THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES DANG THI LE THUY FACTORS AFFECTING LISTENING COMPREHENSION OF THE 8TH GRADE STUDENTS AT A JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL IN THAI NGUYEN CITY (Những yếu tố ảnh hưởng đến khả năng nghe hiểu của học sinh lớp 8 tại một trường Trung học cơ sở ở Thái Nguyên) M.A THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201 THAI NGUYEN – 2019 Số hóa bởi Trung tâm Học liệu và Công nghệ thông tin – ĐHTN http://lrc.vn download by : skknchat@gmail.com THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES DANG THI LE THUY FACTORS AFFECTING LISTENING COMPREHENSION OF THE 8TH GRADE STUDENTS AT A JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL IN THAI NGUYEN CITY (Những yếu tố ảnh hưởng đến khả năng nghe hiểu của học sinh lớp 8 tại một trường Trung học cơ sở ở Thái Nguyên) M.A THESIS Field: English Linguistics Code: 8220201 Supervisor: Nguyen Thi Minh Loan Ph.D THAI NGUYEN – 2019 Số hóa bởi Trung tâm Học liệu và Công nghệ thông tin – ĐHTN http://lrc.vn download by : skknchat@gmail.com DECLARATION I certify that this thesis paper is the result of my own research and the substance of the research has not been submitted for a degree to any other university or institution. I assure that all references and citations to ensure the correctness, accuracy and honesty. Thai Nguyen, July 2019 Author’s signature Dang Thi Le Thuy Số hóa bởi Trung tâm Học liệu và Công nghệ thông tin – ĐHTN http://lrc.vn download by : skknchat@gmail.com ACKNOWLEDGMENT For the completion of this thesis, I have received great assistance and support from many people without whom the work could not have been fulfilled First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude and my profound appreciation to my supervisor, Dr. Nguyen Thi Minh Loan- from Thai Nguyen University, School of foreign languages for her guidance, precious suggestions, invaluable critical feedback and encouragement in the process of completing this thesis.
I would also like to express my sincere thanks to all the lecturers of the School of Foreign Languages, Thai Nguyen University for their interesting lectures and suggestions for the topic of my study. Thanks are also due to my students grade 8 and my colleagues at a Junior High School, Thai Nguyen City for their assistance and cooperation in completing the questionnaires and interviews Last but not least, I would like to give my deepest gratitude to my parents, my husband and my friends for their moral support and encouragement throughout my training course. Số hóa bởi Trung tâm Học liệu và Công nghệ thông tin – ĐHTN http://lrc.vn download by : skknchat@gmail.com ABSTRACT The aim of the study was to discover the factors affecting the listening comprehension of 8th-grade students at a junior high school in Thai Nguyen. The participants of the study included 90 grade 8 students from classes 8A1, 8A2, 8A3 and 5 teachers of English at Nha Trang junior high school in Thai Nguyen.
In this article, researchers had looked at the terms listening, listening comprehension, factors that affect listening comprehension. After conducting the research steps, the researcher discovered factors that more or less affected the listening comprehension of grade 8 students such as, process, task, listener, input, affect, and context. Among these factors, it was found that specific problems that affected students' listening comprehension were: grammar, structure and vocabulary, accents, speaking speech, unfamiliar topics and poor listening equipment. The finding of the research indicated that when teachers were aware of the factors that affected students’ listening comprehension, they could help their students develop effective listening strategies and ultimately solve those difficulties in listening and improved listening comprehension.
Số hóa bởi Trung tâm Học liệu và Công nghệ thông tin – ĐHTN http://lrc.vn download by : skknchat@gmail.com TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS. iv LIST OF TABLES. vi CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION.
Rationale for the study. Aims of the study. Significance of the study. Scope of the study .3 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW.
Listening comprehension process. Factors affecting listening comprehension. Taxonomy of factors affecting listening comprehension. Previous studies on factors affecting listening comprehension.
Subjects of the study. Data collection instruments. Procedures of data collection .17 Số hóa bởi Trung tâm Học liệu và Công nghệ thông tin – ĐHTN http://lrc.vn download by : skknchat@gmail.com CHAPTER 4: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION. Findings of the questionnaire.
Findings of the interview .30 CHAPTER 5: IMPLICATIONS AND CONCLUSION. Limitations of the study. Suggestions for future research .43 Số hóa bởi Trung tâm Học liệu và Công nghệ thông tin – ĐHTN http://lrc.vn download by : skknchat@gmail.com LIST OF TABLES Table 1: Students' choices about factors that affected their listening comprehension.18 Table 2: Process factor .20 Table 3: Task Factor.21 Table 4: Input Factor .22 Table 5: Listener Factor .23 Table 6: Affect Factor .24 Table 7: Context Factor .25 Số hóa bởi Trung tâm Học liệu và Công nghệ thông tin – ĐHTN http://lrc.vn download by : skknchat@gmail.com CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale for the study Listening is an important language skill to develop in second language learning.
Despite its significance, language learners consider listening as the most difficult language skill to learn. Moreover, listening is the most important skill in language learning because it is the most widely used language skill in normal daily life. Listening has an important role not only in daily life but also in the classroom environment. Most people believe that being able to write and speak in a second language means that they know the language.
However, if they do not have efficient listening skills, it is impossible to communicate effectively. That is, listening is the basic skill in language learning. Listening is vital in the language classroom because it provides input for the learner. Without understanding input on the right level, any learning simply cannot start.
A lot of research has been done on this issue (Chang & Roebl, 2011, Kutlu &Aslanolub, 2009). The results of previous studies have largely supported the difficulty of listening to new languages from the text, listeners, speakers, and tasks. Almost all previous studies in listening skills and listening comprehension skills have identified important factors affecting the ability of the learner’s listening comprehension such as process, input, listener, task, affect and context factors. However, the subjects of those studies were often high school and university students in Vietnam or other non-English speaking countries.
In Vietnamese schools, especially in Nha Trang junior high schools in Thai Nguyen, most students thought that learning the listening skills was the hardest, and some students thought the listening skills were relatively new, even though the students experienced the least English learning 3 years in primary school and in grade 6, 7. Meanwhile, the period of training at junior high school according to the distribution of each semester was more than 50 periods (3 periods/ week), in 18 weeks in a semester, the amount of time spent on listening comprehension was too little. Số hóa bởi Trung tâm Học liệu và Công nghệ thông tin – ĐHTN http://lrc.vn download by : skknchat@gmail.com Less time was spent on self-study, and fewer students could practice listening at home from 1 to 2 hours a week. Another worry thing was that most students read the typescript before practicing their listening skills.
Hence, it was a bad habit that made the listening process not meet the requirements and goals of the curriculum. Therefore, identifying the factors that directly or indirectly affected the listening skills of 8th graders was very important. These factors would help students realize their own difficulties, and they could find the best solution to overcome these factors, and also help teachers to look more about the factors that affect their students' listening comprehension to give solutions and teaching listening, toward a goal that all students can listen in the best way. With the current situation relating to the students’ poor listening comprehension competence at Nha Trang junior high school, the researcher conducted this study to find out factors that affected the 8th-grade students’ listening comprehension at Nha Trang junior high school in Thai Nguyen.
It was hoped that the findings of this paper could provide good views for the teaching and learning of listening comprehension at school. Aims of the study The purpose of this study was to identify factors that affected the listening skills of eighth graders. This helped students identify the importance of listening skills and develop it better. In this study, the following research question was answered: - What factors affect the listening comprehension of the 8th-graders? 1.
Significance of the study The findings of this study brought a lot of meaning to teachers, students as well as researchers. First, for English teachers, this study was able to provide more in-depth information so that teachers could actively help students improve their listening skills. Besides, this study was able to provide suggestions and Số hóa bởi Trung tâm Học liệu và Công nghệ thông tin – ĐHTN http://lrc.vn download by : skknchat@gmail.com recommendations for English teachers to prepare English listening lessons more effectively, enabling students to improve listening comprehension as well as daily language communication. Second, this study also played an important role for students to be aware of their listen ability.
They could recognize the factors that affected their learning to listen skills so that they could find ways to improve their listening ability. Last but not least, for other researchers who would carry out a similar study, the results of this study were considered a reference and contributed more information to solve the same problem. Scope of the study The research was conducted on 90 students of 8th-grade and 5 English teachers from Nha Trang junior high school in Thai Nguyen city. It focused on the factors that affected the student’s listening comprehension.
Organization The study included five main chapters: introduction, literature review, methodology, findings and discussion, implications and conclusion. Chapter 1: Introduction, presented basic information such as theoretical basis, purpose, research questions, meanings, scope, significance as well as the design of the study. Chapter 2: Literature review, considered different views on listening comprehension, listening processes, factors affecting listening comprehension, classification of influencing factors as well as previous studies about factors affecting students' listening skills. Chapter 3: Methodology, mentioned the method of conducting research including, research topics, research questions, data collection tools (questionnaires and interviews), data collection steps and data analysis.
Chapter 4: Findings and discussion, presented research findings and discussed research questions. Chapter 5: Implication and conclusion, pointed out the implications of the study, some limitations and made research conclusions. Số hóa bởi Trung tâm Học liệu và Công nghệ thông tin – ĐHTN http://lrc.vn download by : skknchat@gmail.com CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter discussed the theory and previous research on areas that form the basis of this research. The first section provided an overview of listening comprehension and common listening processes.
The second part provided a definition of the factors affecting the listening process and the classification of previous researchers on those factors. The final part was an assessment of previous relevant studies conducted by researchers. Definition There have been different definitions of the term “listening comprehension.” Rost (2002) and Hamouda (2013) defined listening comprehension is an interactive process in which listeners engage in building meaning. The listener understands oral input through sound distinction, previous knowledge, grammatical structure, stress and intonation and other linguistic or nonverbal clues (as cited in Pourhosein Gilak camera & Sabouri, 2016).
Listening is not a passive skill, but an active, receptive skill. It requires a lot of attention and mental activity like speaking. And listening comprehension is an act of understanding an oral message. Listening is an extremely complex operation (Buck, 2001) requires more than simple perception of audio signals.
It involves speech decoding and comprehending.