Tài liệu Vietnamese efl college students’ perceptions of listening comprehension problems a study at a university in vietnam

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES BÙI THÚY NGA VIETNAMESE EFL COLLEGE STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF LISTENING COMPREHENSION PROBLEMS: A STUDY AT A UNIVERSITY IN VIETNAM (Nhận thức của sinh viên học tiếng Anh về các vấn đề khi ến An n n ứ n đ ọ n V N M.A MINOR THESIS Field : English Teaching Methodology Code : 8140231.01 Hanoi – 2021 VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES FACULTY OF POST- GRADUATE STUDIES BÙI THÚY NGA VIETNAMESE EFL COLLEGE STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF LISTENING COMPREHENSION PROBLEMS: A STUDY AT A UNIVERSITY IN VIETNAM (Nhận thức của sinh viên học tiếng Anh về các vấn đề khi ến An n n ứ n đ ọ n V N M.A MINOR THESIS Field : English Teaching Methodology Code : 8140231.01 Supervisor : Assoc. Prof. Nguyen Thuy Nga Hanoi – 2021 DECLARATION This is to certify that this thesis is of my own research and has not been submitted to any other university or institution degree or other purposes. Except where the reference is indicated, no other person‟s work has been used without due acknowledgement in text of the thesis. I certify that the assistance received in preparing this thesis and sources have been acknowledged. Hanoi, 2021 Bùi Thúy Nga. i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis could not have been completed without the help and support from a number of people. First and foremost, I would like to send my sincere thanks to my supervisor, Assoc.Prof. Nguyễn Thúy Nga for her enthusiastic guidance, insightful comments, and valuable support throughout my research. I would also like to thank all of the lecturers of the Department of Postgraduate Studies, Vietnam National University for their useful lectures and materials which are of great value to my thesis. A special word of thanks goes to all of my fellow master students for their feedback, cooperation and of course friendship. Last but not the least, I would like to thank my boyfriend and my family for supporting me spiritually throughout writing this thesis and my life in general. ii ABSTRACT Listening skill is appreciated as a key skill in real-life communication as well as language acquisition. Therefore, there have been numerous studies of this skill in different aspects. This study attempts to investigate the perceived problems Vietnamese EFL college students commonly encounter when doing listening test and the relationship between these problems and students‟ actual performance. Specifically, it involves the listening test scores and responses on listening problems of 43 EFL learners at a college in Hanoi. Descriptive statistics reveals that the listening problems faced by students are mainly from context and input factors, followed by process and task factors. However, as regression analysis points out, students‟ listening test scores have rather strong association with two factors namely affect and listener factors. Based on these findings, pedagogical implications for teaching and learning listening skills are also discussed, such as planning listening lessons with memory and concentration activities and providing and gaining constructive feedback. Key words: listening skills, listening problems, listening scores iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS EFL English as a Foreign Language CEFR Common European Framework of References IELTS International English Language Testing System HaUI Hanoi University of Industry DLPT Defense Language Proficiency Test GEPT General English Proficiency Test L1 First Language / Mother Tongue L2 Second Language iv LISTS OF FIGURES AND TABLES Table 3.1. Structure of the listening test ......................................................... 25 Table 4.1. Overview of the listening comprehension problems ..................... 28 Table 4.2. Top five problems encountered in listening comprehension test .. 29 Table 4.3. Listening problems related to process factor ................................. 32 Table 4.4. Listening problems related to listener factor ................................. 36 Table 4.5. Correlation between listening scores and different factors............ 38 Table 4.6. Model Summary Table .................................................................. 40 Table 4.7. ANOVA Table (test using alpha = .05) ......................................... 40 Table 4.8. Coefficients Table (test each predictor at alpha = .05) .................. 42 Table 4.9. Summary of Coefficients Table (test each predictor at alpha = .05).....42 v TABLE OF CONTENTS DECLARATION .............................................................................................. i ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS............................................................................ ii ABSTRACT .................................................................................................... iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ....................................................................... iv LISTS OF FIGURES AND TABLES............................................................ v CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ................................................................. 1 1. Rationale........................................................................................................ 1 2. Aims and objectives of the study .................................................................. 2 3. Research questions ........................................................................................ 2 4. Method and procedures ................................................................................. 3 5. Scope of the study ......................................................................................... 4 6. Significance of the study ............................................................................... 5 7. Structure of the thesis .................................................................................... 7 CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEW .......................................................................................................... 9 2.1. Listening skill in English language teaching ............................................. 9 2.2 Listening comprehension .......................................................................... 10 2.2.1 Definitions of listening comprehension ................................................. 10 2.2.2 The importance of listening comprehension .......................................... 12 2.2.3 The process of listening comprehension ................................................ 13 2.3. EFL learners‟ listening problems ............................................................. 15 2.4 The correlation between EFL learners‟ listening comprehension problems and their performance. .................................................................................... 18 2.4.1 Review of previous studies overseas ..................................................... 18 2.4.2 Review of previous studies in Vietnam ................................................. 20 2.5 Framework for investigating listening problems ...................................... 20 vi CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY............................................................... 23 3.1. The setting of the study and participants ................................................. 23 3.2. Data collection instrument and procedure ............................................... 24 3.3. Data analysis methods .............................................................................. 26 CHAPTER 4: FINGDINGS ......................................................................... 28 4.1. Problems frequently encountered by students while listening................. 28 4.2. The relationship between listening problems and listening scores .......... 38 4.2.1. Interpretation of output from correlation analysis ................................ 38 4.2.2. Interpretation of output from multiple regression analysis ................... 39 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION ..................................................................... 45 5.1. Recapitulation .......................................................................................... 45 5.2. Implications .............................................................................................. 47 5.3. Limitations and suggestions for further studies ....................................... 48 REFERENCES .............................................................................................. 50 APPENDIX ....................................................................................................... I vii CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1. Rationale Among four language skills, listening is believed to play a vital role in developing foreign language competence. Nunan (1998) asserts that listening is the basic skill in language learning and over 50% of the time is actually spent on listening while learners are functioning in a foreign language. Improvement in listening skill is also proved to have positive influence on the other three language skills (Pearson & Fielding, 1991), thus need to gain more attention in EFL classroom. Despite being considered the most challenging skill to teach and learn (Field, 2008), listening skill is by far the least widely researched among the four language skills (Plonsky, 2011). Compared to the other receptive skill, listening to a foreign language is understudied, since its process is more difficult to observed and manipulated than reading skills (Osada, 2004). In English language teaching process, grammar, reading and vocabulary appear to gain more attention than listening skill. The fact that it is neglected in teaching curricula, textbooks and teachers‟ lesson planning probably lead to serious problems that many EFL learners are exposed to in listening comprehension tasks (Gilakjani & Ahmadi, 2011). This same issue can also be found in Vietnam, where English is introduced to learners since third grade of primary school, and upon finishing secondary education (a.k.a. lower-secondary and higher-secondary schools), students are expected to achieve B1 level of the Common European Framework of References for languages (CEFR), according to National Foreign Languages 2020 Project which has come into effect since 2008. However, this expectation is hardly met and when moving to post-secondary 1 education, English learners, especially non-English major students still have various problems with language skills, especially speaking and listening. Since the English college entrance exam only tests students‟ vocabulary and grammar knowledge as well as reading and writing skills, the washback effect of teaching to testing has made English education in Vietnam to neglect speaking and listening skills. That is why together with speaking, listening is the most difficult skill for EFL college students. The struggles they have can be clearly observed by their scores on listening comprehension test. Therefore, it is vital for teachers to find out the students‟ difficulties with this skill and finally help them to improve their performance in listening tests. In spite of the significant role of the research matter, the investigation of listening problems faced by Vietnamese EFL students has not been found adequately. Therefore, this study was designed to make an effort to discover EFL college students‟ listening problems and to determine whether a relationship exists between their problems and listening test performance. 2. Aims and objectives of the study The researcher aims to give a closer investigation into listening comprehension problems and possible strategies to tackle those difficulties. In detail, the objectives are as follows.  Identifying what problems are met by Vietnamese EFL college students when doing listening comprehension practice and tests.  Finding out whether there exists a relationship between their problems and their actual listening test scores. 3. Research questions With the stated premises, this study is designed to examine these questions from the perspectives of the teachers: 1. What are the problems that Vietnamese EFL college students face when doing listening comprehension test? 2 2. Is there any relationship between their problems and their actual listening test scores? If so, which factor(s) affect their performance? 4. Method and procedures To fulfill the above aims, the study was conducted with quantitative methods of data collection and correlational analysis. The instruments used in this study were: (1) a listening comprehension test, (2) a questionnaire with the subjects. Firstly, participants were required to sit a listening comprehension test consisting of 3 parts, which had been adapted from Section 2, 3, and 4 of IELTS Listening test materials. The test aimed at English proficiency level of B2 in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). Secondly, students were required to fill in the questionnaire comprising two parts: personal information and listening problems. This questionnaire was used to get information about the difficulties the students were facing in EFL listening while taking listening course and listening tests at Hanoi University of Industry. Afterwards, a proportion of participants were encouraged to take part in a session of a semi-structured interview. The follow-up interview‟s sole purpose was to double-check the information that was obtained through the questionnaire. Therefore, the semi-structured interview was not considered one of the main instruments used for this study. The two main instruments, namely, the test and the questionnaire, were described in more details in Chapter 3: Methodology. After obtained from the listening comprehension test and the questionnaire, data was analyzed quantitatively. For the first research question, descriptive statistics with mean and standard deviation are employed to identify the major problems faced by students in the listening comprehension test. 3 With regards to the second research question, correlation analysis was first applied in order to see whether the relationship between these perceived problems and students‟ listening scores existed. The researcher went on to carry out regression analysis to investigate the relationship between each of the six factors (process, input, listener, task, affect, context) and students‟ performance. This was for the purpose of finding out how much the difficulties faced by students affect their listening score. 5. Scope of the study The study was carried out at Hanoi University of Industry (HaUI), an accredited technical university. Although this university‟s major departments are associated with industry, technology and applied science; it also caters for those who major in business and foreign languages as well. The participants in this study were 43 undergraduate students in the department of English language and translation who are now at their 5th semester. Their age ranges from 19-22 years old. All of them were attending the course called Listening-Speaking 5 at the time the study was conducted, and were chosen using convenient sampling. The language courses offered to them include a listening component. By participating in listening courses available, they were provided plenty of opportunities to listen to a variety of spoken language, namely, daily conversations, short talks, presentations and lectures in English. This study aims at determining the problems faced by English-major students at Hanoi University of Industry when they are doing listening comprehension tasks. The scope of the study is limited to this specific group of students, and thus, the results might be more valuable to the internal revision within the institution itself of their teaching and assessment materials. 4 6. Significance of the study This study was conducted to find out the problems encountered by EFL college students when listening comprehension tasks are being conducted; hence, practically, it was expected to be a useful reference material to teachers who are currently teaching the course Listening-Speaking 5 at Hanoi University of Industry, as well as teachers who are in charge of similar English courses in other educational institutions. Besides being of immediate use to teachers of English at Faculty of Foreign Languages at HaUI, theoretically, this study might also interest those whose academic work are focusing on the listening component in the field of English Language Teaching. To be more specific, recognition of the factors that are the roots of the problems that EFL learners were facing in their study process would benefit the following groups:  EFL teachers at Hanoi University of Industry: to be provided with insights of their students‟ difficulties that occur when they are doing listening comprehension tasks, and reflect on their own teaching and assessing methods to enhance their students‟ performance. Knowing the occurrence of those identified problems would inherently help teachers stand a higher chance in guiding their learners so that they can tackle the listening difficulties they are experiencing. It is also hoped that the findings of this research paper can provide English language teachers at Hanoi University of Industry with some guidelines for material evaluation, selection and adaptation. Besides, the results of the study might be able to propose some indications for EFL teachers at HaUI to revisit and/or revise their teaching and 5 assessment materials. In addition, thanks to this study, other teachers of English at University of Industry might be aspired to produce similar research into other groups of students apart from English-major students at the very same institution.  EFL teachers of similar language courses at other educational institutions in Hanoi: to be inspired to propose similar research questions and conduct investigation into the problems faced by their own students‟ body when they are taking listening comprehension tests. Being equipped with this knowledge, they may find ways to improve their own teaching methods or assessment materials.  EFL learners at HaUI: to identify the listening comprehension challenges that they are having, so that they may come up with, on their own or with the help of their teacher or mentor, what further learning strategies are needed for them to achieve progress in listening skill acquisition. One way or another, learners ought to be aware of the factors which might be responsible for their listening problems. When listeners have a certain amount of knowledge of their own challenges, they are likely to be able to grow to become better listeners as well as more well-rounded learners.  Researchers who have taken an interest in EFL learning and teaching: to use the findings as a basis for a similar study at other institutions or with another group of students, for further study of the similar topic or a reference material in their own paper. All in all, the researcher believes the thesis will be helpful in practice to all stakeholders in Faculty of Foreign Languages at Hanoi University of 6 Industry; and theoretically, it might be useful for scholars who are researching into English as a Foreign Language Teaching field. 7. Structure of the thesis This research consists of five chapters: Chapter 1: Introduction It is important, first and foremost, to state the reasons, objectives, and values of the research. Consequently, the Introduction involves seven sections: Rationale, Research goals, Research questions, Research scope, Research instruments and procedures, Research significance, and Design of the research. Chapter 2: Theoretical background and literature review This includes the explanation of key definitions of listening comprehension and listening comprehension problems. Moreover, it presents the review on different previous works on listening comprehension skill and listening comprehension problems to point out the research gaps. Chapter 3: Methodology This chapter presents research methodology, the setting of the study and participants, and data collection instruments and procedures. Chapter 4: Findings This chapter states what can be learned during the research and interprets the results. This chapter presents the findings of the data analysis as following: 4.1. Problems frequently encountered by students while listening 4.2. The relationship between listening problems and listening scores Chapter 5: Conclusions In this chapter, the conclusions of the paper will be presented. This part also summarizes how to conduct the research to the objectives, and offers 7 possible guidelines Recapitulation, for future Concluding research. remarks, Recommendations for further study. 8 Five parts Implications, are included: Limitations, and CHAPTER 2: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND AND LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1. Listening skill in English language teaching In the field of EFL acquisition, listening plays a significant role, since it is the most regularly used language skill in the classroom (Ferris, 1998; Nunan, 1998) and it takes a crucial part in improving EFL learners‟ language competence. Dunkel (1991) and Feyten (1991) both agree that listening can provide meaningful input for the learner, which is the fundamental foundation for any learning. Rost (2006) also supports this idea by stating that listening provides the linguistic environment and sets the stage for acquisition. Therefore, good competence in listening comprehension can have great impact on improving the other three language skills (Pearson & Fielding, 1991). In addition, acquiring listening skill also facilitates students to get access to various information sources in the age of blooming technology and multimedia, such as online audios and videos, podcasts and vlogs. Simply speaking, listening can be defined as “the activity of paying attention to and trying to get the meaning of something we hear” (Underwood, 1989, p.1). A more elaborate definition of listening is proposed by O‟Malley, Chamot and Kupper (1989): “listening comprehension is an active and conscious process in which the listener constructs meaning by using cues from contextual information and from existing knowledge, while relying upon multiple strategic resources to fulfill the task requirement” (p.19). Sharing the same view that listening is mostly associated with the ability to understand speaker‟s meaning, Mendelson (1994) adds that the required abilities of a competent listener are processing the linguistics forms, interacting, understand the message and decipher the speaker‟s intention. Later, Steinberg (2007) emphasizes the need of distinguishing listening from 9 hearing, asserting that listening is a complex process involving four distinct stages: sensing and attending, understanding and interpreting, remembering and responding. Although the fact that EFL leaners only sit quietly when doing listening comprehension creates the impression of listening as a passive skill, it is actually argued by most scholars to be an active and dynamic process. Purdy (1997) clarified such process engaged in listening: “attending, perceiving, interpreting, remembering, and responding to the expressed (verbal and nonverbal), needs, concerns, and information offered by other human beings” (p. 8). Rost (2002) proposed the idea of listening comprehension as an inferential process, in which listener‟s main jobs are constructing, decoding and negotiating meanings with the speaker. The ability to understand and interpret spoken messages in real time is attributed to the process of integrating information from phonetic, phonological, prosodic, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic sources (Lynch, 1998); therefore, listening can be regarded an active and complex process which requires both linguistic and world knowledge. In order to achieve comprehension, bottom-up (datadriven) and top-down (conceptually-driven) are the two processes common applied (Nunan, 1998). While the bottom-up allows listeners to form the meaning basing on linguistic cues in speakers‟ utterances, top-down process mainly depends on background knowledge in interpreting what listeners hear. In a nutshell, it is widely agreed that rather than a solely passive reception of audible signs, listening comprehension is an active, complex and interactive process involving different cognitive strategies and stages. 2.2 Listening comprehension 2.2.1 Definitions of listening comprehension A number of definitions of listening comprehension skill have been put forward and each of those definitions reflects its author's own point of view. The following are some representative definitions of listening comprehension. 10 Buck (2001: 31) defined listening comprehension as an active process in which listeners are involved in constructing meaning. He emphasizes that both linguistic knowledge and non-linguistic knowledge are used for the understanding of incoming speech by listeners. It can be realized from this definition that listening comprehension is more than hearing because listeners actively interpret what speakers say basing on their linguistic and nonlinguistic knowledge. Rost (2002: 3) considered listening comprehension as a cognitive process to represent and form meaning from what speakers say. According to him, meaning 8 construction is assisted by contextual factors. Moreover, listening comprehension involves establishing a negotiation in meaning (with the speaker), and giving responses. Thus, listening comprehension is one integral part of communication skill in which context plays an important role in identifying speakers' intention. Jeon (2007: 50) stated that listening comprehension requires listeners' capacity to "apprehend, recognize, discriminate, or even ignore certain information". He also pointed out the factors which are necessary for listening comprehension: linguistic knowledge, personal expectation, cognitive processing skills, world knowledge and prior experience which listeners have. Thus, listening comprehension depends on a variety of listeners' sub-skills, knowledge, and experience. Nadig (2013: l743) simply defined listening comprehension as the various processes of interpreting spoken language. According to him, the processes are based on listeners' perception of speech sounds, comprehension of the meaning of individual words and the syntax of sentences. It can be concluded from the definitions mentioned above that “listening comprehension is an active and purposeful process” in which 11