MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING QUY NHON UNIVERSITY NGUYEN TRANG BICH THUY TRAN HUNG DAO HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF LEARNING ENGLISH LISTENING SKILLS Field: Theory and Methodology of English Language Teaching Code: 8140111 Supervisor: Assoc. Nguyen Thi Thu Hien BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC QUY NHƠN NGUYỄN TRANG BÍCH THỦY NHẬN THỨC VỀ VIỆC HỌC KĨ NĂNG NGHE TIẾNG ANH CỦA HỌC SINH TRƯỜNG THPT TRẦN HƯNG ĐẠO Ngành: Lý luận và phương pháp dạy học bộ môn tiếng Anh Mã số: 8140111 Người hướng dẫn: PGS. Nguyễn Thị Thu Hiền i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP I certify that the information reported in the thesis “Tran Hung Dao High School Students’ Perceptions of Learning English Listening Skills” is the result of my own work and attempt. No references are used in the study without acknowledgment.
Also, no parts of the thesis have been submitted for the award of any degree or diploma. Binh Dinh, 2023 Nguyen Trang Bich Thuy ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I could not have accomplished this thesis without the considerable assistance, encouragement, and contributions from my supervisor, colleagues, friends and family. I take this chance to express my heartfelt gratitude toward those who offered me valuable advice and wholehearted support for my research. Firstly, I am deeply grateful to my thesis supervisor, Assoc.
Nguyen Thi Thu Hien. I sincerely appreciate her step-by-step directions, excellent suggestions, valuable advice, great encouragement, endless patience, and critical comments so that I can complete my study on time. Secondly, I would like to express my gratitude to all the lectures that taught me throughout my MA course and gave me sensible advice. Thirdly, my thanks are due to Tran Hung Dao High School for facilitating my attending the MA course at Quy Nhon University.
Fourthly, I also express my warmest thanks to Quy Nhon University, Post-graduate Department, Department of Education, and Foreign Languages Department for the administrative assistance. Next, I would like to thank the students at Tran Hung Dao High School, who dedicated their time to participating in my research. They enthusiastically completed the survey questionnaires and attended the interviews. Special thanks also go to my dear friend Ms.
Nguyen Thi Thuy Kieu, who always encouraged me when I met obstacles during my study and gave me some helpful advice on my thesis. I feel lucky to have her support. Last but not least, I owe my family a great debt of gratitude for their greatest encouragement and support throughout my MA course. iii ABSTRACT Listening is one of the important language skills; however, many learners have trouble learning this skill.
This study aimed to investigate students’ perceptions of learning English listening skills. To achieve the aim, quantitative and qualitative approaches were employed to collect and to analyze the data. The data were gathered from 200 Tran Hung Dao high school students via the questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. The findings showed that most students were aware of the importance of English listening skills as well as teachers’ listening teaching methods.
They also find listening comprehension interesting but challenging. Many students encountered listening problems related to listening materials, teachers’ teaching methods and themselves as listeners. As for means of practicing listening skills, listening to teachers and classmates in class and listening to English news and English songs were the ones employed by most of them, whereas a smaller number of students watched YouTube English talk shows or short videos, British or American television channels and used mobile applications. Moreover, there were just a few using voice chat on the Internet to talk with foreigners.
The study had significant contributions to teaching and learning listening skills. Keywords: learning listening skills, students’ perception, the importance of listening, listening problems, practice listening skills iv TABLE OF CONTENTS STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS. iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS.
vii LIST OF TABLES. Aim and Objectives. Scope of the Study. Significance of the Study.
Organization of the Study. Perception and its Importance in Teaching and Learning. Definition of Perception. Importance of Perception in Teaching and Learning.
Overview of Listening. Definition of Listening. Definition of Listening Comprehension. Importance of Listening Skills in Language Learning.
Teachers’ Roles in Listening Activities. Principles for Teaching Listening Skills. Factors Affecting EFL Students’ Learning English Listening Skills. Teachers’ Teaching Method.
Related Studies on Students’ Perceptions of Learning English Listening Skills. Research Setting and Participants. Semi-structured Interview. Reliability and Validity.
Scale Reliability Analysis. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION. Students’ Perceptions of The importance of Listening Skills. Problems Students Face When Learning Listening Skills.
Students’ Problems Related to the Listening Materials. Students’ Problems Related to Teachers’ Teaching Methods. Students’ Problems Related to The Listener. Means Students Use to Practice Listening Skills.
CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS. Summary of the Study. Suggestions for Further Research. 71 APPENDICES vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CD Compact Disc EFL English as a Foreign Language L1 First Language L2 Second Language MoET Ministry of Education and Training viii LIST OF TABLES Table 3.
Summary of Participants’ Background Characteristics. Reliability Statistics of the Questionnaire. Students’ Perceptions of Importance of Listening Skills. Detailed Description of Importance of Listening Skills.
Detailed Description of Difficulty of Listening Skills. Detailed Description of Appeal of Listening Skills. Detailed Description of Sufficient Training in Listening Comprehension. Detailed Description of Listening Strategies.
Students’ Problems Related to Listening Materials. Detailed Description of Unfamiliarity of the Topic. Detailed Description of Unfamiliar Vocabulary. Detailed Description of Difficult Grammatical Structures.
Detailed Description of Speech of Spoken Texts. Detailed Description of Stress, Pronunciation, Intonation and Accent. Detailed Description of Length of Spoken Texts. Detailed Description of Poor-quality Recordings.
Students’ Problems Related to Teachers’ Teaching Methods. Detailed Description of Pre-teaching Important Vocabulary. Detailed Description of Warming-up Activities. Detailed Description of Clear Explanation of Tasks’ Instructions.
Students’ Problems Related to the Listener. Detailed Description of Listeners’ Anxiety. Detailed Description of Slow Recall of Familiar Words’ Meaning. Detailed Description of Slow Recollection of Heard Words or Phrases.
Detailed Description of Concentration Lapses due to New Words. Detailed Description of Concentration Lapses due to Strong Focus on Every Word or Phrase. Means Students Use to Practice Listening Skills. Detailed Description of Means of Listening to Teachers and Classmates.
Detailed Description of Listening to English News and Songs. Detailed Description of Means of Watching YouTube English Talk Shows. Detailed Description of Means of Using Mobile Applications. Detailed Description of Watching British or American Television Channels.
Detailed Description of Using Voice Chat to Communicate with Foreigners. INTRODUCTION The introduction chapter helps lay background information essential for understanding the issue discussed in this study. The chapter includes 6 main parts: rationale, aim and objectives, research questions, scope of the study, significance of the study, and organization of the study. Rationale In Viet Nam, English has been becoming a compulsory subject in schools.
No one can deny that due to being one of the four major skills in language learning, listening has become an indispensable part of learning English as a foreign language. It is a very crucial skill because it is the most frequently utilized in everyday life. According to Croom Helm Cross (1998), listening is the most essential part of communication because it has an important role in supplying a meaningful reply. Thanks to listening, the language learner can obtain pronunciation, word stress, lexicon, and syntax and the gasp of messages communicated can be dependent solely on voice tone, pitch and accent.
Similarly, Harmer (2007) stated that listening helps our students pronounce words correctly because it helps them take in the appropriate “pitch and intonation, stress, and sounds” of both single words and ones which join together in connected speech when they hear and comprehend the spoken English texts. Gilakjani and Ahmadi (2011) concluded that listening plays an integral role in people’s lives. Learning listening will permit us to considerably enhance our communication ability. If people wish to communicate accurately and meaningfully, it is necessary for them to frequently and consistently hear various English forms.
It means that it is impossible for people to learn a language without hearing, for listening supply language input. 2 Not only does listening have a crucial role in daily life but it has great potential for learning activities in the classroom. Rost (1994) stated that in the language classroom, listening is significant as it provides the learner with input. Learning cannot start without the precise comprehension of input.
Likewise, according to Wallace et al. (2004), listening skills have a significant impact on learning purposes because students can get information and obtain insights. This is in line with Harmer’s (2007) statement that listening could be useful for students to have successful communication. The students are required to improve basic language knowledge on their own, such as “vocabulary, structure, pronunciation, phonology, and other language items” in order to gain good listening comprehension in English.
However, according to Lu (2008) (cited in Dang et al., 2021), most students perceived that the listening skill is probably the most important but the most difficult one to study. He also stated that listening comprehension is hampered by many factors. It can be concluded that listening is an integral part of learning English, but it is a difficult skill for students. Therefore, a number of research papers related to students’ perceptions of listening difficulties in learning English listening skills have been conducted in many countries (Anadapong, 2011; Juan & Abidin, 2013; Duong and Chau, 2019; Diora & Rosa, 2020; Tran & Duong, 2020; Nadhira & Warn, 2020; Hardiyanto et al.
Nevertheless, the studies concerning students’ perceptions of learning English listening skills have been limited. Nguyen and Thai (2018) concluded that the majority of students have a positive awareness of listening skill development. Listening comprehension issues faced by the first year English-major students include speakers’ various accents, pronunciation, speed of speech, inadequate vocabulary, dearth of concentration, worry, and poor quality of the recording. Similarly, according to Lestari et al.
(2019), the importance of English 3 listening skill is realized by most of the students, but they assume that they are the weakest at the listening skill. The authors also add that there are many problems students face in learning English listening skills. These problems include accent, pronunciation, fast rate of speech, restricted vocabulary, sophisticated grammatical structures, prior knowledge, poor concentration, low recording quality, noise and length of oral texts. In addition, in Rullu's study (2022), most of the students think that listening is more challenging than other skills.
They also emphasize that their major problems are repetitious activities, long material, anxiety, lack of concentration, bad quality of recording tapes, unknown words, noisy surrounding, texts with fast speed, unclear pronunciation, and dearth of vocabulary. In Vietnam, the 2022-2023 school year is the first time of implementing MoET’s 2018 General Curriculum for the tenth graders. It is required that the new course books’ level of English proficiency for high school students be level B1 (level 3 in Common European Framework of Reference). It is obvious that there is a lack of investigation into perceptions of learning English listening skills of tenth graders who have just finished the grade ten 2018 General Curriculum.
Besides, being one of the English teachers at Tran Hung Dao high school, I recognize that the majority of students are weak at listening and learning listening skills is often ignored and not focused on. I desire to help students at my school pay much attention to and improve their English listening skills. For those reasons, with a view to investigating how grade 10 students perceive learning English listening skills at Tran Hung Dao high school, I am so inspired to choose the topic “Tran Hung Dao High School students’ perceptions of learning English listening skills” for my MA thesis. Aim and Objectives 1.