ABSTRACT It has been acknowledged that English has been used all over the world. It means that English is a means of communication that is used internationally by people to communicate with others to transfer ideas, thoughts, feelings, attitudes, or messages. Nowadays, people need to be able to use English due to globalization. In English, There are four skills in learning language: listening, speaking, reading and writing.
Naturally, the process of learning is started from listening speaking-reading and the last is writing. Human cannot speak before listen. Wallace (2004:13) wrote that listening skill is very important skill because this skill may human acquire perception, knowledge, information and success in communicating with others. However, listening is not simple process.
One is able to listen means she/he can differentiate between sounds, comprehend and understand vocabulary and grammar, interpret intonation and meaning, consider everything in the same time, and also adjust to the social cultural context from utterances that are listened (Vandergrift, 2012).Therefore, the present study attempts to investigate the English listening problems encountered by a group of third year English major students at Thuong Mai University and suggests solutions so as to improve their English language listening skill. Survey questionnaires and interview questions are used to collect data. I administered a questionnaire to 200 third- year English major students at Thuong Mai University. This study included 4 chapters.
Firstly, chapter 1 showed the overview of the study. This chapter provided general information about rationale, previous, scope, i aims, research methodology and organization of the study. Secondly chapter 2 was literature review related to research topic. Thirdly, reseach methodology was chapter 3 which included participants and instruments.
Next, chapter 4 was most essential chapter of this study, named Research Findings. Data is analyzed quantitatively using descriptive statistics and qualitatively using content analysis. Chapter 5 is recommendations and suggestions. The results of this study may also be useful for those who are interested in this field.
ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Nguyen Khac Nghia, for his professional guidance, intelligent advice, caring, patience, and continuous support in all stages of this thesis. I have been extremely lucky to have a supervisor who cared so much about my work, and who responded to my questions and queries so promptly. Without his invaluable supervision and words of encouragement, this thesis would not have been possible.
I am also thankful to 200 participants in this study for their patience and cooperation. This study would not have been successful without their assistance. Finally, I am also grateful to my family and English major students who have enthusiastically helped and encouraged me during the time I conducted this work. Thank you so much! Hanoi, 23, March, 2019 Phuong Nguyen Thi Phuong iii iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT.
ii TABLE OF CONTENTS.iii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES.v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. vi CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY. Reason of the study. Aims of the study.
Organization of the study. 3 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW. Overview of listening. Definition of listening and listening comprehension.
The importance of listening skill. Types of listening. Stages of listening. Difficulties in learning the English listening skill.
Problems students face when listening. Characteristics of spoken language making listening so difficult. Factors affecting to the English listening.14 CHAPTER 3: RESEACH METHODOLOGY.17 CHAPTER 4: RESEARCH FINDINGS. Result and discussion.
Current situation of practising listening English to third - year English major students at TMU. The attitude of students at TMU towards the position of listening skill. Students Self-assessment in English listening skills. The emphasized skill in the previous.
Students’ emotion in learning English listening. Causes make students feel difficult in listening to English. Problems students meet in listening to English.2 Factors affecting to students in listening to English. Suggestions for student to improve English listening skill.
Solution1: Consolidating language foundation. Solution 2: Listen and repeat stories or anything you like in English and practice. Solution 3: Always creating an talk environment by English anytime anywhere. 31 vi CHAPTER 5: RECOMMENDATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS.
Summary of the study. Limitations of the study. Suggestions for future research.ix vii LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES No. List of tables and charts Page List of tables 4.
Students’ feeling about the English listening lesson 19 1 List of charts 4. Profiles of students 20 1 4. Attitude of students towards the position of listening skill 21 2 4. Students Self-assessment in English listening skills 22 3 4.
The highlighted skill in the previous 22 4 4. Problems related the listeners 23 1 4. Problems related to the listening materials 25 2 4. Listening problems related to Linguistic feature 27 3 4.
Others factors affecting to the listening process 28 4 viii 4. Solutions for overcoming to improve English listening skill for 3rd 29 1 year students ix LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS No. Abbreviations English meaning 1 TMU Thuongmai University 2 Etc et cetera 3 CDs Compact discs 4 EL English language 5 EFL English as a Foreign Language x CHAPTER 1: OVERVIEW OF THE STUDY 1. Reason of the study Nowadays, explosive science and technology and globalization, proficient English is extremely necessary.
No one denies the importance of English language in the present time as global language. It is clear that English has become more and more dominant around the world. Actually, in some countries it is used as the mother tongue and others countries learn it as second language in their school. There is no doubt that English is language of communication between the people from different cultures.
Therefore, learning English plays an important role in education and the development of the country. The four language skills are listening, speaking, reading and writing that all language learners are supposed to acquire. If learning English is like building a house, English listening is building a foundation for the house. Listening is believed to be the most challenging due to the complex and subtle nature of listening comprehension in a second or foreign language.
In fact, there are a variety of learners who cannot communicate English fluently after many years of foreign language studying. To speak English fluently, you must listen to English well. We just can exchange information each other when understanding what are partner saying. Consequently, bad listening will affect to the conversation.
All these reason, offered the researchers a chance to conduct a study on “How to improve English listening skill of K52 English faculty students at TMU”. 1 The researcher hopes that the research will provide learners a relatively view about how to improve listening skill. Research questions The goal of the study is to find out actual situation of English listening for K52 students in English faculty, detect factors affecting the listening and give some possible in order to help student improve listening skill. To reach the target, the researcher set up the following questions: 1.
What difficulties do K52 students face when listening to English? 2. What are some possible solutions to improve their English listening skill? 1. Research scope The study is about learning listening skill for K52 students of English department at TMU. The research shows the current situation of English Listening skill of K52 students and dealt with the problems that students usually met in Listening.
Besides, the study also suggested some possible solutions to improve their listening skill. Because of the limitation of time and knowledge; the shortage of reference materials, this study cannot cover the whole issues of listening skill. Moreover, the study cannot touch upon all students at English Department, it is confused to the K52 students in the faculty at TMU. Method Nowadays, both quantitative and qualitative methods are commonly used for the researchers to report the study.
Consequently, this study was implemented in both quantitative and qualitative. Documents and scientific research of scholars and domestic and foreign researchers help the researcher build theoretical framework 2 for the study. The data was collected by means of questionnaires and interviews at TMU. The main method is quantitative survey questionnaire.
In addition, so as to fulfill the set goals, some information is collected by the researcher based on her informal interviews qualitative method to assume the value and accuracy of the study. Aims of the study This study attempts to explore of how students overcome listening difficulties English. This study aims the following. Firstly, this research is to identify the students’ perception to the significance of the English listening.
Secondly, finding out kinds of listening problems encountered by English major students at TMU is one of the aims. These challenges make students feel uninterested in learning English in class as well as at home. Finally, we provide the potential suggestions, to help students overcome difficulties. Meanwhile, these solutions will help student be excited in English listening lesson.
Listening level is better and better. Organization of the study The research is divided into 5 following chapter: Chapter 1 (Overview): some main information about the research. Chapter 2 (Literature review): comprising relevant definitions, difficulties and methods to improve that skill. 3 Chapter 3(Research method): give reasons for choosing and describing research methods.
Chapter 4 (Research findings): collecting, analyzing, processing the data and presenting the results. Chapter 5(Recommendations and suggestions): summarizing the study, making suggestions, presenting the limitations and research future. “References” of the study which listed all the materials and sources of the information used in the study and the “Appendix” in which the questionnaires and interview questions designed for students were mentioned. 4 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.
Overview of listening 2. Definition of listening and listening comprehension Listening is considered as one of the most important skill and in acquiring both a native language and a second on foreign language. It is being paid more and more attention to. So far, there have been a number of definitions of listening by different linguists such as Howatt and Dalkin (1974), Wolvin and Coakley (1982), Pearson (1983), Hirsch (1986), Scarcella and Oxford (1992), Bentley and Bacon (1996), Brown (2001), Gary Buck (2001), Scott Shelton (2008) and among other.
Howatt and Dalkin (1974) defined listening as the ability to identify and understand what others are saying. This involves understanding a speaker’s accent or pronunciation, his grammar, his vocabulary, his grasping and his meaning. Wolvin and Coakley (1982) regarded listening “the process of receiving, attending to and assigning meaning to aural stimuli. Pearson (1983) stated that “listening involves the simultaneous organization and combination of skills in phonology, syntax, semantics and knowledge of the textual structure, all of which seem to be controlled by cognitive process.
Thus, it can be said that thought not fully realized the listening skill is essential in acquiring language proficiency”. Hirsch (1986) gave another definition: “listening as an aspect of skill involving neurological response and interpretations of sounds to understand and to 5 give meaning by reacting, selecting meaning, remembering, attending, analyzing and including previous experience”. Bentley and Bacon (1996) stated that listening , an important part of the second language learning process, has also been defined as an active process during which the listeners constructs meaning from oral input. According to Brown (2001), listening is “not merely the process of unidirectional receiving of audible symbols.
He supposed that one aspect s of listening comprehension transmitting nerve impulses to the brain”. Hence, listening comprises of three elements: the sender, the message, and the listener. Gary Buck (2001), for example, points out that “listening comprehension is an active process of constructing meaning and this is done by applying knowledge to the incomings sound” in which a number of different types of knowledge are involved both linguistic knowledge and non-linguistic knowledge.” Scott Shelton (2008) thinks that listening effectively is a demanding and involving process. One must be able to deal with different accents or pronunciation, unfamiliar lexical items and syntactic structures, competing background noise and also make a conscious effort to not switch off or become distracted while listening.