Fostering listening skills of chemistry majored sophomores in a university in hanoi by applying frequent dictation

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

LƢƠNG HUỆ PHƢƠNG

FOSTERING LISTENING SKILLS OF
CHEMISTRY-MAJORED SOPHOMORES IN A UNIVERSITY IN HANOI
BY APPLYING FREQUENT DICTATION
(Tăng cƣờng kỹ năng nghe của sinh viên năm thứ hai chuyên ngành Hóa
tại một trƣờng Đại học ở Hà Nội
thông qua việc áp dụng thƣờng xuyên phƣơng pháp nghe chép chính tả)

M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Major

: Teaching English Methodology

Code

: 8140231.01

HANOI - 2021


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

LƢƠNG HUỆ PHƢƠNG

FOSTERING LISTENING SKILLS OF
CHEMISTRY-MAJORED SOPHOMORES IN A UNIVERSITY IN HANOI
BY APPLYING FREQUENT DICTATION
(Tăng cƣờng kỹ năng nghe của sinh viên năm thứ hai chuyên ngành Hóa
tại một trƣờng Đại học ở Hà Nội
thông qua việc áp dụng thƣờng xuyên phƣơng pháp nghe chép chính tả)

M.A. MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS
Major

: Teaching English Methodology

Code

: 8140231.01

Supervisor : Dr. Trần Thanh Nhàn

HANOI - 2021


DECLARATION

Luong Hue Phuong, hereby state that, this minor thesis is the result of my own
research and all the material in this study which is not my own work has been
identified and acknowledged. I also state that the substance of the thesis has not,
wholly or in part, been submitted for any degree to any other universities
institutions.
Hanoi, 2021

Luong Hue Phuong

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank various people who provide me with considerable assistance
during the whole journey of the thesis.
First of all, I would like to express my sincere thanks and my deepest gratitude to
Dr. Tran Thanh Nhan, my supervisor, for her thorough instructions, precious
guidance, ideas and constant encouragement during the time my research endeavors
lasted. Without her invaluable support on research methods and her critical
comments on my writings, this thesis would have never been completed.
I also would like to express my appreciation to the lecturers of the University of
Languages and International Studies for providing me with comprehensive
knowledge which have laid the foundation for my thesis.
This is a great opportunity to thank my beloved colleagues who have helped me
with a great source of literature for my research and encouraged me to keep going. I
am pleased to thank my leader who was willing to discuss the development of this
research with me, who has helped me predict and overcome adversity while doing
the research by sharing her studies and experience.
In my study, it is inevitable that the ideas of many other writers in this field are
reflected and developed. Their ideas have stimulated my thinking on doing this
research. My debt to the authors listed in the references is equally great. To all these
scholars, I offer my sincere thanks.
Last but not least, I owe my great gratitude towards my family, friends and my
husband-to-be for their best possible support, endless care and inspiration.
Hanoi, 2021
Luong Hue Phuong

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ABSTRACT

Listening is one of English skills learnt by the students besides three other skills:
speaking, reading, and writing. Basically, the students can hear certain words or
sentences what the speakers have said, but they cannot listen clearly, which impedes
their listening comprehension. Especially in ESP course where students cope with a
great deal of technical terms, their understanding is limited. One of teaching
technique used in teaching listening is dictation technique which requires students
to focus on the sentences or words being dictated because they should listen and
memorize what they have heard. The participants of the study are 25 volunteering
Chemistry-majored sophormores at a university in Hanoi. The action research was
conducted in 2 cycles, each of which includes

planning, action, observation,

reflection and revised plan. All the quantitive data collected from the results of
students in 3 distinct tests taken at 3 different stages in the research and the data
collected from the questionnaires and students‘ journals were analyzed in order to
examinine whether or not there existed the improvements in students‘ listening
competency. The results of the study show that students‘ scores increased
considerably, which means they made a significant improvement in their listening
competency. In addition, most students adopted positive attitude towards this
implementation as they saw the benefits of the new method. The benefits of
frequent listening dictation were recognized in terms of 5 major catagories namely
advancing short-term memory, attentiveness, vocabulary, note-taking capacity and
apprehension of entire discource.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

DECLARATION ........................................................................................................i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..................................................................................... ii
ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................. iii
LIST OF TABLES ................................................................................................. vii
LIST OF FIGURES .............................................................................................. viii
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ............................................................................1
1. Rationale of the study..............................................................................................1
2. Scope of the study ...................................................................................................3
3. Aim of the study ......................................................................................................3
4. Research questions ..................................................................................................4
5. Organization of the study ........................................................................................4
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................5
2.1. Listening skills in ESP .........................................................................................5
2.1.1 Definition of listening ........................................................................................5
2.1.2 Listening skills in English teaching and learning ..............................................6
2.1.3 Listening in ESP .................................................................................................7
2.1.4 Factors affecting listening comprehension in ESP ............................................9
2.2 Listening dictation ...............................................................................................13
2.2.1 Dictation technique ..........................................................................................13
2.2.2 Types of Dictation ............................................................................................14
2.2.3 Benefits of dictation in improving listening comprehension ...........................15
2.3 Previous studies ...................................................................................................19
CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY .................................................22
3.1 Setting of the study..............................................................................................22

3.2 Participants ..........................................................................................................22
3.3 Research Design ..................................................................................................23
3.3.1 Cycle 1: ............................................................................................................26

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3.3.2 Cycle 2: ............................................................................................................30
3.4 Data collection procedure ...................................................................................33
3.4.1 Tests .................................................................................................................33
3.4.2 Listening dictation as a home-assignment .......................................................34
3.4.3 Questionnaire ...................................................................................................34
3.4.4 Journal writing .................................................................................................35
3.5 Data analysis .......................................................................................................35
CHAPTER 4: DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION ......................................36
4.1 The effectiveness of listening dictation ..............................................................36
4.1.1 The frequency of listening dictation practice ...................................................36
4.1.2 Tests .................................................................................................................38
4.2 Students‘ opinions on applying frequent dictation .............................................43
4.2.1 Students‘ opinions on the suitability of dictation application ..........................43
4.2.2 Effectiveness of dictation in improving listening comprehension ...................46
4.2.3 Student‘s preference of utilizing listening dictation in the next semester .......49
4.3 Discussion ...........................................................................................................50
CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION ...............................................................................52
5.1 Major findings of the study .................................................................................52
5.1.1 The effectiveness of applying frequent dictation on Chemistry-majored
sophoremores ............................................................................................................52
5.1.2 Students‘ opinions frequent dictation application to enhance student‘s
listening comprehension............................................................................................53
5.2 Implications .........................................................................................................53

5.3 Limitations of the study ......................................................................................54
5.4 Suggestion for further studies .............................................................................54
REFERENCES ........................................................................................................56
APPENDICES ........................................................................................................... I
APPENDIX I: PRE-TEST ......................................................................................... I
APPENDIX II: PROGRESS TEST ......................................................................... IV

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APPENDIX III: POST-TEST ................................................................................. VII
APPENDIX IV: DICTATION TASKS POSTED ON GOOGLE CLASSROOM ... X
APPENDIX V: SAMPLE OF A DICTATION TASK ............................................ XI
APPENDIX VI: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE .................................................. XIV
APPENDIX VIII: PARTICIPANTS‘ JOURNALS ............................................. XVII

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 1. Course schedule for Phase 1 .......................................................................27
Table 2. Course schedule for Phase 2 .......................................................................31
Table 3. The relationship between the frequency of students‘ practice and the
changes in their scores ..............................................................................................38
Table 4. Mean scores of pre-test, progress test and post test. ...................................43
Table 5. Student‘s opinions on how listening dictation affected their listening
competency................................................................................................................48

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. The Tree of ELT (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987, p. 17) .............................8
Figure 2. Simple Action Research Model (MacIsaac, 1995) ....................................25
Figure 3. Student‘s frequency of dictation practice ..................................................37
Figure 4. Result description of pre-test .....................................................................39
Figure 5. Result description of progress test .............................................................40
Figure 6. Result description of post-test ...................................................................41
Figure 7. Result description of pre-test, progress test and post test ..........................42
Figure 8. Students‘ opinions on their involvement in listening practice ..................44
Figure 9. Students‘ opinions on the suitablility of dictation activity ........................45
Figure 10. Students' opinion on the frequency of dictation practice.........................46
Figure 11. Student's opinion on the effectiveness of listening dictation ..................47
Figure 12. Student‘s preference of utilizing listening dictation in the next semester
...................................................................................................................................49

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CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

1. Rationale of the study
Language is a media used by people to communicate in social environment. People
using language to comunicate with another consituting a society. Fromkin (2003)
states that the nature of language that makes us human is the crucial factor that
helps us to learn more about the humanity. The symbols of language, spoken or
written are used to express an idea or feeling. Mastering the mother tongue as well
as other languages, accordingly, is considered essential for people to get merged

into the society, especially at the current time of globalization.
As a matter of fact, English recently is reputed as an international language widely
used in many countries all over the world and employed in many sectors such as
technology, trade, education, etc. In order to master English communicative
competence, learners are suggested focusing their attention on four main skills
namely listening, speaking reading and writing. Among those, listening appears to
be the most influential factor in acquiring a new language and to pose the greatest
obstacles to language learners. Vandergrift (1999) proved that listening
comprehension plays a key role in facilitating in language learning. In addition, he
also indicated that it is the most frequently used skills compared to speaking,
reading and writing since it occupies 40 – 50% of our daily communication while
the three others represent less than 25% for each.
As regard to the role of English listening skills in English learning at school, the
college years recently involve significant challenges and opportunities for all people
who decide to pursue higher education, especially for those studying their major in
English – the second language. The language barrier for Vietnamese students,
whose first language is not English, was widely recognized in the 1900s. Up to now,
approximately 30 years later, the Vietnam Ministry of Education and Training
reports that there are more than half a million Vietnamese native speakers in
Vietnam have to master English in order to pursue bachelor‘s, master‘s, and

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doctorate degrees in a variety of areas. The necessity of English as a second
language and as a global language helping undergraduates to seize their job
opportunities has forced university administrations to acknowledge the linguistic
needs of the students. Therefore, many colleges and universities has conducted ESP
programs in order to offer their students additional support.
These programs are usually available in the first two or three academic years, and at

the university I am doing the research on, the undergraduates are required to attend
at least 6 ESP courses from year 2 to year 3 aiming at enhancing their
communicative competence in the field they major in.
My motivation for undertaking this research comes from my experience of teaching
in those ESP programmes. According to the School Curriculum, listening is the
language skill that should be mastered by students with the learning materials
provided including authentic audios and practice exercises. However, in fact,
through my hands-on experience of teaching the Chemistry-majored sophomores (at
level A2), I have noticed that there were quite a large number of students who
frequently struggled in listening sections in ESP course as well as in ESP tests. In
fact, in recognition of the importance of English communication skills as
prerequisites for the students‘ successful performance at the workplace, the
alternative method of student‘s self-study vocabulary, grammar, reading and writing
skills has been employed to make room for classroom-based speaking practice.
Online listening practice, hence, seemingly becomes a thorny issue to the nonEnglish majored students due to the lack of teacher‘s guidance. Students were stuck
with bad listening habits that come in the way of effective listening. They had a
tendency of doing something else while listening, or getting distracted due to
external factors. At times they did not try to listen and understand something that
they judge as difficult. Moreover, it has been also claimed that technical words in
the authentic workplace-based recordings such as the names of substances, the
laboratory equipment and the names of various types of chemical reactions, which
are quite challenging for those at A2 level to capture the meaning without
memorizing their spelling, also impeded their comprehension.

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Therefore, I decided to apply several listening techniques with the hope that the
students can enhance their listening competence. While most of them seemed not to
be very effective, I got interested in the techniques of Listening dictation, which

was thoroughly discussed during a course on the method of teaching ESP by Ms.
Kettle (from University of Queensland – Australia). In addition, according to
Montalvan (2006), dictation involves the whole class, no matter how large it is. He
also emphasizes that listening passages can be well-prepared in advance and
administrated quite effectively by an inexperienced teacher. Sharing the same views
on listening dictation with Pappas (1977) who reported that dictation is a good
means of developing the learner‘s comprehension, Alkire (2002) also specified the
benefits of listening dictation such as reinforcing the spelling and sound correlations
of English, uncovering comprehension and grammatical weaknesses in learners so
that the teacher can analyze and address in the upcoming lessons.
Based on the difficulties in listening skills most of my students in ESP courses
encountered and the explanations above, I am self-motivated to conduct a research
with the title ―Fostering listening skills of chemistry-majored sophomores in a
university in Hanoi by applying frequent dictation.‖.
2. Scope of the study
Within a short time and with limited reference materials, it would be too ambitious
for this small-scaled study to cover the outcome of the application of frequent
dictation on all Chemistry-majored students in the university as well as all over the
nation. Therefore, the study is limited to investigating the effectiveness of this
technique. I only concentrate on examining the influence of frequent dictation on
listening comprehension of 25 Chemistry-majored students who are studying
English as non-major field as well examining their opinions on the application of
this technique.
3. Aim of the study
This research is conducted in order to measure the efficacy of frequent dictation as a
means of enhancing listening skills of the second-year students majoring in
Chemistry during their self-study practices in English for Specific Purposes course
and investigating their perspectives on listening dictation.

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The objectives of the research:
- To investigate the effectiveness of applying frequent dictation in second-year
students‘ listening skills in ESP course.
- To examine the attitude of the second-year students majoring in Chemistry in a
university in Hanoi towards frequent dictation.
More detailed explication as how the aforementioned objectives have been
formulated and how these objectives can be attained is specified in chapter 3:
Methodology.
4. Research questions
On the basis of the aforementioned aims and objectives, the study is conducted to
answer the following questions:
(1) To what extent does frequent listening dictation help to improve listening
comprehension of Chemistry-majored sophomores?
(2) What are students‘ opinions about applying frequent listening dictation?
5. Organization of the study
The study is divided into five chapters:
-

Chapter 1, Introduction, discusses the rationale, the scope of the study, the
objectives of the study and the research questions as well as the organization
of the study.

-

Chapter 2 is Literature Review which presents all related theoretical
background that precedes and necessitates the formation of my research: an
overview on listening skills, ESP and listening dictation.

-

Chapter 3, Methodology, describes the research procedures that have been
utilized in the study.

-

Chapter 4, Data Analysis, contains the core part of the study. It presents,
analyzes and synthesizes data collected and gives some findings and
discussions.

-

Chapter 5 is Conclusion part summarizing the major findings on the
effectiveness of applying frequent dictation in second-year students‘
listening skills in ESP course and suggestions for further study.

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CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

In this chapter, a range of fundamental theoretical concepts will be introduced. All
related theoretical background that precedes and necessitates the formation of my
research will be presented: an overview of listening skills in ESP in 2.1; listening
dictation in 2.2, the effectiveness and suitability of dictate listening for ESP
students, especially for those majoring in Chemistry in 2.3.
2.1. Listening skills in ESP
2.1.1 Definition of listening
There are different points of view on the definition of listening. As defined in

Cambridge Learners‘ Pocket Dictionary, listening is a process involving giving
attention to someone or something in order to hear them. According to Howat and
Daikin as quoted by Saricoban (2006), listening is the ability to identify and
understand what others are saying by understanding a speaker‘s accent or
pronunciation, his grammar and his vocabulary, and grasping his meaning‖.
Listening has often been claimed to be a passive skill. However, Murphy (1991)
proved this statement to be misleading since listening is an interactive, dynamic,
interpretive process that requires students to construct the message actively.
Littlewood (1981) also supported this concept by indicating listening demands
active involment from the hearer. He explained that to reconstruct the message the
speakers convey, the hearer must actively contribute knowledge from both linguistic
and non-linguistic source.
In 1989, Charnot and Kupper (1989) defined listening comprehension as an active
and conscious process of using cues from contextual information and from existing
knowledge to construct meaning. Vandergrift (1999) also stated the same opinion
that in listening comprehension process, the listeners must understand vocabulary,
grammartical structures as well as immediately interpret the discourses based on the
sociocultural context of the utterance.
To sum up, these definitions above clearly imply that listening is the skill which is

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required to listen well to somebody or something. Listening competence is the
ability or power to relate the sound to meaning. A student listening to a passage
means that he actively uses his listening competence to communicate with the
passage by understanding the vocabulary, spelling, grammar and the meaning of the
passage.
2.1.2 Listening skills in English teaching and learning
As stated above, up to now listening skills has been paid the least attention to

among 4 main skills of language learning. This deliberate neglect may lie behind
the fact that listening has been considered as a passive process. On the contrary, in
point of fact listening is the most frequently used language skill in the classroom
compared to the other language skills (Ferris, 1998). Additionally, Rost and Ross
(1991) stated that progress in listening can provide a basis for development of other
skills. It can be easily inferred that listening skill can support students to master
other language skills. As a result, listening in a language teaching-learning process
is of the utmost importance that should not be ignored by students of all levels.
In teaching listening, teachers must understand the process of listening. Nation and
Newton (2009) mentioned two distinct listening processes as follows:
a. Bottom-up process
In this process listeners assemble the messages piece by piece from the speech
stream going from parts to the whole. According to Cook (1995), bottom-up parsing
refers to building up the meaning of the whole sentence in listener‘s mind bit by bit,
combining sounds into words, words into phrases, phrases into the sentence.
Therefore, Richards (2008) asserted that with this approach, the tasks assigned to
students help them to recognize words and clauses, identify key words and
transitional words/ phrases in a discource.
b. Top-down process
Top-down process, on the other hand, is characterized as the procedure listeners use
their background in predicting and understanding the message; therefore, the key
process is inference. Nunan (1999) clarified top-down process as the listener

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actively constructs the original meaning of his partner‘s utterance using incoming
sounds as the clues. As stated by Richards (2008), top-down process approach
includes the exercies which help language learners to develop their ability to use
keywords to construct the schema of a discource, infer the setting for a text and

infer the role of participants and their goals.
2.1.3 Listening in ESP
Internationalization of education, business, technology and industry have led to the
development of ESP and thus there emerged numerous definitions of ESP. Mayo
(2000) claimed that it is not an effortless task to define ESP because it can be
applied to any situation and depends on what learners are facing with. ESP stands
for English for Specific Purposes and refers to teaching and learning of English as
second or foreign language where learners aim to use English for a particular career
(like engineer, doctor), or for a field in general (like Chemistry). Robinson (1989)
defined ESP as goal-oriented language learning that represents the student having a
particular goal that is going to be achieved. Whereas, Hutchinson and Waters
(1987) considered ESP as an approach to language teaching, to content and method
are dependent on the learner‘s reasons for learning. As for a broader definition, they
preferred defining what ESP is not, by presenting a tree of English language
teaching (Figure 1) which allows us to see the relationship between English for
general purposes and ESP.

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Figure 1. The Tree of ELT (Hutchinson and Waters, 1987, p. 17)
According to Figure 1, ESP can be classified into three branches: English for
science and technology, English for business and economics, and English for social
science. Chemistry is classified into the group of Science subjects; therefore,
English for Chemistry can be regarded as an ESP branch belonging to the English
as a Foreign Language or English as a Second Language.
Described as two main branches of EFL, listening in ESP and in GE have many
similarities as they share the same cognitive processes and requires the use of the
same macro skills in accordance with the purpose for listening. In terms of

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cognitive processes in ESP listening, ESP listening aims to develop active listeners
to construct interpretations on the basis of input and ask for the needed information
(Brown, 1990). Paltridge and Starfield (2013) also shared the same opinion that
ESP listening has a range of similarities as GE in terms of cognitive process. To be
more specific, ESP listening, similarly involving bottom-up and top-down
processes, can occur in various forms of communications namely one-way listening
or interactive listening. In interactive listening, the listeners practice bottom-up
process in which they involve the dialogist in repeating and clarifying the message
in their attempt to perceive the message conveyed. By contrast, in one-way
listening, such as listening to a lecture or a talk, active listeners facilitate their
comprehension by infering and predicting as well as monitoring and evaluating their
interpretation with the use of background knowledge.
The distinction between listening in ESP and GE is that ESP listening requires more
additional skills and specific types of knowledge and vocabulary required for
English for academic purposes and English for occupational purposes. In addition,
developing ESP listening may require more high-level listening skills relevant to the
requirement in English for academic purposes and English for occupational
purposes situations than for General English (Goh, 2013).
2.1.4 Factors affecting listening comprehension in ESP
It is obviously discernible that almost all ESP students as well as foreign language
learners are rather afraid of listening and face some uncertainties about the
appropriate listening strategies to be applied to attain better listening
comprehension. To some extent, the factors influencing listening comprehesion in
ESP are proved to be the same as ones to comprehension of GE. In fact, these
problems are the results of the factors that strongly impede learners‘
comprehension. The following would be an overview of some main factors that
make listening arduous including vocabulary reservoir, the speed of delivery,

listener‘s concentration, memory as well as background knowledge.

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a. Clusters, connected speech and accents in English
It is undeniable that Vietnamese learners frequently encounter difficulties with
English listening due to the various phonetic differences between English language
and their mother tongue. One of the greatest obstacles is the feature of sounds. In
fact, in English words, there are consonant-clusters which cause difficulty for both
speaking and listening. From my personal experience of teaching listening,
listeners, my students, may get consonants in the wrong order and thus
misunderstand the message when they hear ―parts‖ /pɑ ː ts/ instead of ―past‖
/pɑ ː st/, or omit one of the sounds (crips for ―crisps‖).
Another problem that should be mentioned is connected speech. It is defined as ―a
flow of sounds which are modified by a system of simplifications through which
phonemes are connected, grouped and modified‖ (Underhill, 1994). According to
Crystal (1991), English native speakers are able to speak at a pace of approximately
450 words in informal context. When the tongue has to move from one articulating
position to another at this pace, an approximation of the phoneme can be produced.
Thus, Underhill (1994) summarized that assimilation is "the natural result of the
various speech organs 'cutting corners' as they perform their complex sequence of
movements‖. A prime example for this phenomenon is ―what are‖ /ˈwatar/ changed
into /ˈwʌɾɚ/. Secondly, elision refers to the omission of a phoneme in a speech like
―what are you‖ /ˈwɑtɑrjuː / is pronounced into /ˈ wʌtʃə/ (Underhill, 1994). Thirdly,
the researcher also characterized the liaison as ―the smooth linking or joining
together of words with a seamless quality‖. An example for this phenomenon is
―what is it?‖ described as /wɑt ɪz ɪt/ is shifted to /wɑtɪzɪt/. Examining the influence
of these features of connected speech, Rubin (1994) concluded that the existence of
elision or the utilization of reduced forms such as assimilation, liaison and vowel

reduction makes the decoding process more challenging for English listeners as the
second language. The result is the phonemic information missing from the input
may obstruct the recognition of words and syntactic patterns.
Another hindrance in phonetic complexity is different accents in the English

10


language. Most language learners are dismayed when they find difficulties from the
speaker‘s accent. In fact, the situation that English is not always delivered with a
native accent makes adaptation become considerably more demanding to listeners.
To be more specific, it is proved that accented speech affect both the listeners‘
understanding of the message conveyed and the effort involved as listeners identify
specific words in the message (Floccia, Butler, Goslin, & Ellis, 2009). According to
Goh (1999), two thirds of English learners affirmed that accent is one of the most
problematic factors to comprehension. To sum up, familiar accents can support
English learners‘ listening comprehension and unfamiliar accents can cause a huge
of problems in listening comprehension.
b. Vocabulary reservoir
It is evident that vocabulary is one of the most important part of the language
accquisition and thus can be the most challenging for English learners. In fact, the
vocabulary acquired by English learners is limited, especially for the ESP learners
when the terminologies are normally considered as peculiar and thus hard-toremember. As a result, ESP vocabulary always presents a major linguistic barrier to
non-native English-speaking students.
Brown (1974) indicated that the students who are about to enter the university often
acquire limited vocabulary, compared to a five-year-old native speaker. Thus,
around 5000 most-frequently-used words must be fluently practiced by English
learners so that they can achieve successful listening comprehension at a certain
level (Nation, 2006).
Additionally, in listening, familiar words will make it much easier for listeners to

understand a lecture or discourse, even if its topic is unknown to them. In ESP
listening text, there seems to be certainly an occurrence of infrequent words or
terminologies which the learners are less likely to be familiar with. This contributes
to its complexity and may impede their listening comprehension and thus they may
need to infer the meaning of any low-frequency words in the text (Bloomfield,
Rhoades, Wayland, & Linck, 2010). As a consequence, restricted vocabulary
reservoir is actually a problematic factor affecting ESP students‘ listening
comprehension.

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c. Speed of delivery
Most foreign language learners claimed that native speakers speak at a fast pace that
causes their difficulties in listening comprehension. Accordingly, Hayati (2010)
states that it is often less demanding for listeners to comprehend the speech of low
rate, compared to natural speech rate. This lies behind the fact that a slower rate of
delivery provides the listeners with enough time to think and process the stream of
information. In other words, the more increased speech rate, the weaker
performances in second language‘s listening comprehension are (Rubin, 1994).
Sharing the same thought, Underwood (1989) concluded that speed of delivery is
considered one of the greatest obstacles in listening comprehension. If speakers
deliver their speech at an exceptionally fast rate, listeners may be unable to keep up
with the content of the whole lecture or discourse.
d. Background knowledge
It cannot be denied that listener‘s background knowledge of topic can be attributed
to the positive influence on their ability to understand the message conveyed. There
are always gaps between the mother tongue (Vietnamese) and the target language
(English) in terms of cultures, behaviors, beliefs, customs, etc.; hence, in order to
bridge these gaps, enhancing background knowledge about the target language‘s

items is highly suggested. According to Anderson & Lynch (1988), background
knowledge is essential for listeners to absolutely apprehend the message.
Specifically, if English learners lack shared schematic or contextual information, it
will make listening comprehension more challenging or even impossible.
e. Memory
Memory or working memory mentioned here involves a set of cognitive processes
that all listeners use with varying degrees of efficiency as they process, temporarily
store, and retrieve information in memory (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974). The
relationship between working memory and listening comprehension of second
language learners is clearly demonstrated in various literature. An experiment
conducted by Miyake and Friedman (1998) emphasized that listeners with higher

12


memory capacity would achieve higher performance when comprehending the
message in the second language.
Moreover, as showed in some recent studies, there exist correlations between
working memory and listening comprehension performance, but the effect differed
depending on the task and the familiarity of the topic. Leeser (2007) highlighted
that in listening comprehension process, the better working memory span especially
in the case of short – term memory is associated with the greater performance for
familiar topics. For that reason, the improvement of memory span has a positive
impact on listening comprehension of a foreign language.
While the problems facing English learners in listening process in GE has been
invesigated with numerous studies listed above, there is a lack of empirical studies
that examine those in ESP. To address this gap in identifying the factors affecting
listening comprehension of ESP learners, this investigation was conducted using 25
students majored in Chemistry in a university located in Hanoi.
2.2 Listening dictation

2.2.1 Dictation technique
Originating from the increasing attention to listening competence, progressive
techniques to enhance listening comprehension have emerged. Davis and
Rinvolucri, (2002) illustrated a wide range of activities in relation to dictation
techniques designed to develop listening comprehension in their book ―Dictation:
New methods, new possibilities‖.
Oxford Learner‘s Pocket Dictionary (2003) gives the definition of dictation as an
act of saying words aloud for someone to write it down. From the perspectives
involving English teaching and learning, Richards and Schmidt (2002) defined it as
a technique used in both language teaching and language testing whose process
includes a passage being read aloud to students or test-takers, with pauses and
students being required to write down what they can hear as accurately as possible.
In other words, dictation technique involves the spoken input and written output
(Nation & Newton, 2009). In its most fundamental form, dictation can be

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characterized as a technique in which the learners are given the spoken input, keep
it in their short-term memory, and then dictate what they hear (Nation, 1991). Oller
(1971) supports it by clarifying the dictation process through a recurrent cycle of
four dependent activities including (1) reading a passage aloud, (2) chunking the
passage into smaller phrases suitable for committal to short-term memory and rereading the phrase with gaps long enough for subjects to record the preceding
phrase in writing, (3) optionally re-reading each phrase as it is being written, and (4)
repeating the whole passage as in the first step.
From these definitions, it can be concluded that dictation is a teaching technique
that requires students to hear attentively and write down what have been said to
them, so that the students are able to comprehend the content of it. Nation (1991)
asserts that kind of techniques is affected by three major factors including listeners‘
listening skill, their command of language as well as their short-term memory.

In association with more traditional language teaching methodologies, dictation has
widely been employed as a suitable activity easily implemented in class. Besides,
the use of dictation technique as a measure of testing has always been suggested
because it requires minimal preparation by teachers, and is suitable for student
groups of any size and at any proficiency level (Davis & Rinvolucri, 2002). As
regards to taking advantages of dictation on listening comprehension, the statistics
analyzed by these two reseachers also showed that more than half of European
teachers admits using dictation routinely or time after time in their teaching.
2.2.2 Types of Dictation
According to Rost (2002), there are several types of dictation procedures that have
been used in a variety of ways as testing techniques. Those five ways are best
known types of dictation.
a. Standard dictation
Standard dictation is probably the best known one. In this technique, students write
verbal sequences of authentic listening materials played back from a recording. The

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material should be presented at a normal rate of speed (in conversation) and is given
in sequences that are long enough to examine students‘ short-term memory.
b. Partial dictation
Known as spot dictation, this type is closely related to the standard dictation; however,
the students are given the written version of the text (transcript). They are required to
listen to the spoken material and complete the transcript with missing words.
c. Dictation with competing noise
It seems to be demanding for students because the aural material is presented
imitating natural conditions with added noise. The kind of dictation helps the
students to get familiar to daily communication context where language is used in
less-than-ideal acoustic conditions.

d. Dicto-Comp
This type of dictation is actually a combination of two forms, namely dictation and
composition. Here, the teacher read the whole passage three times and the students are
only given a chance to write their work after the teacher has finished the third reading.
e. Elicited imitation
This is similar to dictation in the way the listening material is presented to the
learners, but dissimilar in terms of the response mode. In this case, listeners are
required to listen to material, then repeat them or recount what is said instead of
writing them down.
Due to the limit of time in class and the overwhelming school work students had to
complete at home, the researcher attempted to apply standard dictation in take-home
assignments. Students were allowed to listen to the whole recording for the first
time, then they listened to that recording with clear chukings for the second time. In
the last chance they listened, the whole recording was played in order that students
could complete their dictating tasks.
2.2.3 Benefits of dictation in improving listening comprehension
a. Dictation promotes short – term memory
As mentioned in the section 2.1, short-term memory is one of the key factors

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