Difficulties in learning english listening skills the case of 10 grade students at thang long high school m a thesis linguistics 60 14 10

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

VŨ QUỲNH TRANG

DIFFICULTES IN LEARNING ENGLISH LISTENING
SKILLS: THE CASE OF 10-GRADE STUDENTS AT
THANG LONG HIGH SCHOOL
(NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN TRONG VIỆC HỌC KỸ NĂNG
NGHE: TRƯỜNG HỢP CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP 10
TRƯỜNG THPT THĂNG LONG)
M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field

: English Language Teaching Methodology

Code

:601410

HÀ NỘI- 2013


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

VŨ QUỲNH TRANG

DIFFICULTES IN LEARNING ENGLISH LISTENING
SKILLS: THE CASE OF 10-GRADE STUDENTS AT
THANG LONG HIGH SCHOOL
(NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN TRONG VIỆC HỌC KỸ NĂNG
NGHE: TRƯỜNG HỢP CỦA HỌC SINH LỚP 10
TRƯỜNG THPT THĂNG LONG)

M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field

: English Language Teaching Methodology

Code

:601410

Supervisor : Kiều Thị Thu Hương, Ph.D

HÀ NỘI- 2013


TABLE OF CONTENTS
DECLARATION............................................................................................................................... I
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS........................................................................................................ II
ABSTRACT...................................................................................................................................... III
TABLE OF CONTENTS............................................................................................................ IV
LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS.................................................................... VII
ABBREVIATIONS.................................................................................................................... VIII

PART I: INTRODUCTION................................................................................................... 1
1. Statement of the problem........................................................................................................ 1
2. Objectives of the study............................................................................................................. 2
3. Research questions..................................................................................................................... 2
4. Significance of the study.......................................................................................................... 2
5. Scope of the study....................................................................................................................... 3
6. Design of the study..................................................................................................................... 4

PART II: DEVELOPMENT.................................................................................................. 5
CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW........................................................................... 5
1.1 The nature of listening........................................................................................................... 5
1.1.1 Definition of listening.................................................................................................... 5
1.1.2 Classification of listening............................................................................................. 6
1.2. Process of listening................................................................................................................. 7
1.3 Factors affecting EFL listening.......................................................................................... 8
1.3.1 Text Characteristics......................................................................................................... 9
1.3.1.1. Length and density of the text.......................................................................... 9
1.3.1.2 Quality of the text............................................................................................... 10
1.3.1.3 Conceptual difficulty of the text.................................................................... 10
1.3.1.4 Syntactic complexity of the text..................................................................... 11
1.3.1.5 Complexity of tasks............................................................................................ 11
1.3.2 Speaker Characteristics............................................................................................... 12
1.3.3 Listener Characteristics............................................................................................... 13

iv


1.3.3.1 Background knowledge................................................................................... 13
1.3.3.2 Language proficiency level........................................................................... 15
1.3.3.3 Application of strategies................................................................................ 16

1.3.3.4 Knowledge of vocabulary.............................................................................. 16
1.3.4 Listening Environment................................................................................................ 16
1.4 Overview of listening section in the English 10 textbook “Tieng Anh 10” 17

1.4.1 Pre-listening stage......................................................................................................... 18
1.4.2 While-listening stage.................................................................................................... 18
1.4.3 Post-listening stage....................................................................................................... 19
1.5 Previous works review......................................................................................................... 19

CHAPTER II: THE STUDY................................................................................................. 21
2.1. Subjects..................................................................................................................................... 21
2.2. Data gathering instruments............................................................................................. 21
2.3. Procedure................................................................................................................................. 22
2.4 Findings and discussion...................................................................................................... 23
2.4.1 Students‟ background information......................................................................... 23
2.4.2 Students‟ opinion concerning difficulties they encounter in studying
listening skills.......................................................................................................................... ..26
2.4.2.1 Difficulties related to Text factors................................................................ 26
2.4.2.2 Difficulties related to Listener factors........................................................ 29
2.4.2.3 Difficulties related to Speaker factors........................................................ 34
2.4.2.4 Difficulties related to Listening environment........................................... 35
2.4.2.5 Other difficulties................................................................................................. 37
2.4.2.6 Summary................................................................................................................. 37

PART III: CONCLUSION................................................................................................... 40
1. Conclusions................................................................................................................................. 40
1.1 Students’ listening performance and how they perceive
the importance of listening skills.................................................................................... 40
1.2 Difficulties 10-grade students at TLHS encounter when studying
listening skills........................................................................................................................... 40

2. Implications................................................................................................................................. 41
v


2.1 Solutions to Listener factors...................................................................................... 41
2.2 Solutions to Text factors.............................................................................................. 43
2.3 Solutions to Speaker factors...................................................................................... 43
2.4. Solutions to Listening environment...................................................................... 44
3. Limitations and suggestions for further studies........................................................ 45

REFERENCES............................................................................................................................ 46
APPENDICES................................................................................................................................. I
Appendix 1: Questionnaire (English version)..................................................................... I
Appendix 2: Questionnaire (Vietnamese version).......................................................... V

vi


LIST OF TABLES AND CHARTS
Table 1:

Difficulties related to Listening factors............................................................ 26

Table 2:

Difficulties related to Listener factors............................................................... 29

Table 2.1: Learners‟ responses related to the difference between written
and spoken language.

31

Table 2.2: Students‟ responses related to long questions................................................ 32
Table 2.3: Students‟ responses related to their anxiety when they
fail to understand the text immediately

33

Table 2.4: Students‟ responses related to their inability to spell words....................33
Table 3:

Difficulties related to Speaker factors............................................................... 34

Table 4:

Difficulties related to Listening environment................................................. 35

Table 5:

Other difficulties reported by students.............................................................. 37

Table 6:

A summary of listening difficulties faced by students................................ 38

Chart 1.1: Students‟ time experience in learning English.............................................. 23
Chart 1.2: Students‟ average scores in listening skills last semester.......................... 24
Chart 1.3: Students‟ responses related the importance of listening skills................24
Chart 1.4: Students‟ responses related to the difficulty level of listening
skills in comparison with other skills

25

Chart 2.1: Students‟ responses related to unfamiliar words, difficult
grammatical structures, and complex sentences. 27
Chart 2.2: Students‟ responses related to long spoken text............................................ 28
Chart 2.3: Students‟ responses related to uninteresting information
and unfamiliar topics

28

Chart 2.4: Students‟ responses related to the skills of predicting
and getting a general idea of a text.

30

Chart 2.5: Students‟ responses related to speakers‟ pronunciation............................ 31
Chart 2.6: Students‟ responses related to the speaker‟ fast speech
and unfamiliar accent

34

Chart 2.7: Students‟ responses related to the visibility of the speaker,
time allowed for listening tasks

35

Chart 2.8: Students‟ responses related to disturbing noise
and poor-quality tape-recorders/ cassette-players
vii

36


ABBREVIATIONS
No

Number

&

and

EFL

English as a foreign language

TLHS

Thang Long High School

GCSE

General Certificate of Secondary Education

viii


PART I
INTRODUCTION

1. Statement of the Problem
Recently, listening has gained more and more attention in foreign language
learning. In learning English as a foreign language (EFL), it is suggested that the
most important step should begin with an effort to listen. Rubin & Thompson state:

Listening, quite possibly, is the most important of the language skills, since
people spend approximately 60% of their time listening….. In addition, listening
will give you an opportunity to get a “feel” for the language and will have you
improve your overall ability in it. If you don‟t learn to listen effectively, you will
not be able to participate in conservations in the foreign language.
Rubin & Thompson (1994: 85)

Rost (1994:141) emphasizes that listening can be regarded as a necessary skill in
the preparation of foreign language students and can even be considered as a good
predictor of language achievement. Consequently, listening plays a vital role in
foreign language learning.
Quite recently, listening is incorporated in any English syllabuses used in primary,
secondary and high schools of the Vietnamese education system. There are more
and more students who set themselves ambitious goals like studying abroad,
taking college entrance exams or at least getting good marks at school. Therefore,
they hope to develop their language abilities.
To enter Thang Long High School (TLHS from now on), students must get at least
53,5/ 60 points in the General Certificate of Secondary Education examination
(GCSE), thus they are expected to have good performance in all subjects including
English. However, most of the students who enroll in TLHS this year seem to have
low levels in listening skills. This is especially observable when they take listening
classes with the textbook “Tieng Anh10”. Many students
1

perform poorly and some of them seem uninterested in listening lessons and
unwilling to listen to the recordings. The question arises here is what difficulties
the students face while they study listening skills. The purpose of this study is,
therefore, to find out the specific listening difficulties 10-grade students at TLHS
encounter in listening skills in the textbook “Tieng Anh 10” and suggest some
pedagogical implications.

2. Objectives of the Study
The objectives of the study are:
-

To identify common difficulties 10-grade students of TLHS encounter when
studying listening skills in “Tieng Anh 10”.

-

To suggest some solutions to help students overcome their difficulties and
recommendations for teachers at TLHS to have possible measures that could
contribute to planning a lesson taking the learners‟ problems into consideration.

3. Research questions
The study aims at finding out answers to the following questions:
1. What difficulties do 10-grade students at TLHS encounter in studying

listening skills?
2. What solutions are suggested to overcome these difficulties?

4. Significance of the Study
Awareness of the difficulties that students encounter in listening skills would
benefit both students and teachers. Hopefully, the findings of this study will

2


provide teachers knowledge of the problematic areas of listening skills, so that
they can take necessary treatment measures, which are suggested as an implication
of the study. Understanding their students‟ listening difficulties will permit
teachers to modify their teaching approaches, methods and techniques.
The study will also help students to identify their difficulties of listening skills and
find suitable and effective learning strategies. When listeners know about their
own problems, they will be able to improve their listening practices and become
better listeners.

5. Scope of the study
There are two kinds of English textbooks suggested to10-grade students in
Vietnam. The first one entitled “English 10” is for students specializing in English
and the second one - “Tieng Anh 10” is for students of common classes. In spite of
the similarities in the organization of topics and skills in both textbooks, “English
10” involves more advanced knowledge and language practices. Both textbooks are
officially used in almost all schools in Hanoi. However, due to limited time and the
scope of a minor thesis, the research has focused her study on 10-grade students‟
difficulties in learning listening skills in the textbook “Tieng Anh 10”, which is
used in common classes nationwide.
The researcher looks for a better understanding of listening difficulties 10-grade
students in TLHS encounter. Although it is not suggested that students of other
high schools in Hanoi face exactly the same listening difficulties, the research
believe that they may share some common difficulties. It is hoped that future
extensive investigations into listening problems can be conducted in different
contexts in further studies will provide more exact and reliable answers.

3

6. Design of the study
The study includes three parts:
Part one is the Introduction of the study which states the problem, the research
questions, objectives, scope, significance and the design of the whole paper.
Part two is the Development which consists of two chapters. Chapter one presents
the theoretical background related to the topic. Chapter two includes subjects of
the study, data collection instruments, procedure, analysis of data and the results.
Part three is the Conclusion which summarizes major findings of the investigation,
provides implications and suggestions, limitations and suggestions for further
studies.

4


PART II
DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW
1.1 The nature of listening
1.1.1 Definition of listening
To define listening, theoreticians distinguish listening and hearing. Listening
involves an active process, which requires an analysis of sounds, in contrast to
hearing that only perceives sounds in a passive way. In the same way, Harmer
(1989: 16) expresses that listening is a “receptive skill” where people obtain the
main idea according to what they hear. Besides, listening helps learners to be
flexible listeners, to know how to listen in order to get the general idea or the
specific information needed to understand the message.
Listening is a process in which the listener constructs meaning out of the
information provided by the speaker. This involves understanding a speaker‟s

accent or pronunciation, his grammar and his vocabulary, and grasping his
meaning. Morley (1972) as cited in Tesfaye (2008) provides a broader definition of
listening states that it includes the process of reauditorizing, extracting vital
information, remembering it, and relating it to construct meaning, besides the basic
auditory discrimination and aural grammar. Therefore, although listening is a
passive skill it is very much an active process of selecting and interpreting
information from auditory and visual clues.
Listening is the process that allows the listener to understand a message and gets
them involved in the conversation and be able to achieve successful
communication. Without listening, the communicator would fail to receive the
message and therefore, unable to respond quickly and effectively. Listening plays
an important role in the process of acquiring a language. Rost (1994) points out:

5


Listening is vital in the language classroom because it provides input for the
learner. Without understanding input at the right level, any learning simply cannot
begin.
Rost (1994: 141)

Thus, listening is fundamental to speaking and other skills. In conclusion, listening
fosters the learning of a second language because it provides input which is a main
factor in the learning process. In this way, listening is a significant skill during the
process of acquiring a language.

1.1.2 Classification of listening
According to Rubin and Thomson (1994: 85) listening is divided into two types
basing on the types of situation where the understanding takes place. Firstly,
reciprocal or interactive listening happens when the listener is required to take

part in the interaction and alternately listens and speaks. Interactive listening
situations include face-to-face conversations and telephone calls in which the
listener has a chance to ask for clarification, repetition, or slower speech from
his/her conversation partner. The second type is non-reciprocal or non-interactive
listening which happens when the listener is engaged in listening passively to a
monologue or speech or even conversation. Some non-interactive listening
situations are listening to the radio, CDs, TV, films, lectures etc. and here the
listener doesn‟t usually have the opportunity to ask for clarification, slower speech
or repetition.
According to Derrington and Groom (2004), there are five types of listening: (i)
informative, which consists of information retained by the learner; (ii)
appreciative, when the learner listens according to his style and feels pleasure
about it; (iii) critical is based on retaining information and analyzing it deeply;
(iv) discriminative in which the listener identifies emotions and inferences

through the tone of voice, (iv) empathic consists on non-verbal behavior of the
listener that is attending to what is said.
6


1.2 Process of listening
Duzer (1997) lists the following nine activities underlying the silent learning: (1)
determining a reason for listening; (2) taking the raw speech and deposits an image
of it in short-term memory; (3) attempting to organize the information by
identifying the type of speech event (a conversation, a lecture, a radio ad) and the
function of the message (to persuade/ inform/ request); (4) predicting information
expected to be included in the message; (5) recalling background information
(schemata) to help interpret the message; (6) assigning a meaning to the message;
(7)

checking that the message has been understood; (8) determining the

information to be held in long-term memory; (9) deleting the original form of the
message that has been received into short term memory.
These nine activities indicate the interaction of two cognitive processes: bottomup and top-down. In the bottom-up view:
… [T]hey segment the stream of speech into its constituent sounds, link these
together to form words, chain the words together to form clauses and sentences
and so on. This view is known as the bottom- up approach to listening
(Nunan 1991: 17)

Thus, in this process the learners attempt to understand a spoken discourse by
decoding a number of sounds to form words. Next, words are linked to form
phrases, which make up sentences. These sentences build a complete text, the
meaning of which is then constructed by the listener. In addition to the grammatical
relationships, such phonemes as stress, rhythm and intonation also substantially
contribute to this data-driven processing. Learners can be trained to perform this
processing, for instance, by activities that require them to discriminate two sounds
or distinguish rising and falling intonations.
The top-down processing, on the other hand, refers to interpreting meaning as
intended by the speakers by means of schemata or structures of knowledge in the
mind. This view emphasizes the prominence of background knowledge already
possessed by the learners in making sense of the information they hear. The prior
7


knowledge may facilitate their attempt to grasp the incoming information by
relating the familiar with the new one, and significant lack of such knowledge can
ruin their efforts to comprehend a particular utterance. Successful listeners are
those who can combine both “inside the head” knowledge, which is not directly
encoded in words, and “outside the head” knowledge to interpret what they listen

to (Nunan 1991: 18). Anderson and Lynch (1988), cited in Nunan (1991: 18),
contrast the bottom-up view of listener as “tape recorder” with the top-down view
of listener as “model builder”. Therefore, it is essential for the listener to ultilise
both bottom-up and top-down knowledge.

1.3 Factors affecting EFL listening
In Underwood‟s point of view (1994: 16), there are seven potential difficulties in
EFL listening comprehension: (1) lack of control over the speed at which speakers
speak; (2) inability to get things repeated; (3) the listener's limited vocabulary; (4)
failure to recognize the signals; (5) problems of interpretation; (6) inability to
concentrate; (7) established learning habits. Many language learners believe that
the greatest difficulty with listening is that the listener cannot control how quickly a
speaker speaks.
Rubin and Thompson (1994: 87) identify three common problems in learning to
listen to a foreign language. The first problem is that the speaker talks too fast. If
the listener cannot follow the speaker, the listener can let the speaker know about it.
He/she can ask for repetition, clarification or rephrase. The second problem is that
the listener could not understand the foreign language, for example, in TV and
movies. It is advisable for the listener to guess or predict what he/she has to listen
to by using visual clues, teachers‟ questions, warm up activities and his/her own
background knowledge. The third problem is that the listener tend to stop listening
when he/she hears a new word or phrase. As a result, he/she can miss portions of
the passage that might help clarify the unfamiliar word or segment. The listener
should concentrate on familiar parts and keep listening.

8


In addition, there are other scholars who forwarded factors that are thought to
affect foreign language listening comprehension. Rubin (1994: 216) after

reviewing “over 130 studies of which over 115 report directly on research in
listening comprehension”

identified five factors which affect listening

comprehension: text characteristics such as speech rate, pause, stress and rhythm,
difference in first and second language, etc; interlocutor characteristics such as
gender and language proficiency; task characteristics such as task type;. listener
characteristics such as language proficiency level, memory, attention, affect, age,
gender, learning disability in first language, and background knowledge; and
process characteristics such as top-down, bottom-up, and parallel processing,
listening strategies, and negotiation of comprehensible input.
Yagang (1994) attributes the difficulty of listening comprehension to four sources:
the message, the speaker, the listener and the physical setting. The researcher will
focus on the factors proposed by Yagang (1994) and Rubin (1994). The study,
which particularly limited to the listening problems pertinent to the Text, the
Speaker, the Listener, and the Listening Environment. The following section
discusses each characteristic.
1.3.1 Text Characteristics
One of the major factors that are believed to affect EFL listening is text
characteristics. Text refers to the content of the listening passage, the attractiveness
of the topic to generate interest to the learners, conceptual difficulty, syntactic
complexity, length and density of a text, etc. These factors potentially influence
the success or failure of listening comprehension. The details are presented as
follow.
1.3.1.1. Length and density of the text
In learning a foreign language, listening and interpreting unfamiliar sounds for
long time are tiring. Although successful listeners do not try to understand every
9

word they hear (in fact, they just listen to key words), they still find it difficult to
catch key words from a relatively long and dense text. It may be due to fatigue or
students‟ inability to concentrate for a long time. Moreover, if a message contains
so much information that cannot be stored easily in memory, special listening
strategies will be possibly inapplicable. Short spoken text reduces the complexity
of comprehension by reducing tiredness and lapse of concentration. With regard to
the density of the text, many writers (Ur, 2005; Underwood, 1989) claim that
information should be less dense in the spoken language than in the written
language.

1.3.1.2 Quality of the text.
It is important to pick topics that will be interesting for students of different ages.
An interesting topic generates enjoyment that leads to motivation. Thus, learners‟
interest should be taken into consideration during selecting or preparing listening
materials. If the text is interesting, it motivates learners by making the listening
task enjoyable. Also, it catches learners‟ attention and encourages them to actively
engage in the activities. Underwood (1989: 19) says: “If students find the topic
interesting, they will find concentration easier.” That i s , when the listening topic
is interesting, students find listening tasks very enjoyable, because they are
motivated to attentively follow what they listen to. On the contrary, if the topic is
not interesting, students may find the listening activities boring, and this can
interfere with their concentration which is critical to listening activity because
even “the shortest break in attention can seriously impair comprehension”
(Underwood, 1989: 19).
1.3.1.3 Conceptual difficulty of the text
Difficult concepts can negatively affect students‟ listening. According to Boyle
(1984: 35), if the concept of a listening passage is difficult “especially if the
material is abstract, abstruse, highly specialized or technical, esoteric, lengthy, or
10

poorly organized”, comprehension of that passage can be difficult. During
selecting or preparing listening materials, therefore, we should make sure that
whether the difficulty level of the concept is suitable for all students in the level.
Topics about people, daily life, environment and social issues which contain
simple concepts are familiar to students while topics with theoretical concepts
interfere with the students‟ comprehension. If the information of the spoken text is
full of theoretical concepts and if it is beyond learners‟ knowledge, it will make
students confused and frustrated. This is because a difficult concept demands past
experiences and linguistic abilities that not many students could have.

1.3.1.4 Syntactic complexity of the text
According to Brown and Yule (1983: 1), there are a number of differences between
spoken discourse and written discourse which are important in learning EFL
listening. That is, while the spoken language is syntactically simpler, the written
language is relatively complex. Therefore if the listener is unable to segment and
simplify complex sentences and turn them into more basic syntactic units, they
will fail to comprehend the text.

1.3.1.5 Complexity of tasks
In real life, the listener has a definite non-linguistic reason for listening for
example to communicate or entertain. In listening classrooms, however, the reason
for listening is purely linguistic and test-focused.
A problem arises here, however, when the tasks require responses beyond
checking the students listening skills. Penny Ur asserts:
…[T]asks that involve a lot of reading (such as answering multiple-choice
questions) or writing (such as taking notes) have one disadvantage that should be
noted.
Ur (2005: 26)

11


Ur also says that even many native speakers find it difficult to do multiple-choice
listening exercises or make note from lecture because this kind of exercises do
more for writing skills than listening skills. Here if the purpose of the tasks is to
cover all language skills other than focus on listening skills, it may be unnecessary
to employ tasks that involve reading, speaking or writing which are tiring and
difficult for students. Therefore, Ur (2005) and many authors agree that listening
tasks should requires quick simple responses and should not demand the skills of
reading, speaking and writing at the expense of listening. It is advisable that the
listening tasks should be listening- based, rather than reading-, writing-, or
speaking-based.

1.3.2 Speaker Characteristics
Speaker factors may include the language ability of the speaker (native or nonnative speaker); speaker’s production (pronunciation, accent, variation, voice,
etc); speed of delivery; prestige and personality of the speaker (Boyle 1984: 35).
Most students have had little prior exposure to authentic discourse; therefore,
listeners have imperfect control of linguistic code. Moreover, the different
pronunciations of words across versions of the same language (e.g. British, Indian,
Canadian, Australian, and regional U.S English) make it difficult to percept the
sounds. Ur (2005) realizes that many foreign language learners who are used to the
accents of their teachers feel dismayed when they cannot listen to other speakers.
They even claim that the speaker‟ accent is inferior or wrong “but there is rarely
such a thing as wrong accent” (Ur 2005: 20). Ur also advises teachers to not only
give students familiarity with the two most common English accents - English and
American varieties, but introduce them to other accents.
The other problem that makes difficult to understand the native speaker
English may be the learners past experience of learning. Let us now look at how

Yagang describes it:

12


Learners tend to be used to their teacher‟s accent or to the standard variety of
British or American English. They find it hard to understand speakers with other
accents. Spoken prose, as in news broadcasting and reading aloud written texts, is
characterized by an even pace, volume, pitch, and intonation. Natural dialogues, on
the other hand, are full of hesitations, pauses, and uneven intonation. Students used
to the former kinds of listening material may sometimes find the latter difficult to
understand.
Yagang (1994:190)

This seems the reason why Underwood (1989: 99) criticizes the use of nonauthentic texts instead of the authentic one for the teaching of listening. She says
that using non-authentic texts for listening causes students to pose an additional
problem of having to try to transfer what they have learned by listening to nonauthentic materials to their attempts to understand authentic speech.

1.3.3 Listener Characteristics
Listener characteristics appear to have considerable impacts on listening
comprehension. Some researchers have sought to identify listener factors that
influence listening comprehension in positive and negative ways.

1.3.3.1 Background knowledge
According to Rubin (1994: 209), background knowledge, also called prior
knowledge or declarative knowledge has an impact on understanding a subject that
a student is going to learn. Learners construct meaning during the comprehension
process by segmenting input (i.e., from which they hear or read) into meaningful
units, then matching the intake, with their existing linguistic and world
knowledge, and filling in the gaps with logical guesses. It means that the kind of

knowledge learners have before learning a new topic affects how they understand
the new information.
From this

we

can

understand

that students
prior
13

having varying

levels of


knowledge about a subject are more likely to understand, interpret the new
information in different ways, and these students try to make sense of new
information; in other words, students try to make sense of what is new by relating
it to what is familiar using their prior knowledge and strategy. These concepts of
learning, in general, indicate that listeners' past experiences strongly affect the way
in which the listeners interpret a passage. To make the points more clear, we will
see the concept of background knowledge from three different perspectives: topic
familiarity, authentic speech and culture familiarity.

a) Listeners’ awareness to a topic
Boyle (1984: 35) lists “knowledge of the specific topic or subject” as a factor that

affects EFL listening. Listening can be seen as an interactive process in which the
listener's knowledge is used to make sense of information provided by the speaker.
Current views on listening comprehension agree that prior knowledge of a topic
can affect listening comprehension. If communication is to take place, the learner
should have certain things in common with the subject under discussion.

It is obvious that students will find it easier to listen to a passage on familiar topic
than on unfamiliar one. Moreover, in order to make students familiar to a topic,
scholars advise to activate learners‟ background knowledge to prepare the students
to use what they know about a topic, and to facilitate effective comprehension.

b) Cultural awareness
Culture plays a significant role not only in comprehension but also in learning a
foreign language as a whole. It can be inferred that the student with no background
knowledge of culture in English, American or other English speaking
14


countries, is unlikely to understand Anglophone modes of thinking as expressed in
the English language. Underwood states:
Students who are unfamiliar with the cultural context may have considerable
difficulty in interpreting the words they hear even if they can understand their
„surface‟ meaning.
Underwood (1989:19)

According to Brown (1994), culture includes the sociolinguistic aspects of
language which deal with politeness, formality, metaphor, register, and other
culturally related aspects of language as dialects and figures of speech. He adds
that if learners are not familiar with the sociolinguistic aspects of the language,
they may misunderstand intended meanings of utterances within the contexts.

c) Familiarity with natural feature of spoken English
The spoken features of native speaker English can be difficult for learners who do
not have previous exposure. Non-native learners who are unfamiliar with authentic
features will have difficulty in perceiving aspects of listening such as hearing the
sounds, understanding intonation, stress, and redundancy under colloquial
vocabulary and understanding different accents.

1.3.3.2 Language proficiency level
Rubin (1994: 206) claimed that language proficiency is a major variable that
influences EFL listening. More advanced learners, with a greater store of linguistic
knowledge, and a more sophisticated control over this knowledge, achieve greater
understanding of speech. But those students at low English proficiency level, with
a lesser store of linguistic knowledge, and less sophisticated control over this
knowledge may encounter problems in understanding speech.

15


1.3.3.3 Application of strategies
Harmer (1991:183) describes these strategies, which he calls “micro skills”, as
follows: predictive skills, extracting specific information, getting the general
picture, extracting detailed information, recognizing functions and discourse
patterns and deducting meaning from contexts. He says that an effective listener is
the one who is capable of employing the appropriate strategies of listening
simultaneously. He advises that EFL listeners should employ these strategies of
listening in order to be successful in listening comprehension because listeners‟
success at understanding the content of what they hear depends to a large extent in
their expertise on the micro skills.
1.3.3.4 Knowledge of vocabulary

Another area that is claimed to affect students‟ listening comprehension is the
student's limited lexical knowledge. A problem many learners have is having to
deal with the multiple meanings of words and in fact, many students know only
the most common meaning of a word. When the word is encountered in one of its
less common uses, students are confused. The other problem of listening in
relation to vocabulary is getting words which seem similar in sounds. In English
there are different words which seem similar in sounds but different in meanings
(as ship/sheep, meat/meet, fit/feet, write/right, sight/site, light/light, etc)
(Underwood, 1989: 9). When EFL listeners come across such words, they may fail
to distinguish one word from the other with similar sound.
Therefore, students should be exposed to such words and need to learn their
differences in meaning. In addition, students need to learn the expressions that are
common in spoken English.

1.3.4 Listening Environment
Some of these factors that are claimed to affect students‟ EFL listening
comprehension are those concerned with environmental distractions or associated
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visual support. Yagang (1994) asserts that noise, including both background noises
on the recording and environmental noises, can take the listener‟s mind off the
content of the listening passage. Similarly, environmental variables can disturb and
confuse EFL listeners. Environmental distractions, such as, phones ringing, and
other voices can affect the learners‟ listening comprehension. The distraction
originates from the listening environment or from the listening equipment such as
machines, cassettes, volume control, etc.
Another barrier of listening comprehension, which can be associated with
environment, is lack of visual support. Yagang (1994) says that not seeing the
speaker‟s gestures and facial expressions makes it more difficult for the listener to

understand the speaker‟s meaning. These factors are important not only because
they contribute to the immediate act of comprehension, but because they help the
students to build up knowledge of context which is important for successful
listening. Ur (2005: 4) also mentioned the importance of “visibility of the
speaker” and suggests “using live speakers, restoring to recordings only to attain
specific objectives”.

1.4 Overview of listening section in the textbook “Tieng Anh 10”
The new series of English textbook for students from grade 6 to 12, including the
textbook “Tieng Anh 10” marked a great effort of Vietnam‟s Ministry of
Education and Training (MOET) to improve language teaching and learning
context in Vietnam. Different from the old textbooks where language input were
presented in terms of long reading texts and mechanically grammar-based
exercises, the textbook “Tieng Anh 10” is a theme-based one, in which there are
16 units arranged according to different topics conveying various aspects of daily
life such as School talks, People’s background, An excursion, Film and Cinema.
Each unit consists of 5 sections: Reading, Speaking, Listening, Writing and
Language focus. This is an advantage of the textbook as it aims to develop all
communicative language skills for students.
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Listening skills is a complete new section for both Vietnamese students and
teachers, who have not got used to the communicative approach. Thus, listening
skills is considered one of the most difficult skills by many Vietnamese students.
Listening lessons make up 20 % of the English 10 syllabus and each lesson consists
of 3 stages: Pre-listening stage, While-listening stage and Post-listening stage

1.4.1 Pre-listening stage
To prepare students and arouse students‟ interest in the listening text, this stage

consists of various activities such as discussing some relevant pictures, asking and
answering about relevant experience, ideas and vocabulary associated with the
topics, predicting information about the topic. It is difficult for students to listen to
a text at the beginning of the lesson without knowing about the topic, its
knowledge and related vocabulary. Even if the sounds and topics are familiar with
students, they may still get confused and miss parts of the text. There are certain
goals that must be achieved before students start listening to any text. They are
motivation, contextualization and preparation, which should be done in the prelistening stage. To do so, teachers should have interesting activities to introduce
the topic, give background information and pre-teach vocabulary such as games or
colorful pictures.
1.4.2 While-listening stage
This stage includes a series of listening activities for students to practice, thus it
often takes most time of the lesson. At this stage students often listen to the tape
recordings several times to do different types of tasks. The purpose of the stage is
to help students develop their listening skills and get to understand the text.
Teachers should play the role of a facilitator who introduces necessary listening
strategies and clues to help students complete given tasks. Teachers should not
expect students to understand every word in the tape recording. While-listening
may involve these activities: identify the exact topic, note some pieces of
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