VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF AGRICULTURE FACULTY OF EDUCATION AND FOREIGN LANGUAGES BA THESIS AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE DIFFICULTIES IN LISTENING COMPREHENSION OF FIRST-YEAR ENGLISH-MAJORED STUDENTS AT VNUA NGHIÊN CỨU NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN TRONG VIỆC NGHE HIỂU TIẾNG ANH CỦA SINH VIÊN NĂM THỨ NHẤT NGÀNH NGÔN NGỮ ANH - HỌC VIỆN NÔNG NGHIỆP VIỆT NAM Student: HOANG THE KY Student code: 621267 Major: ENGLISH Supervisor: NGUYỄN THỊ KIM QUẾ, M.Ed Hanoi – 2021 CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I, the undersigned, hereby certify my authority of the study project report entitled “An investigation into the difficulties in listening comprehension of first-year English majors at VNUA” submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor in English Language. Except where the reference is indicated, no other person’s work has been used without due acknowledgement in the text of the thesis. Hanoi, 2021 Hoang The Ky Approved by SUPERVISOR Date:…………………… i ACKNOWLEDGEMENT During the process of fulfilling this graduation paper, I have received enormous assistance, precious ideas, and timely encouragement from my teachers, family, and friends. I would like to acknowledge and extend my great thanks to many people, without whom this study couldn’t have been completed.
First and foremost, I would like to show my deepest appreciation to my supervisor, M.Ed Nguyen Thị Kim Que, who has supported me throughout my thesis with her knowledge and enthusiasm. I would also like to express my gratitude to M.A Le Thi Hong Lam for her enthusiastic guidance. These two lecturers’ detailed comments and useful advice have helped me shape my ideas and achieve my aims. They have also provided me with many useful materials as well as encouraged and created favorable conditions for me to fulfill this research.
Therefore, it is an undeniable fact that this paper would have not been completed without their invaluable support. Secondly, I am extremely grateful to all the lecturers of Faculty of Education and Foreign Languages in Vietnam National University of Agriculture for their awesome lectures that have helped me to stimulate my interest in the English language and enriched my academic knowledge of English during the past four years. In addition, I warmly thank all my friends for their encouragement and precious assistance throughout the process of writing the thesis. Their material and spiritual support is a great driving force for me.
Especially, I am deeply grateful to the 80 first-year English-majored students for their enthusiastic and effective cooperation in the process of completing the survey questionnaire. Last but not least, I am greatly indebted to my parents, who have always encouraged and supported me to fulfill this graduation thesis. ii ABSTRACT Many students fail to seize them because of some learning difficulties in listening classes. Teachers should be aware of students’ learning difficulties.
This study is aimed to investigate the difficulties in listening comprehension of first-year English-majored at VNUA. A survey questionnaire is used to collect information about the subjective and objective causes leading to the students’ unsatisfactory results in their listening tests. Results show listening skill is a difficult skill and there are many factors that make listening comprehension difficult. In the last section, some suggestions for improvement are put forward.
iii TABLE OF CONTENTS CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS. iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. vi LIST OF TABLES.
vii LIST OF FIGURES. vii Part 1: INTRODUCTION. RATIONALE FOR THE STUDY. AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY.
SCOPE OF THE STUDY. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY. DESIGN OF THE STUDY. 5 Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW.
REVIEW OF PREVIOUS STUDIES (AT HOME & ABROAD). Review of previous studies at home. Review of previous studies abroad. REVIEW OF THEORETICAL BACKGROUND.
Definition of Listening and Listening Comprehension. Factors affecting English listening skills. Difficulties in English listening comprehension - causes and solutions. RESEARCH SETTING/CONTEXT:.
Data collecting instruments. Data collecting procedures. 19 iv Chapter 3: FINDING AND DISCUSSION. THE CURRENT STATUS OF LEARNING LISTENING SKILLS.
Students' opinions on the difficulty of listening skills. Student's listening comprehension level. The problem of learning listening skills in the high school curriculum. Students' listening motivation.
Time and frequency of learning listening skills. Time to learn listening per day. Frequency of learning listening skills. Methods and means of learning English listening.
Note-taking skills. DIFFICULTIES LEARNING LISTENING SKILLS. Difficulties in vocabulary. Difficulties in grammatical structure.
Difficulties in concentration. Solutions for phonetics. Solutions for vocabulary. Solution for concentration.
LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY. SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH. 45 v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS VNUA Vietnam National University of Agriculture EFL English as a Foreign Language L2 Second Language UTEHY Hung Yen University of Technology and Education FE Faculty of Education vi LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Listening learning method. 26 Table 2: Listening media.
27 Table 3: Difficulties in phonetic. 28 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 3. 34 vii Part 1: INTRODUCTION 1. RATIONALE FOR THE STUDY No one can deny the importance of listening skills in foreign language learning because the key to acquire a language is to receive language input (Mohammed, 2016).
Listening plays an important role in communication as it is said that, of the total time spent on communicating, listening takes up 40-50%; speaking, 25- 30%; reading, 11-16%; and writing, about 9% (Gilakjani and Ahmadi, 2011). Listening is an active process that involves deciphering and constructing meaning from verbal and non-verbal messages (Nunan, 1998). Effective communication therefore necessitates that learners develop the listening skills deemed essential for understanding input for any learning to begin (Nunan, 1998; Rost, 1994). EFL learners have serious problems in English listening comprehension due to the fact that universities pay more attention to English grammar, reading and vocabulary (Dwi Rara Saraswaty, 2018).
This is considered the common situation of many EFL students. Furthermore, Hamdona (2007) indicates that English language plays an important role in everyday situations all over the world. It's a universal language which deals with all aspects of life.6) states that when we learn a language, there are four skills that we need for complete communication. When we learn our native language, we usually learn to listen first, then to speak, then to read and finally to write.2) indicates that listening skill plays a significant role in daily communication and educational process.
In spite of this importance, listening ability has received only slight care in the language teaching. Moreover, Assaf (2015:p5) states that listening can be major skill helping in acquiring English language. Gilakjani (2016) also says that listening 1 skill is very important in foreign language learning because the key to learn a language is to receive language input. Phung Thi Tho (2017) pointed out learning listening skills is the most difficult in learning a foreign language.
Especially for freshman of English linguistic major, learning L2 (English) listening comprehension still faces many difficulties and limitations. It is likely that students have not optimized their listening skills, most of them have not yet reached the set target. Therefore, to learn English listening comprehension skill effectively, the ability to practice should be developed and trained more actively, especially in the freshman stage. Realizing this is a rather essential problem and want to find some useful solutions to help students, I decided to choose the topic “An investigation into the difficulties in listening comprehension of first-year English majors at VNUA” to research the cause and the solution.
AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY Aim: The purpose of the study is to find out the difficulties in listening comprehension of first-year English majors at VNUA and suggest some solutions to help them overcome the difficulties. Objectives: - To figure out the difficulties that first-year English-majored students face in English listening comprehension. - To find out the causes of the difficulties and to suggest some solutions. RESEARCH QUESTIONS - What difficulties do first-year English majors have in English listening comprehension? - What solutions can help the students to overcome the difficulties? 2 1.
SCOPE OF THE STUDY Research object: Listening skills of first-year English major students at VNUA Research subject: English learning process of English major students at VNUA Scope of study: 80 K65 English-majored students. SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY 1- This study helps teachers to know the difficulties that the students are struggling with to improve their listening skills. 2- This study helps English-majored students at VNUA to realize the causes of their difficulties in listening comprehension and the solutions to overcome their difficulties. 3- This study may be beneficial to other learners of English as well.
DESIGN OF THE STUDY Apart from the acknowledgement, the abstract, references and appendices, this study consists of three main parts: PART 1 - INTRODUCTION presents the rationale of the study, aims and objectives of the study, research questions, the scope and the significance of the study. PART 2 - DEVELOPMENT is composed of 3 chapters: Chapter 1 - LITERATURE REVIEW - provides theoretical background for the study including the definition of listening and listening comprehension, Types of listening, Factors affecting English listening skills, and Difficulties in English listening comprehension - causes and solutions 3 Chapter 2 – METHODOLOGY describes the methodology used in the research including the research methods, research setting/ context, data collection, and data analysis. Chapter 3 - FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS - reports and discusses the findings of the study. PART 3 - CONCLUSION summarizes the main issues that have been addressed in the study, points out the limitations, draws pedagogical implications concerning the research topic and recommends several solutions to English-majored students at VNUA to overcome the difficulties in listening comprehension.
4 Part 2: DEVELOPMENT Chapter 1: LITERATURE REVIEW 1. REVIEW OF PREVIOUS STUDIES (AT HOME & ABROAD) 1. Review of previous studies at home Vietnam is one of the countries where English is considered one of the foreign languages - the main communication tool, so the teaching of English is much focused. This is reflected in the Law on Education of Vietnam, the Ministry of Education and Training has enhanced the importance of learning English by bringing English into teaching right from the elementary level.
Teaching and learning foreign languages in Vietnam has made great efforts but is not really effective and has many limitations, so what is the cause? Maybe it is due to the training program, the teaching method, or the assessment method is not correct and does not reflect the essence, the assessment results do not meet the requirements and purpose of the assessment. There have been a lot of researches aimed at renewing the curriculum of the Ministry of Education and Training such as: changing textbooks, fostering pedagogical and professional qualifications for teachers, changing testing methods, assessment of learners' learning results. However, it is necessary to have support in our teaching and learning about the student's learning outcomes assessment model to re-influence the teaching process and learning foreign languages in general and English in particular. Vietnam has had many studies on methods to improve the quality of foreign language teaching and learning, but studies in Vietnam are incomplete, and there are no in-depth studies on foreign language learning capacity based on assessment frameworks, specific capacity.
Although English is only a tool to 5 communicate, how to effectively teach and study: innovating teaching methods or adjusting current assessment methods. These are two issues that are quite closely related. Objectives and roles of foreign language teaching and learning have been reaffirmed, the purpose of foreign language teaching is defined as teaching communication skills or in other words teaching communication skills for students. This view is absolutely correct and has been proven by the series of requirements of employers in fluent in foreign languages.
Therefore, learning a foreign language is not just simply learning vocabulary and grammar, but also learning communication.