily.
From these points, the researcher may conclude that listening strategies are
several techniques used by listeners consciously while listening to help
understanding. Listeners become more strategic in listening if they learn to use
listening strategies effectively. To listen effectively, listeners have to choose one
kind of listening strategies which is most suitable for each of them.
1.3.2 Classification of listening strategies
Listening is the receptive skill in the oral model. There are two kinds of
listening situations in which people find themselves: interactive listening situation
and non-interactive listening situation. Interactive listening situation include faceto-face conversation and telephone calls, in which people are alternately listening
and speaking and in which they have a chance to ask for clarification, repetition or
slower speech from their interlocutor. Several non- interactive listening situations
are listening to the radio television, films, lectures, tapes and so on. In such
situations they usually do not have the opportunity to give feedback.
According to O‟Malley and Chamot (2001) language listening strategies are
divided into four categories: management strategies, cognitive strategies, social
strategies and affective strategies.

However, Hedge (2000) indicated that listening strategies contain top-down
strategies, bottom-up strategies, and cognitive strategies.
Top-down strategies are listeners based; the listeners tap into background
knowledge of the topic, the situation or context, the type of context, and the
11


language. This background knowledge activates a set of expectations that help the
listeners to interpret what is heard and anticipate what will come next. Put in other
words, listeners use “top-down” process when they use prior knowledge to
understand the meaning of a message. Top-down strategies include:
+ Listening for the main idea
+ Predicting
+ Drawing inferences
+ Summarizing
On the other hand, listeners also use “bottom-up” process when they use
linguistic knowledge to understanding of a message. That means, bottom-up are text
based; the listeners rely on the language in the message, that is, the combination of
sounds, words, and grammar that creates meaning. Bottom-up strategies consist of:
+ Listening for specific details
+ Recognizing cognates
+ Recognizing word-order patterns
In addition, students use cognitive strategies when they listen. Cognitive
strategies are used to study the specific learning tasks and involve the manipulation
and transformation of the listening materials. Repetition, translation, note-taking,
recombination, contextualization, inference are among the most important cognitive
strategies.
As can be clearly seen from this classification, there is a combination of
personal knowledge, the text‟s characteristics, the linguistic knowledge, and the
cognitive techniques. This combination motivates students to analyze and

understand the input at the same time they listen. Therefore the researcher agreed
with the classification given by Hedge (2000) including top-down strategies,
bottom-up strategies, and cognitive strategies.
1.4 Potential affective factors on listening comprehension
This section focuses on several ideas of prior researchers about problems
which affect students‟ listening.
12


The first view identified by Faerch and Kasper (1986) is that there are three
internal factors in second language listeners‟ comprehension. They are: learners‟
knowledge of the second language linguistic code, the degree of socio – cultural
competence, and strategic competence.
After reviewing over 130 students, Rubin (1994) synthesizes the existing
research on factors influencing listening process and identifies five major factors:
(1) text characteristics, (2) interlocutor characteristics, (3) task characteristics, (4)
listener characteristics and (5) process characteristics.
In Yao‟s (1995) study, she found that the speaker‟s speed, accent,
vocabulary, the listeners‟ background knowledge, and listeners‟ interest affected
listening. The students found that clear pronunciation and speech were important to
their comprehension.
Goh (1998) listed five most common factors that influence students‟
listening comprehension. They are: text, speaker, listener, task and environment.
Text comprises three features: acoustic features, discourse features and influence.
Speaker comprises accent, fluency, standard or non-standard usage, gender.
Listener comprises language proficiency, gender, memory, interest, purpose, prior
knowledge, attention, concentration, accuracy of pronunciation, physical and
psychological states, knowledge of context, topic familiarity, and established
learning habits. Task comprises types of questions, the amount of time available for
processing information, and the repetition of information. Environment comprises

the quality of tape, quality of equipments and surrounding environment.
Teacher decides what and when to repeat listening passages; however, it is
hard for the teacher to judge whether or not the students have understood any
particular section of what they have hear (Underwood, 1989). Underwood (1989)
offers seven conceivable causes of obstacles to efficient listening comprehension,
most of which are related to what was already mentioned: speed of delivery,
repetition, lack of vocabulary, fail to recognize signals, interpretation ability,
concentration, and perfectionism.
13


In the current study, the researcher selects the ideas of Rubin (1994), Yao
(1995), Goh (1998), and Underwood (1989) to conduct this study. From these
researchers‟ views, it can be indicated that affective factors on listening
comprehension can be classified into four categories:
- Problems from listeners include making prediction what speaker talks about,
lacking background knowledge, failing to recognize the main points, lacking
vocabulary, and lacking listening strategies.
- Problems from speakers include variety of accents, speed of delivery, and numbers
of speakers.
- Problems from listening materials include unfamiliar words, difficult grammar
structures, complex sentences, long listening text, uninteresting information and
unfamiliar topics.
- Problems from physical settings (or environment) include noises and equipment‟s
poor quality.
1.5 Solutions to overcome affective factors on listening comprehension
This part presents some solutions to potential affective factors on learning listening
comprehension. The solutions are suggested by the researchers: Naizhao Guo &
Robin Wills (2005), Sáu (2013), and Stephanie Díaz-Galaz (2014).
1.5.1 Helping students with vocabulary

Teachers can provide students with key vocabulary in the listening text
before doing the real task. Students also need to build up a large vocabulary for
themselves by using some vocabulary books for self-practice. For example, Boost
your vocabulary by Christ Barker is a good choice. This vocabulary book series
includes four volumes. The first two books of this series are the most appropriate
for first-year students. They cover the most important words and phrases needed by
elementary and pre-intermediate level students. These books consist of a wide
variety of enjoyable practice activities, revision sections after every four units to
check progress, space to write in translations, and detachable answer keys.
14