A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES IN ENGLISH LISTENING SKILL OF THE SECONDYEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY AND SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS

THUONGMAI UNIVERSITY
FACULTY OF ENGLISH
------

GRADUATION PAPER
Topic:
A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIES IN ENGLISH LISTENING SKILL OF THE
SECOND-YEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT THUONGMAI
UNIVERSITY AND SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS

Student
Student code
Administrative Class
Supervisor

: Nguyen Thi Kieu My
: 17D170264
: K53N5
: MA. Pham Thi To Loan

HANOI – 2021


ABSTRACT

Currently, with the development of international trade, the integration of
foreign companies or multinational corporations are increasing. Demand of foreign
language, especially English, has also become more urgent than ever. English is
considered as a compulsory and basic skill for students to approach businesses,
grasp job opportunities in reality. We can’t deny the role of English for students in
particular and employees in general. However, learning English now not only

requires to communicate or talk normally basic with foreigners, but also able to
read, listen and understand well when approaching a professional working
environment.
Listening skill is one of the most necessary skills to communicate in real life
and it is also important in learning foreign language. Everybody knows that in order
to listen a message is not as simple as hearing it, so the listener has to understand
the message and respond in the right manner.
Especially, with the students of English faculty, Thuongmai University,
English listening skill is a compulsory main subject and plays a very important role
in learning programs as well as equipping skills for students. In study program, the
business students will have to practice some other subjects such as Interpretation
Practice and Advanced Interpretation, which require students to have good listening
skill. However, in the learning process, students usually get unsatisfactory results
due to lacking knowledge and skill, especially for those who are just exposed to this
subject.
Most of these students met several difficulties when they studied English
listening skill. The problems that students encounter can come from many different
reasons such as poor vocabulary, knowledge, understanding et cetera. To identify
certain difficulties when listening English, the researcher has conducted a study on
difficulties in English listening skill by the second-year students of English faculty,
Thuongmai University. The aim of the study is to find out difficulties of students
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English listening skill and suggest several solutions to improve students’ listening
skills.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In the time of making my graduation paper, I have received a lot of support,
assistance and encouragement from my family, teachers, friends who bring me a lot
of motivation to complete my thesis successfully. Thus, I would like to show
acknowledgement to them.
First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor - MA. Pham
Thi To Loan for her guidance, comments and encouragement during my study. With
her dedicated guidance as well as her experience and knowledge, she has directly
oriented, supported and helped me finish my study.
Secondly, I would like to show my special thanks to my teachers of English
faculty at Thuongmai University for their teaching. In my four-years of study at
Thuongmai University, the college board, principal and teachers have given the best
condition and facilities to us to finish our college curriculum.
Besides, I also want to thank all the students for spending their time to answer
my survey questions. With their enthusiastic assistance, I have collected valuable
data to complete my survey. Additionally, I also give my appreciation to all the
authors of the books, reliable data sources and other materials listed in the reference
part which have given me helpful consultancy to develop my graduation paper.
Due to limited implementation time and knowledge, I look forward to
receiving comments and suggestions in order to perfect the graduation paper.
Sincere thanks!

Hanoi, April 15th 2020
Student

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Nguyen Thi Kieu My

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT......................................................................................................i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS............................................................................ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS...............................................................................iii
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS.........................................................................v
LIST OF TABLE AND FIGURES................................................................vi
CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY.............................................1
1.1. Rationale...................................................................................................1
1.2. Previous studies........................................................................................2
1.3. Aim of the study........................................................................................4
1.4. Research subjects.....................................................................................5
1.5. Scope of the study.....................................................................................5
1.6. Research methodology.............................................................................5
1.7. Organization of the study........................................................................5
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW......................................................7
2.1. Listening theory........................................................................................7
2.1.1. Definition of listening............................................................................7

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2.1.2. The importance of listening skills in learning......................................9
2.2. Listening Strategies................................................................................10
2.3. Difficulties in learning English listening skill......................................13
2.3.1. Difficulties from the speakers..............................................................13

2.3.2 Difficulties from learners......................................................................15
2.3.3. Difficulties from the materials.............................................................16
2.3.4 Difficulties from physical setting..........................................................16
CHAPTER 3: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION...........................................18
3.1. Results collected from the questionnaire..............................................18
3.1.1. The students’ attitude toward English listening skill..........................18
3.1.2. Difficulties in English listening skill...................................................24
3.2 Discussion.................................................................................................35
CHAPTER 4: RECOMMENDATION AND SUGGESTIONS.................38
4.1 Suggestion for teachers...........................................................................38
4.2 Suggestions for students..........................................................................39
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................42
REFERENCES.................................................................................................I

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
No.

Abbreviations

English

1

ESL

English as Second Language

2

VCD

Video Compact Disc

3

BBC

British Broadcasting Corporation

4

CCN

Cable News Network

5

ABC

American Broadcasting Company

6

VOA

Voice of America

7

TV

Television

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LIST OF TABLE AND FIGURES

Table 3.1: The reason why students study English listening skill............................18
Chart 3.1: Listening level of students......................................................................19
Chart 3.2. The frequency of students self-studying listening...................................20
Chart 3.3: Time of practicing listening....................................................................21
Table 3.2. Student’s method self-study at home......................................................22
Table 3.3. What students do before listening...........................................................22
Chart 3.4. What students do for the first listening...................................................23
Chart 3.5. Student’s attitude when they cannot understand words or phrases..........24
Chart 3.6. Main difficulties for the learners.............................................................25
Chart 3.7. Listening problems from the speakers....................................................26
Chart 3.8. Listening problems from the listeners.....................................................28
Chart 3.9. Listening problems from the materials....................................................30
Chart 3.10. Listening problems from the physical setting.......................................32
Chart 3.11. Possible solutions for listening problems..............................................33

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CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY

1.1. Rationale
Nowadays, listening plays a vital role in daily life. People listen for different
purposes such as entertainment, academic purposes, or obtaining the necessary
information. Of the four language skills - Listening, Speaking, Reading, and
Writing - that all language learners are supposed to acquire, listening is believed to
be the most challenging due to the complex and subtle nature of listening
comprehension in a second or foreign language. The teaching of listening has
attracted a greater level of interest in recent years than it did in the past. Now,
university entrance exams, exit exams, and other examinations often include a
listening component, acknowledging that listening skill is a core component of
second-language proficiency, and also reflecting the assumption that if listening
isn’t tested, teachers won’t teach it.
Listening is one of the receptive skills and as such, it involves students in
capturing and understanding the input of English. Reading, the other receptive skill
involves students in understanding and interpreting the written word. Listening is
probably more difficult than reading because students often recognize the written
word more easily than they recognize the spoken word. Furthermore, when reading,
students can go back and reread a phrase whereas with listening they only get one
chance. With reading, it’s the reader who sets the pace whereas with listening it’s
the speaker or recording that sets the pace.
Furthermore, English has been widely used as a major language in daily life
and many education levels all over the world, both native and non-native English
speaking countries. Listening comprehension is becoming more and more important
in acquiring a new language as well as knowledge displayed in lectures and media.
Especially, it is a vital skill for most English as second language learners (ESL).
Despite its importance in learning English listening, the state of teaching and
learning listening skills has long been ignored and gives little consideration. It can

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be seen that the Vietnamese education system focuses more on coaching exams with
much attention to grammar, reading and vocabulary. Therefore, listening is included
in course books in many educational levels; however, it somehow is neglected by
the teachers during the lessons. As a result, many Vietnamese students, even those
who get high marks in grammatical tests, cannot communicate successfully with the
foreigners in daily conversations. According to Nguyen (2007), the inability to
comprehend what the native speakers say because of the failure at listening
comprehension is the most severe reason. Also, in Vietnam, countryside students
have no exposure to the English language apart from what they receive in the
classroom. Students’ fundamental means of listening to English come from the
teacher’s voice. Furthermore, the low quality of cassettes has a detectable effect on
the process of practicing and testing listening, and especially in the countryside,
where the cassette players are either poor quality or run off batteries. The students
have difficulties in listening because of the low-standard sound. For those reasons,
most of the students in rural and mountainous areas suffer a terrible shock when
learning to listen in the university. Despite the diversity of literature in this field,
little attention to the feasible solutions and practical purposes is paid.
Because of these issues, many students find listening difficult. Listening tasks
can be very disheartening and demotivating, especially if students have had a
previous negative experience. It is therefore important to give our students plenty of
opportunities to practice the skill of listening in a supportive environment that helps
them to learn. We need to design tasks that help them learn rather than merely
testing their abilities. This means that we guide them through the recording, preteach language and highlight the essential points of the recording. This is in contrast
to testing, where the teacher simply plays the recording and the students listen and
answer questions.
With the purpose of helping students to enhance their listening skills, this
study is conducted to raise the perception of the importance of listening in learning
English as well as their listening difficulties. Additionally, this thesis provides the
valuable insights and pedagogical implications for both teachers and students.

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1.2. Previous studies
Due to the importance of English in the context of globalization and
international integration, companies and employers always prioritize candidates
who can use a fluent foreign language in work. Hence, there are more and more
students who invest their time and finance to learn English. Learning another
language is not easy so many students sometimes meet difficulties and make errors
in the listening process. To find out and overcome the difficulties, there are many
studies carried out. These studies are also made by experienced students with
clearly proving databases through real surveys. Relating my graduation paper’s
topic, there are several previous studies that I have consulted for my thesis.
The first study was made by Mr. Abbas Pourhossein Gilakjani and Mr.
Mohammad Reza Ahmadi who were students of Islamic Azad University, Lahijan,
Iran. Their title was “A study on factors affecting EFL learners’ English listening
comprehension and the strategies for improvement”. In this study, the two students
studied some potential listening comprehension problems of learners, including lack
of controlling the speed of the delivery, limited vocabulary, lack of contextual
knowledge, failure to recognize the signals from the speakers, etc. Their study also
showed some teaching listening activities. Listening activities are usually
subcategorized as pre-listening, while-listening, and post-listening activities.
Besides, they suggested some of the teaching methods for improving students’
listening comprehension skill such as cultivating students’ listening skills, textbookbased learning and other listening contexts, passing on cultural knowledge in
language teaching, combining “intensive listening” with “extensive listening”,
focusing on listening and combining listening with other skills.
The second study was “Learners’ difficulties and strategies in listening
comprehension”. The study was implemented by Dwi Raza Saraswaty, who was a
student at Universitas Muhammadiyah Palembang, a university in Indonesia. In this

study, he found out the difficulties in English listening, including quality of
materials, cultural differences, accent, length and speed of listening and unfamiliar

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vocabulary. He indicated that unfamiliar words, difficult grammatical structures,
and the length of the spoken passages are the most important factors that cause
problems for learners’ listening comprehension. He continued that clarity, lack of
interest, and the demand for complete answers to listening comprehension questions
are the serious difficulties of students’ listening comprehension. Finally, he also
gives some suggestions that teachers can help students overcome their listening
comprehension problems. The study was hoped to help learners improve their
English listening skills and were a reference for readers to consult difficulties in
listening English.
Another one was “A study on difficulties and solutions in English listening
skill of the second-year students in Faculty of Foreign Language at University of
Technology and Education” made by Phung Thi Tho, a student at the Faculty of
Foreign Languages, Hung Yen University of Technology and Education. In the
study, she mentioned some major problems in listening as follows: lack of control
over the speed at which speakers speak, not being able to get things repeated, the
listener’s limited vocabulary, problems of interpretation, inability to concentrate. In
particular, colloquial language is another problem that can interfere with listeners in
real-life listening because they are familiar with standard written language. In
monologues and dialogues, the appearance of idioms, slang, reduced forms, and
shared cultural language are common. The study not only finds difficulties in
English listening but also figures out factors influencing the students’ listening and
suggests solutions to improve English listening skill.
In summary, through these studies above, we realize some common problems
in English listening such as lack of vocabulary, lack of social and background

knowledge, bad/ incorrect pronunciation, quality of materials, cultural differences,
accent, length and speed of listening and, so on. Hopefully, after this study, students
can find out the suitable ways to improve English listening skill.
1.3. Aim of the study
Firstly, the main aim of the thesis is to figure out the special difficulties in

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English listening skill and then to have a good manner of studying. The study also
classifies the difficulties and explains the causes which lead to the difficulties in
listening processes. Secondly, the study offers some solutions for students and
teachers to overcome the difficulties above and to improve learning and teaching
translation and help them gain the best learning methods. It is hoped to meet the
students’ expectations in looking for a method to learn listening effectively.

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1.4. Research subjects
The research subjects of the study are difficulties in English listening skill and
some suggested solutions. The study also offers solutions for students and teachers
to obtain the best learning and studying English listening skill.
A survey questionnaire is implemented with questions related to the title of
this study. The participants are given a questionnaire and complete one directly or
via the Internet. Then I will select their answers for analyzing data in my study.
1.5. Scope of the study
The second-year students of the English faculty at Thuongmai University are
required to study a listening subject. The study is conducted in the second term of
the 2020-2021 curriculum because all of the students have to study English listening

skill and listening skill in Business English 1.2.
Apart from clarification of the problems, the researcher desires to suggest
some possible solutions for the students to achieve a better result in learning
listening. Therefore, proper teaching methods can be adopted to help them
overcome difficulties.
1.6. Research methodology
To study the students’ difficulties in English listening skill and get accurate
findings, the researcher uses two methods, including quantitative method and
qualitative method. The interviewers have received a questionnaire involving a list
of questions, after answering the questionnaire, the researcher will gather them and
analyze the original databases. The survey was administered to 95 students from
both classes K55N4 and K55N5. The quantitative method will help the researcher
calculate, analyze and evaluate easily the information and data source. Then, it will
give reliable figures which are displayed in charts or diagrams. In the qualitative
method, the researcher uses mini test papers which help exploit more information
and databases. The qualitative method is used to analyze, synthesize and explain the
difficulties of the students. All of the databases are collected from reliable sources

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via books, newspapers, the Internet and websites.
1.7. Organization of the study
This study focuses on four primary following chapters, including:
The first chapter is an overview of the study. In this chapter, a brief description
of the study provides general information about the research. The chapter consists
of seven parts that are rationale, previous studies, aims of the study, research
subjects, scope of the study, research methodology and organization of the study.
The chapter helps readers understand generally about the study.
The second chapter is the literature review. In this chapter, it provides concepts

related to the term of listening, theories concerning English listening skill. Given
that it is considered a premise for the assumptions and discussions in the third
chapter. The theories in the study are from official and reliable sources, all of the
referencing sources are quoted.
The third chapter is the results and discussion. It is divided into two main
parts. The first part shows results from the survey which was collected from the
questionnaire and paper test. It also finds issues in the English listening skill
including lack of vocabulary, lack of social and background knowledge, bad/
incorrect pronunciation, quality of materials, cultural differences, accent, length,
and speed of listening. The second part is the discussion which shows common
difficulties in English listening skill. It discusses the difficulties and gives out
demonstrations for those discussed issues.
The last chapter is recommendations and suggestions. After finding out the
difficulties in English listening skill and showing demonstrations through the results
of the survey questionnaire, the research offers several solutions for both students
and teachers to get the most effective learning and teaching methods in the listening
subject. It summarizes the whole study and presents some limitations of the study
before ending with some recommendations for further study.

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CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1. Listening theory
2.1.1. Definition of listening
In language teaching, “listening skills” means listening and understanding
skills or listening comprehension skills. This is also the sense of listening used in
this thesis, where listening is meant to try to understand the oral messages people
are conveying.
There are a large number of definitions of listening proposed by different

scholars.
According to Wikipedia, listening is a term in which the listener listens to the
one who produced the sound to be listened. Listening differs from obeying. A
person who receives and understands the information or instruction, and then
chooses not to comply with it or not to agree to it, has listened to the speaker, even
though the result is not what the speaker wanted. There is a distinction between
listening and hearing. "Hearing is a physiological phenomenon; listening is a
psychological act." We are always hearing, most of the time subconsciously.
However, listening is done by choice. “It is the interpretative action taken by

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someone in order to understand and potentially make meaning of something they
hear”. Listening may be considered as a simple and isolated process, but it would be
far more precise to perceive it as a complex and systematic process. It involves the
perception of sounds made by the speaker, of intonation patterns that shows the
focus of the information, and of the relevance of the present topic discussed.
In the definition of Underwood (1989), listening is the activity of paying
attention to and trying to get meaning from something we hear. Meanwhile,
Mendelsohn (1994) defines listening as the ability to understand the spoken
language of native speakers. Superficially, listening appears to be a passive skill, but
in fact, it is always an active process. Listening is not just the process of receiving
the information from the speakers, the students do not only listen to it but they are
also able to process it, interpret it, understand it, evaluate it and eventually respond
to it effectively (Underwood, 1989). It means that after perceiving the oral
information, the students must be able to process it in their brains. They can analyze
the illocutionary force of the utterances and after that make the response.
Steinberg (2007) in Bingol mentioned the listening process as “the ability of
one individual perceiving another via sense, aural organs, assigning a meaning to

the message and comprehending it. Listening includes some features. The most
important features can be defined as coping with the sounds, understanding
intonation and stress, coping with redundancy and noise, predicting, understanding
colloquial vocabulary, fatigue, understanding different accents, using visual and
environmental clues. Planning, exercises, listening materials, tasks and visual
materials should be taken into consideration. The teacher should produce a suitable
discourse while using recordings. A preset purpose, ongoing learner response,
motivation, success, simplicity, and feedback should be the things considered while
preparing the listening comprehension. That is the way listening is a complex
process. According to Buck (2001), listening comprehension is a process, a very
complex process, and if they want to measure it, we must first understand how that
process works. Thus, listening comprehension is a complex process to identify and
to understand dialog and monolog what the speaker said which used an audio
cassette or watched VCD in English.

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Rost (2002) says that listening comprehension is regarded as a complex,
interactive process in which listeners are involved in a dynamic construction of
meaning. Listeners understand the oral input from sound discrimination, prior
knowledge of vocabulary, grammatical structures, stress and intonation, as well as
other use linguistic, paralinguistic, or even non-linguistic clues in the contextual
utterance. Sharing the same ideas with Rost (2002), Hamouda (2013) defined
listening comprehension as an interactive process in which listeners are involved in
constructing meaning.

Listeners comprehend the oral input through sound

discrimination, previous knowledge, grammatical structures, stress and intonation,

and other linguistic or non-linguistic clues.
In summary, from all above definitions, we perceive that listening is not just
hearing, but it is an “active and dynamic process” which contains various kinds of
activities such as recognizing the messages from the speakers, remembering and
making inferences based on them.

2.1.2. The importance of listening skills in learning
Listening is one of the necessary life skills which are defined as “skills which
can provide you with a better perspective on life, skills which can allow you to
maintain a higher awareness of both yourself and the world around you”. It is one of
the most vital ways that human beings feel life and live. Everyone, in the real-life,
often listens more than speaks, reads, or writes. We listen everywhere and every
time. We listen to everything and everybody. For instance, at home, we listen to the
news, watch films or talk with others. At school, students listen to the lecturers
teaching. At a meeting, the staff listens to the new plan from the director, etc.
Without listening, the man becomes backward in each minute of their lives. It is
obvious that listening is really important in real life. As it is mentioned in the
differences between hearing and listening, hearing is a part of the five senses
(hearing, smelling, tasting, touching and looking) but listening is a choice to hear
and understand it.

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Listening is the most frequently used skill in daily life communication.
Listening takes up forty-five to fifty percent of the total time in communication.
Therefore, it is undeniable that listening is essential both to communicate and to
learn a foreign language. Obviously, listening skill is extremely important in
acquiring a language because it provides language input. According to Krashen et al
(1984, as cited in Hamouda, A., 2012), only when students absorb enough

comprehensible input, does the acquisition happen. In addition, Krashen believes
that without understanding the linguistic input, the students cannot acquire any level
of language. Thus, listening is a fundamental language skill, and as such, it merits
the top priority among the four skill areas for language students. Listening,
therefore, is regarded crucial to not only a receptive skill but also the development
of spoken language proficiency.
As an integrative skill, listening plays an important role in the process of
language learning, acquisition and facilitating the emergence of other language
skill. Listening is important in social communication, academic success and
language acquisition. Needless to say, listening effectively is a sufficient condition
for the students to take part in oral communication. The communicating process will
break down when the listeners fail to understand what the speakers say.
Furthermore, being able to listen to English well, the students have a good chance to
approach the broad knowledge in the outside world. Noticeably, listening is the
basic step to get input in learning a language. In any language classroom, listening
skill plays a significant role in the development of other language skills. Vandergriff
(1997) claims that listening internalizes not only the rules of language skills but also
facilitates the emergence of other skills. To be more specific, listening helps the
students to pronounce exactly and recognize the spoken form of words. When
learning a new word, students have to listen to it several times before identifying it.
It is said that listening provides a comprehensive supplier for understanding and
acquiring a new language. Precisely, without receiving the necessary language input
at the right level, the learning process cannot take place. Several studies prove that
the aural input plays such a vital role in funding all aspects of language and

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cognitive development. Understanding linguistic information is the key to acquiring
language. What is more, the more the students listen, the more vocabulary,

proficiency and the better language usage they have.
According to Nord (1980, p.17), listening is the way of learning the language.
“It gives the learner information from which to build up the knowledge necessary
for using the language. When this knowledge is built up, the learner can begin to
speak. The listening-only period is a time of observation and learning, which
provides the basis for the other language skills”. Most learners will spend more time
listening to the foreign language than producing it themselves. Failing to understand
spoken language, people may miss important information presented to them or
respond in a funny way. So training in listening is really necessary. It helps students
make the transition from classroom English to real-life English more easily and
effectively.
2.2. Listening Strategies
It is very important to teach listening strategies to students and before doing
this, teachers should increase learners’ knowledge of vocabulary, grammar, and
phonology. Vandergrift (1999) pointed that the development of strategy is
significant for the training of listening and learners can guide and assess their own
understanding and answers. Many researchers expressed that there are three types of
strategies in listening comprehension. They are cognitive, metacognitive, and socioaffective. These strategies can change based on the level of learners.
 Cognitive Strategies:
Cognitive strategies are related to understanding and gathering input in shortterm memory or long-term memory for later use. Comprehension begins with the
received data that is examined as consecutive levels of formation and a process of
decoding. A cognitive strategy is a problem-solving method that learners apply to
deal with the learning activity and facilitate the learning of knowledge. Derry and
Murphy (1986) stated that cognitive strategies as problem-solving techniques that
learners use for the acquisition of knowledge or skill. Cognitive strategies have

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close relation to the learning activities and include direct utilization or change of the

learning materials. Therefore, learners utilize cognitive strategies to assist the
process, keep, and remember new information.
There are two kinds of cognitive strategies in listening: bottom-up and topdown. Bottom-up strategies are word-for-word translation, arranging the rate of
speech, repeating the oral text, and concentrating on prosodic characteristics of the
text. Top-down strategies involve forecasting, guessing, explaining, and
visualization. Advanced learners use more top-down strategies than beginners. A
think-aloud procedure was used to examine the listening strategies of university
students learning Spanish. The results of the quantitative study showed that
participants utilized more cognitive than metacognitive strategies and that females
applied more metacognitive strategies than males. The findings of the qualitative
study indicated that success in listening was related to factors like the application of
many strategies, ability and flexibility in modifying strategies, stimulation, selfcontrol, and sufficient use of prior knowledge.
 Metacognitive Strategies:
Rubin (1988) claimed that metacognitive strategies are management
techniques used by learners to control their learning through planning, checking,
assessing, and changing. For instance, for metacognitive planning strategies,
listeners clear the aims of a listening task and apply specific features of the aural
language input that make easy the understanding of aural input. In this strategy,
students are aware when listening to the text. In this strategy, learners learn how to
plan, monitor, and evaluate the collected information from the listening part.
Learners who use metacognitive strategies can learn faster and integrate the
knowledge outstandingly, can be constant receivers and deal with all situations,
have the self-confidence to get help from partners, teachers, or family, and can
observe and assess themselves. The use of metacognitive strategy in the listening
process increases learners’ self-confidence, motivation, and ability to complete the
activities.

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According to Baker and Brown (1984), there are two kinds of metacognitive
skills: knowledge of cognition and regulation of cognition. Knowledge of cognition
deals with the learners’ consciousness of what is going on and regulation of
cognition deals with what learners should do to listen effectively. The difference
between skilled and less-skilled listeners can be understood through their
application of metacognitive strategies. Skilled listeners utilize more repair
strategies to redirect their attention back to the activity when there is a
comprehension failure, while less skilled listeners cease listening. Skilled listeners
applied twice as many metacognitive strategies as their less-skilled learners.
According to Henner Stanchina (1987), metacognitive strategies played an
important role in listening comprehension. She mentioned that skilled listeners can
permanently explain and what they hear through (1) utilizing their prior knowledge
and predictions to create theories on the text; (2) connecting new information with
their continuing predictions; (3) making deductions to fill comprehension breaks;
(4) assessing their predictions; (5) improving their theories. And skilled listeners
can identify a failure in understanding and activate their background knowledge to
get a better comprehension.
 Socio-affective Strategies:
Socio-affective strategies are techniques that listeners use to cooperate with
others, to check their comprehension, and to reduce their apprehension. Affective
strategies are very significant because the learning situation and learners’ socialpsychological factors are closely related to each other. There is a significant
relationship between low anxiety and high listening performance: that is, the use of
affective strategies makes it easy and improves listening. O’Malley and Chamot
(1987) represented that among the four strategies of listening comprehension, social
and effective strategies had the most effect on the learning context. Socio-affective
strategies are related to students’ interaction with other speakers and their reactions
towards learning. In socio-affective strategy, students should know how to decrease
anxiety, feel confident during listening activities, and raise motivation in improving
listening skill.

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2.3. Difficulties in learning English listening skill
It is taken for granted that people can listen in the mother tongue with little or
no effort. However, learning to listen in the second language is more difficult
because it does not only require the ability of the listeners but also is affected by the
speakers, the physical factors, the content of the listening text and the physical
setting in the classroom.
Many English students will sooner or later find themselves in real life
situations where they need to listen to English for a range of purposes. In these
cases, many problems arise.
2.3.1. Difficulties from the speakers
 The speed of the speakers
The speed of the speakers is one of the most challenges for the listeners. It
hinders the learners in their effort of learning English because the students cannot
sort them out when listening before they disappear. It is so far different from the
remaining reading text on the page. When students read a text, they can retrieve it
whenever they want. On the other hand, while they are working on the first part,
they can miss the next part. Most foreign language students perceive that native
speakers speak too fast and that makes it difficult for them to follow. Therefore,
speed of delivery is one of the biggest obstacles to understanding. The students can
play recorded materials again and again until getting the information.
 The accents
Many foreign language learners are surprised and dismayed when listening to
someone else but not their teachers because they are used to their teacher’s accents.
Moreover, understanding the spoken form of language requires the adaptation of the
idiosyncrasies of a particular speaker. Ikeno and Hansen (cited in Bloomfield et al.,
2010) stated that unfamiliar accents lead to lower accuracy. Accented speech has
been found to affect both the extent to which listeners successfully realize a

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speaker’s message and the effort involved when listeners identify particular words
in the message. In particular, in academic courses, the students are familiar with
native speakers like American or English; however, in reality, they can listen to the
speakers from non-native English speaking countries as well. Consequently, they
cannot catch the words or convey the messages of the conversations and the broken
down communication is the outcome.
 The intonation and stress
One of the outstanding features of English is stress and intonation. The
purpose of stress is to highlight content words to convey the meaning. Students
somehow cannot distinguish between the content and function words. Additionally,
they do not know the fact that words in spoken continuous speech are often not
given the same stress as they are said in isolation (Underwood, 1989). As a result,
they cannot hear the word that they already know. Also, foreign students sometimes
fail to recognize the grammar points in listening because of the stress.
 The reduced form, elision and assimilation
In articulating clauses, the speaker’s desire to express the meanings
effectively. Hence, the words that play a less crucial role in the message may be
slurred or dropped, and other words may be more prominent. According to Madsen
and Bowen (1978), spoken English is in particular characterized by three features of
sandhi-variation: contraction, reduction and assimilation.
We know that accommodating phonological processes affects precisely the
points at which the listener needs unambiguous information, namely word
beginnings and endings. To be more specific, students may have some troubles in
materials such as assimilation, elision or linking word. Liaison (the linking of words
in the speech when the second word begins with a vowel, e.g., an orange) and
elision (leaving out a sound or sounds, e.g., suppose may be pronounced in rapid

speech) are common phenomena that make it difficult for students to distinguish or
recognize individual words in the stream of speech. They are used to seeing words

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