Nghiên cứu về chiến lược nghe cho học sinh lớp 10 tại trường THPT bình liêu

.

THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY
SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

BUI THI THANH VIEN

AN INVESTIGATION OF LISTENING STRATEGIES
FOR THE 10TH GRADE STUDENTS AT BINH LIEU HIGH SCHOOL

(Nghiên cứu về chiến lược nghe cho học sinh lớp 10
tại trường THPT Bình Liêu )

M.A. THESIS
(APPLICATION ORIENTATION)

Field: English Linguistics
Code: 8220201
Supervisor: Cao Duy Trinh (PhD)

THAI NGUYEN – 2019


DECLARATION

I certify my authorship of the study report entitled
“An investigation of listening strategies for the 10th grade students at Binh Lieu high
school”
The topic is a product that I have tried to study in the process of studying at Thai
Nguyen University as well as teaching at Binh Lieu high school. During the writing
process, there are references to some clearly-derived documents, under the guidance of

Cao Duy Trinh (PhD). I assure you if there is any problem, please accept my
responsibility
Quang Ninh, September 20th 2019
Trainee

Bui Thi Thanh Vien

This study was approved by:

Cao Duy Trinh (PhD)

i


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am deeply indebted to a number of people for helping me to make this M.A
thesis possible. First and foremost, my deepest gratitude goes to Cao Duy Trinh (PhD),
my supervisor, who supported and encouraged me generously throughout this study.
Without his excellent academic guidance and support, my thesis would not have been
completed.
I would like to sincerely thank the anonymous participants who contributed
data to this study. Without their outstanding cooperation, this thesis would have never
been done .
I would like to thank my family, especially my parents and my husband for
their constant source of love, support and encouragement in times of difficulty and
frustration.
Finally, I would like to thank my readers for their interests and comments on
this thesis.
While I am deeply indebted to all these people for their help to the completion

of this thesis, I myself remain responsible for any inadequacies that are found in this
work.

Bui Thi Thanh Vien

ii


ABSTRACT
This paper studies an investigation of listening strategies for the 10th grade
students at Binh Lieu high school. The study has the population of total 69 students of
the 10th grade of Binh Lieu high school at Quang Ninh province. These 69 students
come from three classes of the 10th grade. Sampling of a study is defined by qualitative
research and quantitative research.
Through this research, many aspects of listening have been clarified, such as
definition, types of listening, difficulties, importance of listening, how to improve
listening skill, listening strategies, and role of teachers in teaching listening skill.
The application of listening strategies in learning listening skill is very
important. Indirect listening strategy is considered as an effective strategy in
improving efficiency of listening compared to direct listening strategy. Its efficiency
and effectivenes is shown in the result of survey of 10th grade students at Binh Lieu
high school. In the survey to give solution for improving listening skill, a larger
number of students also give answers of listening learning skills related to indirect
strategies: learning listening in group, controling emotions, feelings and attitudes, and
plan to learn listening strategically.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1. Rationale ...............................................................................................................1
1.2. Aims of the study..................................................................................................1
1.3. Research questions ……………………………………………………………1
1.4. Scope of the study ................................................................................................1
1.5. Significance of the research…………………………………………………….2
1.6. Structure of the research………………………………………………………..2
Chapter 2: Literature review
2.1. Listening definition ..............................................................................................3
2.2. Type of listening ..................................................................................................8
2.3. The difference between hearing and listening………………………………...10
2.4. Listening skill…………………………………………………………………13
2.5. The importance of listening skill in daily life, work environment and language
learning……………………………………………………………………………….14
2.6. Barriers and difficulties in listening and learning listening…………………..17
2.7. The improvement of listening skill…………………………………………..24
2.8. The role of teacher in teaching listening skill………………………………..27
2.9. Type of listening strategies ……………………………………………………30
2.9.1. Direct listening strategies………………………………………………31
2.9.1.1.Cognitive strategies........................................................................31
2.9.1.2. Memory strategies.........................................................................32
2.9.1.3. Compensation strategies ...............................................................33
2.9.2. Indirect listening strategies……………………………………………..33
2.9.2.1. Metacognitive strategies ...............................................................33
2.9.2.2. Affective strategies .......................................................................34
2.9.2.3. Social Strategies ............................................................................34
2.10. The reality of learning English at high schools in Vietnam today…………..35
2.11. Previous Studies ...............................................................................................36
Chapter 3: Research methodology
iv

3.1. Introduction ......................................................Error! Bookmark not defined.8
3.2. Research design ...............................................Error! Bookmark not defined.8
3.3. Research site ………………………………………………………………….39
3.4. Sample and sampling procedures .......................................................................39
3.5. Data collection instrument……………………………………………………40
3.6. Data collection procedures ……………………………………………………41
3.7. Data analytical method……………………………………………………….41
3.8. Reliability and validily ………………………………………………………42
Chapter 4: Findings and Discussion.
4.1.Introduction ………………………………………………………………………43
4.2.Result and discussion …………………………………………………………….43
Chapter 5: Conclusions and recommendations……………………………………52
References …………………………………………………………………………54
Appendix A……………………………………………………………………………
Appendix B……………………………………………………………………………

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1. Rationale
Listening is a process that allows the listeners to understand a message, help
them engage in dialogue and succeed in communication. Without listening skills,
people engaged in communication activities will not receive the message, and
therefore, they cannot respond quickly and efficiently (Mberia, 2011). Many
researchers agree that in language learning, listening plays an important role in the
reception of a language.
Recently, listening skill has been gaining much attention among researchers in

teaching and learning foreign languages in general and learning English as a Foreign
Language (EFL) in particular. Many scholars believe that the most important step to
start learning English is to try to hear the language. In addition, listening skill brings
the students the opportunity to feel the language and improve the overall ability to use
English (Yıldırım and Yıldırım, 2016).
Rost (1994) also emphasized that listening could be seen as a necessary skill in
the process of training a foreign language learner and even could be considered as a
tool to predict the success of English learners. As such, listening skill plays an
important role in learning English. Therefore, the topic “An investigation of listening
strategies for the 10th grade students at Binh Lieu high school in Quang Ninh
province” is chosen for research.
1.2. Aims of the study
The study aims mainly to explore listening strategies which the 10th grade
students at Binh Lieu high school in their English learning process, particularly:
-

To explore the direct listening and indirect listening strategies of the 10th
grade students at Binh Lieu high school.

-

To explore their effect differences between using direct listening strategy and
indirect listening strategy in learning English.

-

To provide solutions for improvement of the students‟ listening skill.

1.3. Research questions
1. What listening strategies do the 10th grade students at Binh Lieu high school

use?
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2. Are there any differences of tests‟ results between direct listening strategy and
indirect listening strategy used by the 10th grade students of Binh Lieu high
school?
3. What are solutions for the improvements of the students‟ listening skill?
1.4. Scope of the study
*Geographic location
The research is going to be conducted in Binh Lieu high school in Quang Ninh
province. This is done to obtain an objective result for the applied research.
*Demographic objects
The 10th grade student at Binh Lieu high school is included in demographic
profile. 100 students of the 10th grade of Binh Lieu high school take part in the survey.
In a wide range of respondents, there are some mistakes that can surely happen when
doing survey with the type of error such as the respondents not focusing on the
questions. Thus, they may decide the answers by chance without thinking and share
their true idea, for instance their answers are just all “agree” or “disagree”. In addition,
the respondents had no time to answer the questionnaire, and then they may give
incorrect answers.
*Temporal aims
The time frame for conducting this research and examining the results is
estimated to be a half of year or longer depending on whether there is a constraint of
funds and manpower. The research is written in 2018.
1.5. Significance of the research.
In the aspect of the scope of the research, it is important in finding out listening
strategies. And these strategies are understood through the application of investigation
of the 10th grade student at Binh Lieu high school. From that, it is useful to find out the
best listening in learning English.

1.6. Structure of the research
In chapter 1, it is introduction. The study presents general parts including
background to the study; problem statement; review of related literatures; purposes of

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the study; research question; scope of the study; methods; significance and structure of
the study.
In chapter 2, the study presents literature review including concepts and
previous studies relating to this topic.
In chapter 3, it is research methodology. The study presents research questions,
research participants, research procedures, data collection instruments and data
collection and analysis process.
In chapter 4, the study shows findings and discussion after analyzing data
In chapter 5, the study presents conclusions and recommendations. There are
three parts in conclusions consisting of conclusion of the thesis, limitation of the thesis
and suggestions for further researches.

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CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
Learning English is a long time process requiring perseverance and patience.
The listening subject is one of four difficult skills for learners. In order to have a good
listening, listener has a must of a wake head. During listening process, unrelated things
need to be removed from the brain. In fact, many students have to face with English
listening as well as other foreign languages. The literature review of this research is
going to state some things about listening skill, factors that affecting listening and
kinds of listening strategies. Some previous studies are also described in this literature

so that we can see previous researchers‟ views on listening.
2.1. Listening definition
The word “listening” has been defined by many authors all over the world.
Babita (2013) gave a definition of listening as a language modality. It is one of four
language skills including listening, speaking, reading and writing. Listening must need
to have an active involvement of a person. In listening, there is the relationship of
sender, receiver and message. Listening is a psychological process of receiving,
attending to constructing meaning from and responding to spoken and non-verbal
messages. In a similar aspect, Barker (1971) presented listening was the selective
process of attending to, hearing, understanding and remembering aural symbols. So,
listening is quite complicated and requires high concentration. If not, key words or key
messages will be lost. The role of listening is promoted so much. Having a deep view
of listening, Tucker (1925) brought a profound definition of listening. Particularly, it is
“an analysis of impressions resulting from concentration where an effort of will is
required”. As so, both Baker (1971) and Tucker (1925) had same thought that listening
required a highly concentrated brain. In the case that a person has responsibility to
listen a text and write the main content of the text; however, during the process of
listening, he or she lets his or her brain focus on the other issue. Consequently, the
result of listening is not good. In other words, he or she does not understand what the
key words of the text are. He or she failed in listening. According to the view of
Ahmadi (2016), listening consisted of “the auditory discrimination, aural grammar,
choosing necessary information, remembering it, and connecting it to the process
between sound and form of meaning”. In general, listening is a skill that needs the
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choice of key information, need to remember it. The below is listening definitions of
many authors who wrote very long time ago.
As time passes, listening has been defined in different ways which has
depended on the areas of expertise of educators; these educators have done in social

sciences. Listening, at the beginning of 19th century was understood “in terms of
reliably recording acoustic signals in the brain” (Rost, 2002). The definition was
different in decades later when there was more information about human brain. It was
defined as “unconscious process controlled by hidden cultural schemata”. Coming to
40s of 19th century, due to the development of telecommunications, listening was
“successful transmission and recreation of messages”.

In the 1960s, listening

composed of listeners‟ own experiences to understand the intention of the speaker. In
the 1970s, “the cultural significance of speech behavior” was accepted. “Parallel
processing of input” is the definition of listening in decades of 80s and 90s. Listening
comprehension was defined as “an active and conscious process in which the listener
constructs meaning by using cues from contextual information and from existing
knowledge, while relying upon multiple strategic resources to fulfill the task
requirements” (O‟Malley, Chamot, and Kupper, 1989). The definition of Vandergrift
(1999) was more widen when listening was more complex and active. The complexity
was due to the discrimination of listener between sounds. Moreover, it was also
understood in vocabulary, grammatical structures, interpret stress and intonation
Figure 1: Listening definitions of authors
Author
Tucker

Year

Definition

1925

An analysis of the impressions resulting from concentration where

an effort of will is required

Rankin

1926

The ability to understand spoken language

Nichols

1948

The comprehension of expository materials presented orally in a
classroom situation

Barbe

&

1954

language in terms of past experiences and further course of action

Meyers
Brown

The process of reading to interpreting and relating the spoken

&

1955

The aural assimilation of spoken symbols in a face-to-face speaker

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audience situation with both oral and visual cues present

Carlson
Barbara

1957

A definite usually voluntary effort to apprehend acoustically

Spearritt

1962

The active process involved in attaching meaning to sounds

Barker

1971

The selective process of attending to hearing, understanding and
remembering aural symbols

1972

Weaver

A process that takes place when a human organism receives data
orally. The selection and retention of aurally received data

1975

Kelly

A rather definite and deliberative ability to hear information to
analyze it, to recall it at a later time and to draw conclusions from it

Steil et al.

1983

Consists of four connected activities – sensing, interpreting,
evaluating and responding

Wolff et al.

1983

A unitary-receptive communication process of hearing and
selecting, assimilating and organizing and retaining and covertly
responding to aural and nonverbal stimuli.

Wovin

&

1988

aural stimuli.

Coakley
Brownell

The process of receiving, attending to and assigning meaning to

1994

An overt behavior that conceptualizes the teaching and training
process

ILA

1996

The process of receiving, contructing meaning from and responding
to spoken and/ or nonverbal messages

Cooper

1997

Listening competency means behavior that is appropriate and
effective. Appropriateness means that the content is undertsood and
effectiveness deals with achievement of interactive goals.

de Ruyter

2000

{ as perceived by customers} A set of interrelated activities,
including apparent attentiveness, nonverbal behavior, verbal

& Wetzels

bahaviors, perceived attitudes, memory and behavioral responses
Bostrom

2011

The acquisition, process and retention of information in the
interpersonal context.

* Definitions published prior to 1988 are drawn from Glenn (1989) and Wolvin and
Coakley (1988)
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Listening is an important skill and is expressed by some key components.
Babita (2013) listed components of listening such as the discrimination among sounds,
the recognization of words and the understanding of meaning, the identification of
grammars, the identification of expressions and sets of utteranes that act to create
meaning, the connection between linguistic cues and non-linguistic and paralinguistic
cues. Moreover, listening still uses the background knowledge on the purpose of
predicting and confirming the meaning; for the final purpose, it is used to recall

important words and ideas. As a result, the participation of these components will
create a good ability in listening.
The process of listening is implemented through five steps. It includes
hearing, understanding, remembering, evaluating and responding (Babita, 2013).
Hearing is the process of sound waves awakening the subconscious of brain. It is not
to listent to hear, but it is to hear to listen. In order to have effective listening, it is
essentially neccesary and important to have a brain with a good hearing. You can hear
something, but you must analyse what you heard. It is called “understanding”. In other
words, when you perceive an information from sender, you are in charge of analyzing
the meaning of the information. The analysis is not only about sounds, but also about
words, sights, body…etc. So, so as to obtain successful communication, the listener
has to understand the intended meaning and the context assumed by the sender. In
listening process, “hearing” and “understanding” is not enough. You hear the content
of message, you also understand what the message is about; after that, you forget the
messeage content that sender want to transmit to you. As a result, you fail in listening.
A completed listening process must require the word “remembering”. Based on the
view of Ulum (2015), remembering means that a person has not only received and
clarifies a message but has also added it to the brain‟s stockpile. Remembering is
something saved in the memory after hearing and understaning. Remembering is
different from what was seen and heard. Referring to evaluating, not all listener would
like to join in this step, but active listeners are supposed to complete this step. By
experience and fact, active listeners will determine the apprearance or absence of bias
or prejuidice in a message. Evaluating must be carefully assessed after hearing and
understanding as well as remembering messages (Babita, 2013). An effective listening
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is achieved only when evaluating does not begin too soon. It means that evaluating is
practiced when the incoming message ends. On the other hands, if without hearing,
understanding and remembering all contents of message, evaluating will be wrong.

Sometimes, the beginning and the middle of the message do not present all aspects. As
a result, we must follow the message from the beginning to the ending on the purpose
of getting effective listening. The final step in listening process is responding.
Responding is understood as the feedback that the receiver provides after the
completion of listening process. The feedback can be shown through verbal or
nonverbal. Feedback is the description of the succesful level of the transmission of
message to receivers.
Figure 2: Five steps of listening process.

2.2. Types of listening
Depending on the purposes and ways that listeners perceive and respond to the process
of listening. It can be divided into different types as below:
-Active listening: simply understanding that listeners are active in listening
process. In other sentences, active listening means listeners show their interests in
listening to what speakers are speaking. This type of listening is related to the
encouragement of continued speaking. It is continuous to speak as listeners want to
continuously listen.
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- Appreciate listening: while listening to senders, listeners would like to find the
way to appreciate senders. The reason is that listener‟s needs and goals are satisfied
(Babita, 2013). Consequently, listener will be appreciated to praise sender. This type
of appreciate listening is suitable for good music, good presentation …etc.
- Biased listening: it is easy to be clear about biased listening that one person just
only hears what he or she wants to hear. He does not want to hear others. There are
much news in the text; however, listener will choose the message that is useful for him
or her. Naturally, biased listening is very evaluative.
- Attentive listening: it is opposite of biased listening. It means listener cares much
about message. Therefore, he or she will pay attention to what sender is talking. He or

she listens obviously and carefully.
- Casual listening: show listening attention not obviously. Sometimes, listener
cares much about the content of one message. Nevertheless, the attention is left when
he or she does not care. Actual attention may vary a lot.
- Comprehension listening: the purpose of this type of listening is to understand
the information of message that sender wants to transmit to. When hearing the text,
listener will seek the meaning of the text. It is not necessary for listener to be clear
about all information on the text, but listener must understand what main content is.
- Critical listening: this type of listening is more professional because the purpose
of listening is to evaluate. After hearing, understanding and remembering; listener will
give an evaluation about the message. The evaluation can be the agreement, approval,
criticism, or judgment (Skills you need, 2019).
- Deep listening: it is to seek to understand a person, understand about the
personality, characteristics and real meaning which are not spoken. In clearer
meaning, deep listening is not only to hear what sender said, but also to listen to the
whole person. Whole person here is to listen to the body, gesture, attitude, and action.
Listener can also see the person‟s bias, beliefs, values and preferences …etc
- Discriminative listening: this is the basic kind of listening. It is different
between different sounds. The meaning is that different sounds are identified. If you
cannot hear the differences, then you cannot make sense of the meaning that is
expressed by such differences. We learn to discriminate between sounds within our
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own language early, and later are unable to discriminate between the phonemes of
other languages. This is one reason why a person from one country finds it difficult
difficult to speak another language perfetly, as they are unable distinguish the subtle
sounds that are required in that language. Likewise, a person who cannot hear the
subtleties of emotional variation in another person‟s voice will be less likely to be able
to discern the emotions the other person is experiencing (Purani, 2013)

- Empathetic listening: understanding the feelings of other peoples is what to be
called empathetic listening. This demonstrates empathy. This type requires excellent
discrimination and close attention to emotional signals. In the case that listener is
really empathetic; he or she will feel what other people are feeling.
- Evaluative listening: it is similar to critical listening. The purpose is to
evaluate, criticize, and judge on what other people said.
- Inactive listening: it is opposite of active listening. Listener will pretend to
listen to the message; but in fact, he or she would like to spend more time on thinking.
He or she can think about what the person said before, and does not care or listen to
what the person will say next. Or listener can think about the matter outside the
message that the person is talking.
- Partial listening: listener takes much time on listening to the person saying.
Nevertheless, some times, listener will listen in a drowsy way; or he or she does not
continue listening and thinking of the answer for the previous question. This type of
listening is often seen for learners who hear English listening. They struggle to think
about the first answer; and do not know the second question is floating away.
- Reflective listening: you have listened to a text, and then you reflect the
content of the text back to other persons
- Informational listening: when you listen to learn something, it is called
informational listening. Informational listening is held most of everyday, at most of
everywhere. It is easy to be recognized in education when students try to listen to learn
their lessons. It is also recognized at work
Generally, among various types of listening, five types of listening are considered as
the most important and main listening. They are discriminative listening,
comprehensive listening, informational listening, critical listening and empathetic
listening.
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2.3. The difference between ―Hearing‖ and ―Listening‖

As mentioned above, there are many different opinions about listening. It is
also recognized that “listening” and “hearing” are two different categories. According
to Hasan (2000), "hearing" and "listening" are two distinct processes in which
"hearing" is a process by which listeners receive information, and this process takes
place one way at a time, unlike interpretation or interaction with the text. Simply
understanding, “hearing” is the information that it gets into the ear by accident, or
randomly. Hearers can perceive all messages or a part of messages. In contrast,
listening is the process of two-way interaction between the listener and the listening
text, and this interaction gives the listener an overall understanding of the text. With
wisdom and understanding, listener will make an effort to listen all information in the
text. This "hearing" and "listening" process is performed when the listener selects and
interprets the information received through the hearing organ and other visual cues (if
any) for the purpose of understanding the message of the speaker.
This view of listening comprehension is also consistent with the second
hypothesis of the language spoken by Richards (2002) and O'Malley & Chamot
(1999). This assumes that listening to spoken language is an activity and a complex
process in which the listener focuses on the chosen aspects of the listening. From the
sounds they hear, they find the meaning of the listening message, and relate to what
they hear to the knowledge they currently have. Additionally, Brette (1995) stated that
hearing is a decisive language skill. It plays an important role in the acquisition of
language. When comparing listening with other language skills, Morley (2001) also
points out that on average each of us listens "twice as much as we say, four times what
we read, and five times what the learner wrote ".
The researchers distinguished between Listening and Hearing. Listening is an
active process, including sound analysis, which is different from Hearing, which only
captures sounds passively. In the same way, Harmer (2001) stated that Listening is a
"receptive skill" when learners receive the main idea through what they hear. Listeners
receive the message of the speaker through accent, pronunciation, grammar, and words
that the speaker uses and understands the meaning of their message.

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Richards and Schmidt (2002) describes listening as comprehension of speech in
the first or second language, and listening comprehension of a second language
involves both top-down and bottom-up processes. (Bottom-up). Brown (2006) also
shares this view and argues that the "top-down" process occurs when learners use
background knowledge and vocabulary available to capture the content of the
listening, while the bottom-up process is to use the context of the listening to predict
the meaning of the new word. According to Helgesen (2003), hearing is an active and
purposeful skill. During the listening process, the listener not only captures the content
they are listening to but also can listen to the information they have previously known
to understand the listening. In addition, Helgesen also said that when listening, the
listener is not just listening to the words, but also understand the implications behind
the words.
According to Kline (1996), in order to learn and teach listening effectively; it is
extremely important to be aware of the difference between listening and hearing. The
difference in the view of Kline was obviously described as the following: “hearing is
the reception of sound, listening is the attachment of meaning to the sound. Hearing is
passive, listening is active”. In the similar meaning, Rost (2002) presented hearing
different from listening that “hearing is a form of perception, but listening is an active
and intentional process”. It is clear that both hearing and listening are shown in the
involvement of perception. However, the level of perception is different. Listening is
involved with high degree of intention. Hearing is at lower degree. Hearing is formed
early. It is true for new born children. As soon as being born, children are able to hear
(Flowerdew and Miller, 2005). Right after getting out of the womb, children could be
able to hear the sounds around. However, their perception of sounds is very low. At
the starting time, children will hear, and then show their attention to listen. Speaking is
the second activity of children after listening. The next activity is reading, and then
writing is the final skill of children. This proves that listening is the first skill of

language (Lundsteen, 1979).
In recent time, Surbhi (2016) provided an easily knowledge of listening
definition that hearing is through ears, but listening is through the mind. As so, both
hearing and listening use ear for involvement, but they are different. In hearing, ears
will help you perceive sound waves and noise. It is the power of perceiving sounds. In
12


contrast, listening means you receive sound waves and clear about it by paying
attention to words and sentences of speaker.
Figure 3: The difference between hearing and listening
BASIC FOR

HEARING

LISTENING

COMPARISON

What is it ?

Hearing refers to one‟s ability to Listening is
something
done
perceive sounds, by receiving
consciously, that involve the analysis
Vibrations through ears.
and understanding of the sounds you
hear
An ability

A skill

Nature

Primary and continuous

Secondary and temporary

Act

Physiological

Psychological

Involves

Receipt of message through ears

Interpretation

Meaning

of

the

message

received by ears
Process

Passive bodily process

Active mental process

Occurs at

Subconscious level

Conscious level

Use of senses

Only one

More than one

Reason

We are neither aware nor we have We listen to acquire knowledge

Concentration

any control over the sounds we hear

and receive infotmation.

Not reqiured

Required

2.4. Listening skill
According to Rubin and Thomson (1994), listening skills are divided into two
categories based on the type of listening process: (i) basing on reciprocal hearing: this
process occurs when the listener is asked to participate in the interaction process and
to alternate between listening and speaking. Situations that require interactive listening
include live and telephone conversations. In these situations, listeners have the
opportunity to ask the speaker to speak more clearly, repeat or speak slowly; (ii) Nonreciprocal listening: This kind of hearing takes place when the listener participates in a
passive passage of a monologue, a speech or a conversation.
Successful listeners are those who can incorporate "inside the head" knowledge
that is, knowledge that is not coded directly in words - and that knowledge “outside
the head knowledge” to understand what they are listening, according to Nunan
(1991). Anderson and Lynch (1988) also distinguished these two processes by
13


opposing the process. The bottom-up process of the listener - like the "tape recorder" with the top down process - is "modeling" (model builder). Therefore, the use of both
types of knowledge is essential. The concept of the processes up and down in listening
comprehension is also discussed by Anderson (1983) and Rubin (1994).
According to them, the bottom up process involved initiating by identifying
sounds, distinguishing words and understanding grammatical structures, and finally
understanding the meaning of the message. This is a mechanical process and a
research focus of some teaching methods (Brown, 2006). The above process takes
place when the listener focuses on the general meaning of the listening text and the
application of the schemata. According to the researchers, the schema is an intellectual
framework built on past experiences that can be used to help listeners understand
current situations.
Examples of top-down processes may be: the reflection of ideas and the
guessing of words and the identification of the subject. The bottom line is that
understanding language is a process that goes through many stages, and the output of

each step becomes the input of the next stage. This is why Buck (2001) named this
process One-way listening
2.5. The importance of listening skill in daily life, work environment and
language learning
In daily lives, it cannot be without listening and speaking function. A question
is that how we would feel if no listening. Actually, it is very terrible. Without
listening, we could not feel the world around. Thus, this part is going to feature the
role as well as the importance of listening in life and language learning. Based on the
opinion of Guo and Wills (2006), listening promotes people gaining many profits such
as the improvement in education, information collection, knowledge of the world and
human affairs, and ideals and sense of values. Thus, listening has big role in
motivating the brain to discover many things. Mendelson (1994) stated that listening
occupies from 40 to 50 percent of the total time spending on communication. Speaking
is at lower percentage, from 25 to 30 percent. Reading and writing are from 11 to 16
percent and 9 percent respectively. Consequently, listening is used mostly. The
percentage is given at aim to emphasize the importance of listening in daily life as well
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as language learning. In the similarity to the previous points, Peterson (2001)
described that “no other type of language input is easy to process as spoken language,
received through listening. Through listening, learners can build an awareness of the
interworking of language systems at various levels and thus establish a base for more
fluent productive skills”. Anderson and Lynch (2003) also mentioned the importance
of listening in classroom context. The achievement of making effort in listening is
recognized obviously when we are put in unfamiliar listening environment. This is
clear in listening to a foreign language which we have knowledge limited. Many
people thought that when we know a foreign language, we are able to write, read and
speak it. This sentence is true; however, it is not entirely like that. In fact, if we are not
good at listening skill, it will be very hard and not possible for us to communicate

effectively. As so, listening is the basic skill in learning language. Nunan (1998)
showed that the time spent on learning listening occupied over 50 percent. The role
and importance of listening in classroom context is presented by Rost (1994) under the
following points: firstly, listening is like an input for language learning. In more
details, in speaking learning, if you do not listen to what your teacher is teaching, is
guiding or explaining; you could not express the ideas in speaking. Or in writing and
reading lesson, if learners does not listen to and understand teachers‟ instructions, they
will be sure to fail in these two skills. Secondly, listening exercises provide teachers
with a means for drawing learners‟ attention to new forms in the language. In other
sentences, teachers and learners can explore more about vocabulary, grammar, new
interaction patterns while doing listening exercises. They know new words, new
structures and new style of speaking.
According to Nation and Jonathan (2009), listening is considered as a bridge for
language learners. If you are good at listening, you can master language learning. And
listening must be one of main skills that you need to master. The reason is that
listening is tightly related to communication process. Without listening, it is so hard
for people to communicate with each other. Similarly, Harmer (2007) stated that
listening is useful for students to obtain successful communication. Or successful
communication must accompany with good listening. In daily life, if you are not good
at listening, you cannot understand what your partner is saying. As a result, you will
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give wrong answers or not concentrate on the communication between you and your
partner
Mr Renukadevi (2014) identified that speaking, writing and reading are
essential skills in developing language proficiency; however, listening is primary to
develop language expertise. Listening awakens awareness of the language as it is a
receptive skill that first develops in a human being. Learning to listen to the target
language improves language ability. The sound, rhythm, intonation, and stress of the

language can only be perfectly adapted through listening. To understand the nuances
in a particular language, one must be able to listen. As we get to understand spoken
language by listening it is easier to improve the other skills and gain confidence.
Renukadevi also stated that listening helps learners understand the beauty of foreign
language. In the same view with Nation, Jonathan (2009) and Rost (1994), Renukadevi
gave the crucial role of listening in learning language in terms of acquiring right
pronunciation, vocabulary, and word stress. It is shown through up and down of the
tone of voice
Listening skill is a category that many authors have commented on difficulties
and benefits of learners. Ron (2001) stated that the importance of listening can be
recognized easily when we are poor at listening. The result of the listening ability
testing of new students at the University of Minnesota done by Nichols and Stevens
(1957) pointed out that these new students, in the average, remembered only a half of
what was said. After two weeks testing again, the result was only 25 percent. The test
was repeated and got the same result. As so, if being bad at listening, listeners will get
low result of idea recognition.
According to the survey of the University of Minnesota, 60 percent of
misunderstanding happened in business activity in the case of poor listening and only
1 percent due to poor reading. For example, you are listening to a foreign partner in a
meeting; if you are not good at the listening language, you will not understand about
what he is talking about. Consequently, the contract with the partner is possible failed.
Or in the case of sales, customers want to increase imported volume of products;
however, you misunderstand that they want to repack the volume. This causes damage
in business relationship and sales revenue. In the home, poor listening leads to marital
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conflict. Depending on the result of survey by Family Service Association of America,
there are 87 percent of conflicts happened due to poor communication and no
communication. 44 percent is due to sex conflict. Nevertheless, in explaining the

problem, the word “communication” was repeated and stressed most frequently. To
sum up for this point, good listening is advantageous not only in relationship but also
in business. With experience and knowledge of himself, Robert (1981), a businessman
and motivational speaker and the author of “Listening made easy” said that people
who reached top ten of sales recognized listening make them on top. The percentage of
20 of sales force creates the success of 80 percent of the sales in most of companies
(Ron, 2001). The quality of a good manager is assessed by his listening to his
employees or not. Employees would like to talk with a manager when the manager
uses time to listen to them. From that, relationship as well as work performance is
improved more effectively.
The benefit of listening is shown in maturing value. This is being able to
understand another‟s thoughts and feelings whether you agree with them or not. This
is difficult for poor listener to do. He has his own ideas of the way the world should be
and stops listening whenever another‟s ideas challenge his.
Babita (2013) summarized a range of benefits of listening skill. According to
him, a person with ability in listening can understand exercises, dialogues, or texts in
better ways; he is able to find key information that he expected. In addition to the
importance of listening skill, good listeners have chance to build relationship with
colleagues, managers and customers inside and outside organization. Good listening is
also helpful in showing support. When you listen and understand the matter of other
people, you can be active in supporting them. Furthermore, with ability to listen, you
can work better in a team-based environment. You know to listen to ideas from other
members of team and know to choose the best for decision making. Good listening is
useful in resolving troubles and answering questions. Resolving troubles is very right
with customers, colleagues, and the upper. People who are good at listening will find
underlying meanings in what others say
2.6. Barriers and difficulties in listening and learning listening

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In accordance with the idea of Shalawati and Sitti (2016), listening skill is
regarded as one of the most difficulties for English learners although they have several
years of learning. A part from benefits of proficiency in listening, Babita (2013) listed
barriers of listening. Firstly, some people can get barriers in physiology. This is the
deficiency in hearing something around. The ears are not able to act. People with the
deficiency are called deaf people. However, this deficiency can be treated. In other
case, some people get difficulty in collecting information and keep it in mind.
Secondly, the influence of environment on listening process is called physical barriers.
These physical barriers include noise of air conditioner, of a car, of a fan or something
like that. Physical barriers are also shown in the overload of the form of information. It
is obvious in the case of meeting with manager. While you are listening to manager‟s
saying, you hear the phone rings and your mobile beeps at the same time. So, you will
feel confused of the main information. Thirdly, egocentrism is an attitude barrier to
listening. In this case, listener believes that he have more knowledgeable than the
speaker. Thus, in his mind, there is nothing new to learn anymore. Accordingly, he
becomes a poor listener or fails in listening. Fourthly, in order to have a successful
communication, both sender and receiver must play an important role in transmitting
information. Wrong assumption is to assume that responsibility belongs to only the
sender or the speaker and listener has no the part in communication. This causes the
result of poor listening. Related to this, assumption is a big barrier to listening. This
kind of barrier is proved in the presentation and a talking when the talent speaker well
delivers the interesting presentation and listener does not listen to speaker. As a result,
both speaker and listener must play the role in creating successful communication. A
successful communication must have attention and feedback. Next barrier is related to
culture. Accents can be barriers to listening, since they interfere with the ability to
understand the meaning of words that are pronounced differently. The problem of
different accents arises not only between cultures, but also within a culture. For
example, in a country like India where there is enormous cultural diversity, accents
may differ even between region states. One more barrier to listening is lack of training.

No one was born with good listening. It must be practiced and trained. Without
practicing and training, people are not good at listening skill. The practice and training
should be gradually done, from easy to difficult. Bad listening habits are the final
barrier to listening that Babita mentioned. Some people like to get highlights from
speaker by pretending to listen to what speaker is saying. Indeed, she does not pay
attention much to speaker. Some people have habit of listening to some points. In
consequence of that they miss some other main points
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Some people overemphasize on grammar, reading and vocabulary; hence,
English language learners meet difficulties in listening comprehension (Gilakjani and
Ahmadi, 2011). In accordance with Gilakjani and Ahmadi, Ur (2007) stated that
hearing sounds, understanding intonation, voice, and stress, noise, catching with
colloquial vocabulary, . …etc are main difficulties in learning listening. It is really
difficult for native students to learn second language. In the view of Underwood
(1989), the difficulty for students while learning listening is the speed of delivering
words and sentences, no repeat of words. In addition, students have limitation in
vocabulary and failed to follow signals like transitions. Lack of knowledge and
concentration is the cause of poor listening. Many learners have the greed for making
efforts to understand all words in the text. It is not really a good habit in studying
listening.
In their writing, Selin and Ozgur (2016) proved unfamiliar sounds being one of
main difficult that English learning learners have to encounter with. For example, in
Turkish and English language; both Turkish and English have similar consonants;
conversely, Turkish does not have some consonants of English language such as two
ways of pronunciation of “th” in English (Yavuz, 2006).In Turkish, the closet sound
for /θ/ is /t/ which may cause confusion for Turkish students when they hear the word
“three”. Since the /θ/ sound does not exist in Turkish, students may understand it as
the word “tree” or vice versa. Similarly, for the sound/ ð/, it is highly possible for

students to misunderstand since they may think it is /d/. So when the students hear the
word “those”, they may think the word that they hear is “doze”. As a result, the use of
intonation, stress and rhythm may also prevent learners‟ understanding of the spoken
English.
Continuously, Selin and Ozgur (2016) mentioned the difficulty of language
learners in listening is to make predictions; it is more difficulty when they are not
familiar with idioms, and proverbs. Maybe they heard the word obviously; however,
they do not understand the meanings. Moreover, intonation and stress are significantly
important in some situations. Some people try best to explain new words and
unfamiliar sounds; this really makes them tired and waste lots of time. Different voices
will create difficulty for learners. People usually comment that it is very confused for
students to listen to Japanese and Korean when they speak English. And in native
country, different areas will have different pronunciation of English. Some people in
this area pronounce clearly and easy for listeners to hear; some others in that area do
not pronounce well which causing difficulty for listeners to hear. In a study about
English learners‟ perception of listening aspects, Goh (2000) summarized listening
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