MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY ----------------------------- NGUYEN QUANG MINH IMMIGRATION OFFICERS’ ENGLISH LISTENING DIFFICULTIES AND USE OF STRATEGIES: A STUDY AT HO CHI MINH CITY IMMIGRATION OFFICE Major: English Language Course code: 60220201 HO CHI MINH CITY, SEPTEMBER 2021 i MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY --------------- IMMIGRATION OFFICERS’ ENGLISH LISTENING DIFFICULTIES AND USE OF STRATEGIES: A STUDY AT HO CHI MINH CITY IMMIGRATION OFFICE Total words: 18,706 Submitted to the Faculty of English Language in partial fulfillment of the Master’s degree in English Language Class: 19SNA11 By NGUYEN QUANG MINH Supervised by LE VAN TUYEN, Ph. HO CHI MINH CITY, SEPTEMBER 2021 i The thesis entitled IMMIGRATION OFFICERS’ ENGLISH LISTENING DIFFICULTIES AND USE OF STRATEGIES: A STUDY AT HO CHI MINH CITY IMMIGRATION OFFICE was successfully defended and approved on ………. at Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HUTECH). Academic supervisor: Dr.
LE VAN TUYEN Examination Committee 1. Nguyen Thi Kieu Thu, Ph. Tran Quoc Thao, Ph. Luu Thi Mai Vy, Ph.
Nguyen Ngoc Tran Chau, Ph. Duong My Tham, Ph. Secretary Member On behalf of the Examination Committee Chair Nguyen Thi Kieu Thu, Ph. ii HCMC UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY POSTGRADUATE INSTITUTE HCMC, September 2021 MASTER’S THESIS REPORT Student name: Nguyen Quang Minh Sex: Male Date of birth: 30/01/1984 Place of birth: Ho Chi Minh City Major: English Language Student code: 1941900017 I- Thesis title: Immigration Officers’ English Listening Difficulties and Use of Strategies: A Study at Ho Chi Minh City Immigration Office II-Objectives and contents: This study aims at exploring difficulties in English listening skills and use of strategies of immigration officers at HIO.
The specific objectives of this study are as follows: § to find out difficulties in English listening skills; § to examine which strategies used by immigration officer to overcome difficulties in English listening skills. This study was conducted at Ho Chi Minh City Immigration Office. The study focused on English listening difficulties and strategies of immigration officers. The participants were the officers who were also from different backgrounds.
The ages of the participants ranges from 19 to 30 over with an average of 25. The findings found out common listening difficulties that immigration officers had in listening iii skills such as the difficulties related to the content of dialogue, the content of linguistic factors, the listener, the speaker and the physical setting. Moreover, the findings showed that immigration officer frequently used the cognitive, metacognitive and socio-affective listening strategies to deal with listening difficulties. In order to gain the results, the quantitative and qualitative methods were applied.
In addition, two instruments used for data-collection were questionnaire and semi-structured interview. III- Starting date: (as stated in the Decision issued by the University) IV- Completing date:. V- Academic supervisor: (full name, title) LE VAN TUYEN, Ph. ACADEMIC SUPERVISOR FACULTY DEAN Le Van Tuyen, Ph.
Nguyen Thi Kieu Thu, Ph. iv CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY I certify my authorship of the Master’s Thesis submitted today entitled: IMMIGRATION OFFICERS’ ENGLISH LISTENING DIFFICULTIES AND USE OF STRATEGIES: A STUDY AT HO CHI MINH CITY IMMIGRATION OFFICE In terms of the statement of requirements for Theses in Master’s programs issued by the Higher Degree Committee of Faculty of English Language, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology. Ho Chi Minh City, September 2021 NGUYEN QUANG MINH v RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS I hereby state that I, NGUYEN QUANG MINH, being a candidate for the degree of Master of Arts (English Language) accept the requirements of the University relating to the retention and use of Master’s Theses deposited in the Library. In terms of these conditions, I agree that the original of my Master’s Thesis deposited in the Library should be accessible for purposes of study and research, in accordance with the normal conditions established by the Librarian for the care, loan, and reproduction for theses.
Ho Chi Minh City, September 2021 NGUYEN QUANG MINH vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would first like to express my deepest gratitude to Dr. Le Van Tuyen, my supervisor, for his patience, guidance, insightful advice, and constant encouragement throughout the whole research process. Under any circumstances, he always gives me his warm support and dedication. He has been a wonderful mentor and I feel grateful for having such a wonderful teacher.
Without his support and guidance, this thesis would never have been completed. Second, I would also like to show my profound gratitude to all the lecturers of the Institute for Postgraduate and the Department of English Language in HUTECH for their tirelessly devoting time and efforts to enrich, broaden and deepen my knowledge over the past two years. Last but not least, my deepest and sincerest gratitude goes to my family, including my mother, my father, my wife, my daughter, and my parents-in-law with their unconditional love, understanding and help. I would like to dedicate this thesis to my beloved mother who has provided me strong spiritual and material support.
vii ABSTRACT Though listening ability is one of the important skills in foreign language learning, there has been relatively little research in this specific area. Listening skill is one of the most necessary skills to communicate in the real life and all daily activities. In learning a foreign language, it is more and more important to learn this skill. Everyday people listen for different purposes such as entertainment, academic purposes or obtaining necessary information.
It is essential for learning languages since they enable to acquire insights and information, and to achieve success in communicating with others. Everybody knows that in order to listen to a message is not as simple as hearing it, so the listener has to understand the message and respond in the right manner. Through the years, investigations into difficulties in English listening and listening strategies have been the subject of many researchers. Additionally, Vandergrift (1999) likewise specifies that the main roles of human listening are data social occasion and delight, however there are different reasons, like sympathy, appraisal and analysis.
As per Wilson (2009), listening includes the unraveling of the messages, which happens over the long haul. It is unique in relation to perusing, who includes the deciphering of the message and it happens over space pages, signs, the backs of envelopes. Most spoken data is not recorded and has no long lasting record. In light of unconstrained execution typically vanishes from the memory in practically no time.
Wilson (2009) describes the difficulties into four general categories: characteristics of the message, the delivery, the listener and the environment. Characteristics of the message relate to the listeners in recognizing the speech. Other difficulties consist of unknown words, lexical density (short spaces of time between content words, forcing listener to concentrate harder), and complex grammatical structures. viii With the hope to find out the answer for these issues, this research aimed at discovering immigration officers’ difficulties in listening and the use of listening strategies to cope with difficulties at Ho Chi Minh City Immigration Office (HIO).
Improving officers listening skills effectively is strongly related to being aware of the factors which have an effect on their listening performance. This study employed qualitative and quantitative methods and descriptive method to do the research. So the collecting data instruments like questionnaire, interview was used to the study. A total of ninety eight immigration officers participated in answering the questionnaire and five officers joined the semi structure interview questions.
The data collected from the questionnaire were analyzed by SPSS 20.0 in terms of descriptive statistics (Mean and Standard deviation). The findings show that immigration officers had to deal with many difficulties in listening such as the difficulties related to the listener, the content of the dialogue, the speaker, the physical setting and the linguistic factors. Besides, the frequency of using listening strategies was relatively high. The cognitive listening strategies were the most frequently used.
The following strategies were metacognitive and socio affective cognitive strategies. Based on the findings, some implications were made to contribute to the administrations and staffs at HIO. Keywords: English listening skills, listening difficulties, listening strategies, immigration officers ix TABLE OF CONTENTS CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINALITY. v RETENTION AND USE OF THE THESIS.
viii LIST OF TABLES. xv LIST OF FIGURES.xvi LIST OF ABREVIATIONS. xvii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION. Background to the study.
Statement of the problem. Aims and objectives of the study. Scope of the study. Significance of the study.
Definitions of terms.8 Organization of the thesis.7 CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW. Listening to a second or foreign language. Definition of Listening. Elements of listening.
Stage of listening. Factors that make listening difficult .1 Strategies of listening comprehension. Meta-cognitive listening strategy. Cognitive listening strategy.
Socio-affective listening strategy. Difficulties in listening to a second or foreign language. Difficulties related to the content of the dialogue. Difficulties related to the content of linguistic factors.
Difficulties related to the listener. Difficulties related to the speaker. Conceptual framework of the study. Sample and sampling procedures.
Data collection procedures. Data analysis procedure. Reliability and Validity .42 CHAPTER 4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION. Results and Discussion.
Immigration officers’ difficulties in listening to English. Immigration officers’ use of listening strategies at workplace. Immigration officers’ difficulties in listening to English. Immigration officers’ listening strategies.
Summary of the main findings of the thesis. Implications of the study. Implications for the administrations. Implication for immigration officers.
Recommendations for the further research. SAMPLE OF INTERVIEW DATA ANALYSIS. Turnitin Plagiarism Scan. 92 xiii Chapter 1: 2,317 words Chapter 2: 6,990 words Chapter 3: 2,762 words Chapter 4: 5,336 words Chapter 5: 1,301 words xiv LIST OF TABLES Table 3.1: Participants’ general information.
Research questions, data collection and analysis instruments. Immigration officers’ difficulties in listening to English. The difficulties related to the content of the dialogue. The difficulties related to the linguistic factors.
The difficulties related to the listener. The difficulties related to the speaker. The difficulties related to the speaker. Immigration officers’ listening strategies.
The frequency of using meta-cognitive listening strategy. The frequency of using cognitive listening strategy. The frequency of using socio-affective listening strategy .59 xv LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2. Conceptual framework of listeners’ difficulties in listening and listening strategies (O’Malley and Chamot, 1990; Nakatani, 2010, Assaf, 2015) .31 xvi LIST OF ABREVIATIONS IO : Immigration Officer ELS : English Listening Skills CSs : Communication Strategies TL : Target Language HIO : Ho Chi Minh City Immigration Office xvii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1.
Background to the study English is the most spoken language in the world and first language used about 400 million people worldwide (British Council, 2020). In fact, English is considered the most used by many people in the world. It is the language of many fields such as science, education, diplomacy and education. Therefore, mastering English language becomes essential to people.
Among English skills, listening is considered the most important skills that people need to master (Morley, 1991). As a fact, people spend a lot of time listening to daily activities to satisfy what they need to understand. Rost (1994) affirmed that listening plays an essential role in communication. Morley (1991) also demonstrated that people spend most of their lives to listening and interpreting what they hear.
However, Walker (2010) stated that listening is one of the most difficult skills. Moreover, it has been given little attention (Prentis and Parrot, 2014). As a result, people seem to neglect these skills and cannot have enough strategies to deal with listening activities (Hamouda, 2013). It is no doubt that many graduated students cannot satisfy minimum requirements of English listening skills at work.
Sincerely speaking, listening exercises were believed to have common tasks such as listening and filling the blanks, listening to songs, listening for true or false and etc. in education system.