BANKING ACADEMY OF VIETNAM FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE -----o0o----- GRADUATION THESIS CHALLENGES OF ENGLISH MAJORED STUDENTS WHEN STUDY “LISTENING 2” COURSE AT BANKING ACADEMY Student : Trinh Thi Thu Tinh Class : K20ATCC Academic year : 2017-2021 Student ID : 20A7510180 Supervisor : Ms. Tran Thi Xuan Anh Ha Noi, May 2021 17014125867891000000 CERTIFICATE OF ORIGIN I declare that this graduation thesis named “Challenges of English majored students when study “Listening 2” course at Banking Academy” is the intellectual product of my own work, under guidance of Ms. Tran Thi Xuan Anh. No part of this graduation thesis has been published elsewhere before.
All sources of information are properly citied in reference section. Ha Noi, May 22, 2021 Signature (Author of thesis) Trinh Thi Thu Tinh i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS After three months, my graduation thesis had completed. It is time for me to express my sincere gratitude to all people who assisted me wholeheartedly. First of all, I would like to thank the Faculty of Foreign Languages at Banking Academy of Vietnam for giving me a chance to do this thesis.
I also would like to thank all teachers at Banking Academy for providing me valuable knowledge during the time I studied here. Secondly, I wish I could express my appreciation to my supervisor Ms. Tran Thi Xuan Anh. I am extremely to her due to her detailed guidance and precious encouragement.
Despite of her busy schedule, she spent time giving me valuable ideas and adjustment to support me to complete the thesis better. Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to my family and my friends for their endless support and motivation when I carried out this thesis. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS CERTIFICATE OF ORIGIN. ii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS.
v LIST OF TABLES .vi LIST OF FIGURES. vii CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION. Background Of The Study. Objectives Of The Study.
Significance Of The Study. Scope And Limitations. Definition Of Terms. 4 CHAPTER II: REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE.
Definitions of Listening .2 Differences between “Hearing” and “Listening”. Definition of Listening Comprehension. Listening Skill Problems in Learning a Foreign Language. Definitions of Listening Skills in Learning a Foreign Language.
Listening Skill Problems in Learning a Foreign Language. Types of Listening Comprehension Strategies in Learning a Foreign Language .3 Socio-affective Strategies. 12 CHAPTER III: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY. Locale of Study.
Data Gathering Procedure. Population and Sample description. 16 CHAPTER IV: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION. The rating of difficulty in Listening skill.
The subjective problems of English majored students referring to Listening comprehension. The objective problems of English majored students referring to the distraction. Suggested Listening Strategies for English majored students. Some useful suggestions for language teachers.
29 CHAPTER V: SUMMARY OF FINDINGS, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS. Summary Of Findings. 42 iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Abbreviation Meaning ESL English as the Second Language EFL English as the Foreign Language SPSS Statistical Package for the Social Sciences ELT English Language Teaching v LIST OF TABLES Table Pages Table 4. The subjective problems refer to Listening comprehension 21 Table 4.
The objective problems refer to the distraction 24 LIST OF FIGURES Figures Pages Figure 4. The English majored students’ score after finishing the 18 Listening 2 courses Figure 4.2 English majored students’ opinions about the Listening skill 19 Figure 4. English majored students self-describing their Listening 20 abilities vi ABSTRACT Listening is one of the most fundamental skills in English language learning. When students listen to English language, they face a lot of listening difficulties.
Students have critical difficulties in listening comprehension because universities and schools pay more attention to writing, reading, and vocabulary. The purpose of this study is exploring challenges encountered by English-majored students when they study “Listening 2” course at Banking Academy of Vietnam. The target population included all language students who had completed this course. Data were collected by distributing a sample questionnaire of sixteen items on academic listening problems to eighty-seven English majored students.
The methods of this study are qualitative data collection and online data collection. The analyzed data would indicate the listening difficulties which are the most influential factors to the English majored students in learning Listening 2 courses are the accent and the speed of the speakers; lack of vocabulary and ineffective listening habits of students and, noises outside and the equipment and facilities at school. To overcome these problems, the writer suggested a number of practical strategies that could help English majored students, English teachers and the university principals to improve listening ability and the students’ quality. Key words: listening problems, listening difficulties, Listening 2, English majored students, strategies vii CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION 1.
Introduction In recent years, the increasing investment by foreign companies in Vietnam has created many job opportunities for graduates. This means the one who has an English certificate will have more job opportunities and higher salary than the one who does not know about English. For that reason, English – the international language, is the preferred one in which students should become experts. However, there are still barriers to Vietnamese people who learn this language, because English is a Foreign Language (EFL) or the Second Language (ESL), it becomes more difficult to study than the mother tongue although both are taught in Vietnam – a non-native country.
In four main skills: Listening, Writing, Reading and Speaking; Listening is the most fundamental and essential thing that students should master first. Before learning Reading skill, the first thing learners should have been taught is Listening skill when they were in primary school. Because when the baby was born, listening was the first thing that made him aware of everything, not read, write or speak. With Reading: it is a process of recognizing the face of words, combining letters into meaningful words; nevertheless, with listening, the way learners enable to understand as well as get the information from other people is much easier: do not need to know how to write that word, but still know what people imply to us.
However, there is still a teaching method in Vietnamese education system that does not teach Listening skills first. For example, the primary and secondary schools have just concentrated on learning grammar, writing and reading skills. And listening is the one that learners have not paid enough attention to: when learning Listening, they only hear English vocabulary from their teacher, who does not pronounce properly; not the native speakers and this led to many problems of studying English at higher levels of education. Additionally, non-native students will be put under strain while learning English at the university level, since most English-major students are required to use English in all academic activities.
Furthermore, the majority of the most recent materials on 1 the subject are written in English. As a result, students become more overwhelmed as they attempt to reach the required standard of English in order to keep up with the teaching curriculum and comprehend what they are learning. Therefore, the aim of this study is to learn about general academic issues that English majored Students at Banking Academy are facing while studying “Listening 2” courses. And, based on data analysis and findings, the writer would make several recommendations to assist English majored students overcoming their listening difficulties.
In addition, this study offers some helpful suggestions for the teacher's teaching method. Background Of The Study “Listening 2” is one of the very first compulsory courses for all English majored students starting at Banking Academy. However, this very start subject had students struggling hard in order to pass it. First of all, most of the final scores in “Listening 2” are much lower than the scores for “Listening 1” and “Listening 3”.
Furthermore, the number of students with A’s score is very rare, while the common C and D scores are what the students get at the end of this course. Last but not least, many students have to study again in order to pass this module or improve their scores. Therefore, the aim of this study is to find out what causes English majored students to have poorly academic performance in “Listening 2”. In addition, the study would provide some suggestions to encourage English majored students to become more professional in Listening skills.
Objectives Of The Study As noted above, to point out the reasons causing English majored students to perform poorly in the “Listening 2” module at Banking Academy is the main purpose of this study. This will be finished by discovering those challenges that language students have to deal with, such as: unfamiliar vocabulary, homonyms, length and speed of listening, delaying in filling out the answer sheet. Furthermore, this study is to provide some effective methods to enhance the English majored students’ general academic performance at university and to give solutions 2 for them to handle Listening 2 courses. The results of this study support to raise students’ consciousness of learning Listening skill at Banking Academy, as well as allow language lecturers to gain a better understanding of difficulties that their students have encountered.
Last but not least, the study contributes to the future research focus on Vietnamese students’ academic listening skill, which have not been overlooked in many previous researches. Research Questions What are the subjective challenges referring to listening comprehension to the recording? What are the objective challenges referring to the distraction in listening to the recording? 1. Significance Of The Study Since human evolution, speaking and listening were the oldest forms of communication before the letters and numbers which became known as the writing system appeared. This means that listening has been one of the fundamental skills that humans must master first.
For example, babies often spend the first 1.5 to 2 years of life listening to others and try to understand their surroundings before they learn how to talk again, of course expecting the baby sounds makes no sense. And in order to talk back to others, the children have to understand firstly what others are implying, then they enable themselves to say what they have been taught by their parents and those around them. When we reach school age, listening is an indispensable skill that appears in many different activities such as debating, role- playing, filling in answers, English competitions or activities… And at work, we use English in jobs such as communicating with foreign partners. Therefore, mastering the Listening skill is very essential for not only children, but also adults.
As a consequence, when this study is carried out to raise awareness of learning Listening skill, and give some recommendations, almost all the objects that take advantage of this study are English majored students who need to enhance their skill in “Listening 2” courses. Scope And Limitations This research was conducted at the Banking Academy of Vietnam with the help of a questionnaire which includes sixteen questions related to the challenges faced when learning the “Listening 2” module. The finding of the researcher depended on the responses of eight-seven English majored students. Since the limitation of attended participants, the funding sources, time to carry out the research, and the communication among the researcher, teachers and students, result of this research still has many downsides.
Furthermore, respondents’ partially and hesitancy in filling out the questionnaires also impacted the survey analysis. One more limitation is that this research was just performed on the following listening issues: vocabulary, listening comprehension, and setting up learning habits, while many other challenges cause poor performance of English majored students which are not pointed out as well as being unable to investigate. Definition Of Terms - SPSS: a short form of Statistical Package for the Social Sciences - Listening 2: a mandatory subject regarding English listening skills for ENGLISH MAJORED students studying in the Faculty of Foreign Languages at Banking Academy of Vietnam.