STATE BANK OF VIETNAM BANKING ACADEMY FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE ---------- ---------- GRADUATION THESIS TOPIC INSIGHTS INTO CHALLENGES IN LISTENING COMPREHENSION ENCOUNTERED BY ENGLISH-MAJORED SENIORS AT BANKING ACADEMY Student : NGUYEN VAN ANH Student Code : 20A7510016 Class : K20ATCA Course : 2017 - 2021 Instructor : MS. NGUYEN THI THUY Hanoi, May 2021 STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP Student : NGUYEN VAN ANH Student Code : 20A7510016 Class : K20ATCA DECLARATION I declare that the work attached is entirely my own, and that I have given due acknowledgement as required by Faculty of Foreign Languages. I understand that the work submitted may be reproduced and/ or communicated for the purposes of detecting plagiarism. Signed Nguyễn Vân Anh Date: 23rd May, 2021 PLAGIARISM By signing the declaration, you are stating that you have not plagiarized.
Use the following as a checklist. This work is entirely my own. I have not copied another student’s work. I have not copied or used in any way material from a text, journal, website or other published source without acknowledgement (including non – English sources) I have cited and referenced fully and correctly as required by ATC where applicable.
I have not reworded material from another source and presented it as my own. I have not used this work in a previous class (self – plagiarism). i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I received several helpful suggestions, valuable ideas, and timely encouragement from my teachers, family, and friends throughout writing this graduation thesis. This present study would not be possible without the assistance, motivation, and kindness of various individuals, all of whom deserve my heartfelt gratitude and appreciation.
Beforehand and foremost, I would like to take this opportunity to express the thankfulness to my supervisor, Ms. Nguyen Thi Thuy, an English teacher at the Faculty of Foreign Languages, who has always been enthusiastic about providing me with helpful guidance and suggestions in order for me to complete this report. I am also highly grateful to K20 students at the Faculty of Foreign Languages for their enthusiastic involvement in the research. I would want to show my appreciation to all of the writers of the books, magazines, and other resources mentioned in the reference section for their ideas, which have been reflected and developed in the report.
I am similarly grateful to my classmates for their advice and encouragement during my studies. Finally, I would like to show my thankfulness to my parents for their support and encouragement, both of which contributed significantly to my graduation document. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP .ii LIST OF TABLES. v LIST OF FIGURES.
Background of the study. Objectives of the study. Significance of the study. Scope and limitation of the study.
Definition of terms. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE. Overview of listening. Definition of listening.
Significance of listening. Classification of listening. Factors affecting listening comprehension and related problems. Subjective factors and related problems.
Objective factors and related problems. Strategies for improving listening comprehension. Socio-affective strategies. 27 iii CHAPTER III.
Locale of the study. Population and Sampling technique. Data gathering procedure. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION.
Difficulties in listening comprehension of ATC seniors. Causes of difficulties in listening comprehension of ATC seniors. ATC seniors' perspectives on listening strategies. 51 CHAPTER V: SUMMARY OF FINDINGS, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION.
Summary of findings. Limitations of the study and suggestions for further studies. 64 iv LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Participants in the study.
Levels of reliability. Reliability statistics of section 2 and 3 of the survey. Difficulties in listening comprehension of ATC seniors. Causes of difficulties in listening comprehension of ATC seniors.
ATC seniors' perspectives on listening strategies. 45 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Five periods in listening comprehension process. Information sources in listening comprehension.
14 vi ABSTRACT One of the essential abilities for communicating in everyday life is listening. This ability is becoming increasingly crucial in the study of a foreign language. Everyone understands that listening to a message is not as easy as hearing it; the listener must comprehend the message and react appropriately. Therefore, the thesis named "Insights into challenges in listening comprehension encountered by English- majored seniors at Banking Academy" was conducted to investigate the difficulties that last-year students in the Faculty of Foreign Language at Banking Academy face while learning to listen.
Additionally, the writer would like to explore the underlying causes of these issues and participants' perspectives on strategies in listening comprehension. In terms of analysis, a data collection instrument, a questionnaire, was distributed to 95 individuals. Then, these quantitative data were processed by the SPSS software. The findings' results showed that most ACT seniors' problems in listening are related to phonological, lexical, syntactic, semantic, and other factors.
Besides that, the strategies that they think are beneficial for their listening comprehension were determined. The writer tried her hardest to complete this study in the hopes of devising appropriate solutions and strengthening students' listening skills. Keywords: challenges, listening comprehension, English-majored seniors vii CHAPTER I. Background of the study In everyday communication, listening is the most frequently used skill (Morley, 1999; Scarcella & Oxford, 1992).
According to Mendelsohn (1994), listening accounts for 45–50% of overall communication time. As a result, listening is undeniably essential for both communicating and learning a foreign language. Listening ability is critical in language acquisition since it offers language input. According to Krashen et al.
(1982, as cited in Hamouda, A., 2012), acquisition occurs only when students consume enough comprehensible input. According to Rost (2002, as cited in Hamouda, A., 2012), listening is vital in learning a language in particular and communication in general because it provides input for learners. Furthermore, Krashen argues that students will not learn any language level unless they understand the linguistic input. Therefore, listening is a primary language ability that deserves to be prioritized over language students' other three skill areas.
As a result, listening is regarded as critical for developing receptive skills and developing spoken language proficiency. Furthermore, native and non-native English-speaking countries have commonly used English as a primary language at many educational levels worldwide. Listening comprehension is becoming increasingly critical in learning a foreign language, as shown in seminars and television. It is significant for the majority of English as a second language learner (ESL).
Despite the importance of listening skills in learning English, teaching and learning listening skills have long been neglected and given little attention. Furthermore, the Vietnamese education system emphasizes coaching tests with a heavy emphasis on grammar, reading, and vocabulary. As a result, listening is included in course books at many educational levels; however, teachers ignore it during lessons. As a result, many Vietnamese students, including those who do well on grammatical exams, cannot interact effectively with foreigners in everyday situations.
According to Nguyen (2007), the most profound reason is the inability to understand what native speakers say due to a lack of listening comprehension. 1 Furthermore, outside of what they learn in the classroom, rural students in Vietnam have little exposure to the English language. The teacher's voice is the primary means by which students learn English. Besides, the low quality of cassettes has a discernible impact on the process of practicing and testing listening, especially in rural areas where cassette players are either of poor quality or run off batteries.
Due to the low-quality sound, the students are having difficulty listening. As a result of these factors, most students from rural and mountainous areas are taken aback when learning to listen in university. Despite the diversity of literature in this area, little attention is paid to realistic solutions and practical purposes. Having studied in the Faculty of Foreign Languages at the Banking Academy of Vietnam for almost four years, the writer discovered that numerous English students still have difficulties with listening skills.
After finishing the three-stage training program for ATC students encompassing Listening I, Listening II, and Listening III, some seniors still complained about their lack of confidence with listening activities, causing them to struggle to understand the spoken messages. Furthermore, few studies in Banking Academy include a comprehensive overview of students' problems learning to listen. Therefore, a study titled "Insights into challenges in listening comprehension encountered by English-majored seniors at Banking Academy" is being conducted to increase students' perceptions of the value of listening in learning English and their listening difficulties. This work also offers essential observations and pedagogical consequences for ATC students.
Objectives of the study The thesis aims to determine the most common difficulties in learning listening encountered by ATC seniors. Secondly, the underlying causes of their listening comprehension issues will also be examined. Last but not least, the project is designed to identify students' perspectives on strategies in listening. Significance of the study Once completed, the objects that this thesis will support are manifold.
The study's conclusions and recommendations are thought to improve Vietnamese college students' listening processes in general and ATC students from a pedagogical standpoint. The findings of this analysis will provide the students themselves and other persons involved in this area with positive support. Furthermore, the study's results give suggestions for those who create listening materials. More specifically, the study results will increase teachers' awareness of their students' difficulties, directing them to reconstruct their teaching curriculum to meet their students' needs.
Scope and limitation of the study Within this report, the researcher only focuses on ATC seniors to explore the listening problems they commonly face and then make recommendations to address discovered difficulties and enhance students' listening capacity. The study's population consists of 95 last-year students in the Faculty of Foreign Language in Banking Academy. Definition of terms * ATC seniors: are final year students majoring in English for Banking and Finance at Banking Academy. * Listening: "is the process of receiving, constructing meaning and responding to spoken and/ or nonverbal messages" (Mariela, 2015) * Hearing: "is a physical and natural process, is passive, only a simple reception of sounds." (Mariela, 2015) * EFL (English as a Foreign Language): "refers to the teaching of English to students whose first language is not English" (dictionary.org) * Listening strategies: "refer to decision-making operations which a learner employs in processing a listening task." (Mariela, 2015) 3 * Bottom-up strategies: "are text-based; the listener relies on the language in the message, that is, the combination of sounds, words, and grammar that creates meaning." (Mariela, 2015) * Top-down strategies: "are listener based; the listener taps into background knowledge of the topic, the situation or context, the type of text, and the language." (Mariela, 2015) * Cognitive strategies: "are mental strategies that the students use to create a sense of learning.
Cognitive strategies “operate directly on incoming information, manipulating it in ways that enhance learning.” (Mariela, 2015) * Metacognitive strategies: "are actions we perform consciously to increase or facilitate our learning process and are good strategies when we want to improve our listening skill. The intended use of metacognitive strategies helps learners get back their focus when they lose it." (Mariela, 2015) * Social strategies: "involve the students’ social relationships with their classmates; the communication takes place in or out of the classroom. The use of these strategies helps to work with other students and at the same time to help them to learn better." (Mariela, 2015) * Affective strategies: "refer to emotional and psychological situations on students; it means to make both emotional and psychological changes that will help students learn better. In other words, when students worry too much, their affective system does not function normally and interferes with listening comprehension." (Mariela, 2015) * SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences): "is software for editing and analyzing all sorts of data.
These data may come from basically any source: scientific research, a customer database, Google Analytics, or even the server log files of a website.