HUNG YEN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY AND EDUCATION FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES --------------------------------------- GRADUATION PAPER FIELD: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIS AND SOLUTIONS TO IMPROVE IELTS LISTENING SKILL FOR THE THIRD- YEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT HUNG YEN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGYAND EDUCATION (NGHIÊN CỨU NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN VÀ GIẢI PHÁP NHẰM CẢI THIỆN KỸ NĂNG NGHE IELTS CHO SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ BA CHUYÊN NGÀNH NGÔN NGỮ ANH TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC SƯ PHẠM KỸ THUẬT HƯNG YÊN) Supervisor: Hoang Thi Ngoc Lan, MA Student: Hoang Lan Student number: 11317031 Hung Yen – 2021 HUNG YEN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY AND EDUCATION FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES --------------------------------------- GRADUATION PAPER FIELD: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS A STUDY ON DIFFICULTIS AND SOLUTIONS TO IMPROVE IELTS LISTENING SKILL FOR THE THIRD- YEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT HUNG YEN UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY AND EDUCATION (NGHIÊN CỨU NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN VÀ GIẢI PHÁP NHẰM CẢI THIỆN KỸ NĂNG NGHE IELTS CHO SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ BA CHUYÊN NGÀNH NGÔN NGỮ ANH TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC SƯ PHẠM KỸ THUẬT HƯNG YÊN) Student: Hoang Lan Student number: 11317031 Supervisor: Hoang Thi Ngoc Lan, MA. Hung Yen – 2021 i DECLARATION I certify that the thesis entitled “A study on difficulties and solutions to improve IELTS listening skill for the third-year English major students at Hung Yen University of Technology and Education” is the result of my own research and the substance of this thesis has not been submitted for a degree to any other university or institution. Hung Yen, June 2020 Signature Hoang Lan ii ABSTRACT Listening is considered to a very essential skill as well as difficult skill in learning English language. In addition, IELTS listening skill is one of the difficult parts in listening.
Most of students claimed that IELTS listening is difficult and they always get low marks. Realizing the problems from learning experiences and finding the techniques to deal with these problems, the author would like to do a research titled “A study on difficulties and solution to improve IELTS listening skill for the third-year English major students at Hung Yen University of technology and Education”. The thesis will study the problems in IELTS listening and find out the solutions for students in learning IELTS listening skill. So the data collection instrument included survey questionnaires that were distributed to 45 third-year English major students in the Faculty of Foreign Languages at UTEHY, but only 40 of them took part in this survey.
And the interviews were conducted by 5 students only. The result of the research will point out the difficulties those listeners meet when they learn IELTS listening and more importantly, it helps the author work out the right solutions to the problems. iii ACKNOWLEDMENTS During the process of doing this graduation paper, I have received many necessary assistances, precious ideas and timely encouragements from my teachers, family and friends. First of all, I wish to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Mrs.
Hoang Thi Ngoc Lan, MA who has always been willing to give me the most valuable advices, experienced guidance and suggestions in order that I can complete this study successfully. In addition, my sincere thanks are also sent to the teachers in the Faculty of Foreign Languages of Hung Yen University of Technology and Education, who helped me collect data to complete the study and gave me a great deal of helpful and valuable support. In my study, it is inevitable that the ideas of many writers in the field are reflected and developed. To all the authors of the publications in the list of references, I offer my sincere thanks.
Last but not least, I also would like to express my special thanks to the third- year students in the Faculty of Foreign. iv TABLE CONTENTS DECLARATION. iii TABLE CONTENTS. iv LIST OF CHARTS AND TABLES.
vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. viii CHAPTER 1: INTROCUTION. Rationale of the study. Aims of the study.
Scope of the study. Methods of the study. Organization of the study. 4 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW .1 An overview of listening skill .1 Definitions of listening .2 Stages of listening.3 The importance of listening .2 An overview of IELTS listening .1 About IELTS listening module.
Type of questions. Difficulties and techniques for each type of questions in IELTS listening skill 11 v 2.3 Plan/map/diagram labeling .4 Form/note/table/flow-chart/summary completion .5 Short-answer questions .3 Difficulties in IELTS listening .4 Techniques to improve IELTS listening skill. 19 CHAPTER 3: THE STUDY .1 Analysis of the questionnaire .1 The current situation in learning IELTS listening of third-year English major students at UTEHY.2 Students’ difficulties in learning IELTS listening for the third- year English majors at UTEHY.3 Techniques used in IELTS listening for the third- year English majors at UTEHY.2 An analysis of interview questions .1 The current situation of the third- year English major students towards learning IELTS listening at UTEHY.2 The difficulties that the third- year English major students at UTEHY face when learning IELTS listening.3 Techniques should be used to improve IELTS listening skill listening for the third year English major students at UTEHY.5 Recommendations for improving IELTS listening skill .1 Summary of the study .2 Limitations of the study. I APPENNDIX 1: SURVEY QUESTIONNAIRE FOR STUDENTS.
I APPENDIX 2: INTERVIEW QUESTIONS FOR STUDENTS. VI vii LIST OF CHARTS AND TABLES 1. Chart 1: The importance of IELTS listening skill 2. Chart 2: Students’ assessment on difficulty of IELTS listening 3.
Chart 3: Students' self- assessment of their IELTS listening skill 4. Chart 4: Frequency of students’ difficulty in learning IELTS listening skill 5. Chart 5: Percentage of students practice IELTS listening skill at home 6. Chart 6: Time students spend on learning IELTS listening skill at home every day 7.
Table 1: The difficulties third-year English major students in IELTS listening 8. Table 2: Student’s difficulties in certain IELTS listening tasks. Table 3: Student’s opinions on skills and knowledge perform in an IELTS listening 10. Table 4: Students’ opinions about the usefulness of techniques to improve IELTS listening skill viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS 1.
FFL: Faculty of Foreign Languages 2. UTEHY: Hung Yen University of Technology and Education 3.A: Master of art in teaching English as a foreign language 4. K16: the third- year English major students at Faculty of Foreign Languages in Hung Yen University of Technology and Education 1 CHAPTER 1: INTROCUTION 1. Rationale of the study It cannot be denied that in the whole world English has become more and more important as the international means of communication in many fields of our life such as aviation, business, service, culture, education, economy, and so on.
Thus, learning English has become a compulsory requirement of studying and working. Vietnam is not out of this circle, learning English has been paid more and more attention to and has begun to be used widely in education and others fields. Actually, listening skill play a very important role in learning a language of four skills. It is the most important skill in communication in the real life.
In learning English as a foreign language in Vietnam, listening has always paid a great deal of attention. That was because listening is a useful means of providing learners with comprehensible input, which is an essential component of the whole language learning process. However, in comparison with speaking, reading and writing skills in English, listening is believed to be the most challenging due to the complex and subtle nature of listening comprehension. And because the listening skill is very difficult, the listeners may have little experience of listening since leaving secondary school, high school or even college and when they are contacted with IELTS listening skill, they may be very anxious and worry about listening parts in IELTS examination.
Moreover, the English proficiency of Vietnamese students even at the university level is often less than satisfactory. The reason is that English is taught as a separate subject rather than being used as the medium of communication. Most students rarely have opportunities to use English outside the class and they have little chance to practice listening skills in general and IELTS listening skill in particular. Moreover, the formative test in most listening programs stress understanding questions, which require background knowledge, various new words, familiarity with the text topic and predicting ability.
Students have very few actual opportunities to complete fully the whole IELTS listening test because of the long spoken text, long message and time pressure. 2 At Hung Yen University of Technology and Education (UTEHY), for the third-year English major students, they cannot avoid common problems related to IELTS listening about the test form or some programs require listening skill. Therefore, it is essential for students to be fluent in English. However, learning IELTS listening skill at UTEHY still have many difficulties due to lack of effective methods that stimulate the student’s interests.
Therefore, it is very necessary to find out the effective methods in learning IELTS listening skill for all English major students as well. From the above reasons, a study entitled: “A study on difficulties and solutions to improve IELTS listening skill for the third- year English major students at Hung Yen University of Technology and Education” to find out appropriate methods, techniques to improve IELTS listening skill. Aims of the study. The vital purpose of the study: Investigate difficulties and solutions to improve IELTS listening skill for the third- year English major students at Hung Yen University of Technology and Education.
The objectives of this study are: - Investigate the current situation of learning IELTS listening skill. - Find out the difficulties of the third- year English major students in learning IELTS listening skill. - Give some suggestions to improve IELTS listening for the third- year English majors. In order to achieve the aims of the study, the following research questions were given: 1.
What is the current situation of learning IELTS listening at Hung Yen University of Technology and Education? 2. What are the difficulties of the third-year English major students in learning IELTS listening? 3. What techniques should be used to improve IELTS listening skill for the third-year English major students at UTEHY? 3 1. Scope of the study.
The study is about learning IELTS listening skill for the third-year English major students at UTEHY. Because of the limitations of time and knowledge, the shortage of reference materials, this study cannot cover the whole issue of IELTS listening skill. It only focuses on exploring common difficulties of students and find out some solutions to help student improve their IELTS listening. Moreover, the study could not touch upon all the students at UTEHY.
It is confined to the third year English major students at Faculty of Foreign Language, UTEHY only. Methods of the study In order to collect the data for researching, the author use both quantitative and qualitative methods including survey questionnaires, and interview questions for students (consist of 10 questions for survey questionnaire and 5 questions for interview). The questionnaires and interview questions were designed basing on the main aims of the study. After getting the results, the authors will use the tables and charts for presenting the collect data.1 Survey questionnaire Questionnaire (including 10 question) for 45 students but only 40 students of K16 at UTEHY participated in the survey to find out some new techniques for research: Part 1: The current situation of learning IELTS listening skill.
(3 questions) Part 2: The difficulties of learning IELTS listening skill for the third- year English majors at UTEHY. (3 questions) Part 3: Techniques for improving IELTS listening for the third- year English majors at UTEHY.2 Interview An interview is done with 5 students of K16 in Faculty of Foreign Languages at Hung Yen University of Technology and Education. There are 5 opened questions were designed according to the aims of the study. How would you rate your IELTS listening skill? 2.
What type of IELTS listening questions are the most difficult?