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BINH DUONG PROVINCIAL PEOPLE’S COMMITTEE

THU DAU MOT UNIVERSITY

WAYS TO IMPROVE LISTENING


SKILLS FOR ENGLISH-MAJORED
FRESHMEN AT THU DAU MOT
UNIVERSITY

Research group:
Student 1: Phùng Trọng Phúc Code: 2122202011124
Student 2: Bùi Thị Việt Hà Code: 2122202010771
Student 3: Châu Đoàn Nhựt Quang Code: 2122202010768

Supervisor: Tran Thanh Du, Ph.D.

BINH DUONG PROVINCE - 04/2023


TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION........................................................................................51
1.1. Background to the study................................................................................................................... 51

1.2. Research objectives............................................................................................................................... 2

1.3. Research questions................................................................................................................................ 2

1.4. Significance of the study...................................................................................................................... 2

1.5. Scope of the study................................................................................................................................... 3

1.6. Structure of the study........................................................................................................................... 3

CHAPTER 2. LITERATURE REVIEW...................................................................................................... 4

2.1. Background of listening....................................................................................................................... 4

2.1.2. The importance of listening............................................................................................................ 5

2.2. Difficulties of English listening.......................................................................................................... 6

2.2.2. Pronunciation...................................................................................................................................... 7

2.2.3. The length and speech rate............................................................................................................. 8

2.2.4. Psychological obstacles.................................................................................................................... 9

2.3. Previous researches.............................................................................................................................. 9

CHAPTER 3. METHODOLOGY........................................................................................11
3.1. Research design and methods......................................................................................................... 11

3.2. Research instruments........................................................................................................................ 11

3.3. Setting, population, and sample..................................................................................................... 12

3.4. Data collection and analysis............................................................................................................ 12

3.4.1.1. Questionnaire................................................................................................................................. 12

3.5. Research Instruments........................................................................................................................ 12

3.5.1. Procedures.......................................................................................................................................... 13

REFERENCES.......................................................................................................................14

APPENDICES.......................................................................................................................16
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CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION
1.1. Background to the study
The problem of entanglement and solutions for the English listening skills of English-
majored freshmen at Thu Dau Mot University have been explored by our research
team for a long time. before that, the covid 19 pandemic broke out and spread in the
field that our team wanted to research, even affecting all fields as well as the country in
which our research team was living. That greatly influenced the research of our research
group. The previous field survey of English-majored freshmen at Thu Dau Mot
University was still a concern and difficulty that our research team encountered. There
have also been many research articles by other researchers on the problems encountered
as well as ways to overcome the English listening skills of English-majored freshmen
at Thu Dau Mot University is still unfinished. The issues of time, effort, money, and
pressure are still the obsession of many research groups. Our research group is no
exception to that. Previous research is the foundation, knowledge, and information that
our team had. Our research group wants to continue that unfinished research journey to
perfect the best way through this research paper.
In recent years, English is widely used throughout the country as well as in the world,
and Vietnam is also among them. English has a huge impact on all aspects of life, as
well as almost all fields. For some areas of communication, commerce, business, trading,
or science and technology, computers. English is an indispensable language in those
fields. English is likened to "a valuable pill" having, it will support a lot, support objects
such as entrepreneurs, enterprises, teachers, lecturers, and students. Using English
effectively and appropriately still depends on each person's passion, love, perseverance,
and desire to discover. One of the first skills to be sorted into the four most important
skills of English is listening. Listening is an active process where patience, compassion,
and determination play significant roles. Human behavior is such that it tends to block
out most of the noises in the surroundings. It needs concentration to absorb the words
and process its meaning so that it can make some sense. The process of listening
promotes participation in a conversation to foster better relationships. It also assists in
building trust, strengthening ties, resolving issues, and most importantly inspiring people
by making them realize giving due consideration to the words and are attentive towards

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the speaker. Listening is not to be confused with hearing because the first is an
interpretative action that is intentional, whereas the latter is a biological action often
done subconsciously. The importance of listening goes far beyond the scope of
professional or personal environment. It is a soft skill that gradually cultivates so that it
becomes an inherent quality in the human system. It facilitates good self-esteem to
optimize productivity. It is a proven fact that people are least bothered about listening.
They tend to forget that hearing is not listening and what you hear you do not have to
recap but when listening, doing it for effective communication and hence have to recall
whatever is being said. Most of the students listen without the intent to understand; they
want to listen to reply without due consideration about the subject. Listening is an active
process where you have to decide to hear consciously, understand the tone, meaning, and
body language and lastly respond effectually. Each skill has its importance and
necessity, but listening skills can form the rest of the skills, and poor listening skills will
lead to the incompetence of other skills. remaining capacity. That greatly affects those
who want to learn and use English. Listening skill is like an "anchor", good listening
skill will develop and balance the remaining skills like the certainty, strength, and
endurance of a small anchor that can keep the whole big boat docked.

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Through observations and obtained information, our research team can see the anxiety
of English-majored freshmen at Thu Dau Mot University when they encounter many
obstacles in improving their listening skills. With the utmost desire, our research team is
determined to study the above issue to come up with methods to improve English
listening skills to put practical ways into practice. Our research group wants to see
significant progress and improvement in the way our research team recommends. To
relieve some of the pressure in finding ways to improve and help the English-majored
freshmen at Thu Dau Mot University confidently face English listening skills in the
next semester as well as confidently walk out with good English listening skills.
1.2. Research objectives
Our research group wanted to find out the strategies in English listening of English-
majored freshmen at Thu Dau Mot University. Guide and point out the causes of
listening, difficulties and find practical and effective ways to improve the English-
majored freshmen at Thu Dau Mot University significantly and outstandingly.
1.3. Research questions
The research group conducted with the following questions and hypotheses needs to be
addressed:
Question 1: What strategies English-majored freshmen do to develop listening skills?
Question 2: What strategies should be done to help English-majored freshmen improve
in listening skills?
1.4. Significance of the study
The research paper of our research group will be extremely useful for those who are
learning English in general and the first-year students of the English Department of Thu
Dau Mot University in particular. Bringing effective and practical ways to learn for each
individual who is having difficulty in the process of listening and understanding English.
Orientation of English listening skills education for the English Department of Thu Dau
Mot University as well as the whole school on the current situation and direction to
overcome English listening skills. Provides valuable information on the status of
English listening comprehension.

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1.5. Scope of the study
About contents: The research topic focuses on the reality of the difficulty in listening to
English and the ways of the first-year English language major students of Thu Dau Mot
University.
About spaces: The research topic of our research group will examine the current
situation of students with difficulties in listening to English and orientations. At the
same time, propose ways to overcome the problem of listening to English by English-
majored freshmen at Thu Dau Mot University.
About times: The research topic of our research group will examine the current situation
of students with difficulties in listening to English and orientations. At the same time,
propose ways to overcome the problem of listening to English by English-majored
freshmen at Thu Dau Mot University at any specific time in 2022-2023.
1.6. Structure of the study
The study consists of 3 chapters:
Chapter 1, Introduction, provides the background information, the research aims, the
research questions, the significance of the study, and the organization of the study.
Chapter 2, Literature review, This chapter presents the theory which is related to
listening problems in English including the definition of listening, the importance of
listening and some problems in listening English of English-majored freshmen at Thu
Dau Mot University. Some related previous studies are also stated in this chapter.
Chapter 3, Methodology, this chapter describes the research methods used in the
present study. It then presents the population and sampling and research instruments.
The last sections involve data collection procedures, and data analysis methods.

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Chapter 2. LITERATURE REVIEW
This chapter presents the theory which is related to listening problems in English
including the definition of listening, the importance of listening, and some problems in
listening to English of English-majored freshmen at Thu Dau Mot University. Some
related previous studies are also stated in this chapter.
2.1. Background of listening
2.1.1. Listening definition
There are several definitions of listening from many researchers. These definitions of
listening have been provided in various ways.
First of all, Rost M. (2002) stated that “listening is a process of receiving what the
speaker actually says, constructing and representing meaning, negotiating meaning
with the speaker and responding, and creating meaning through involvement,
imagination and empathy”. According to this statement, listening involves listening to
thoughts, feelings, and intentions. Consequently, listeners must be able to decode the
message, as well as apply a variety of strategies and interactive processes to make sense
of what they hear, as well as respond to it in a variety of ways depending on the purpose
of the communication.
Moreover, Gilakjani A.P (2016) mentioned the definition of Chastain. Chastain (1971)
said that listening is the ability to understand native speakers at normal speed.
Additionally, Maung W.Y.Y (2019) mentioned Howatt and Dakin (1974) definition that
“listening is the ability to identify and understand what others are saying, this process
involves understanding accent or pronunciation of the speaker, grammar, vocabulary,
and comprehending the meaning. An effective listener could perform all four elements
at the same time.” This comment demonstrated that listening is an active activity that
necessitates a high level of concentration in order to learn and comprehend what the
speaker is demonstrating. In addition, listening is also an active activity that involves
speakers, listeners, content, and supporting elements such as images or diagrams
(Brown G. & Yule G. 1983). Ömer Kutlu (2009) mentioned that according to Devito
(1995), listening has a process of receiving a message, understanding, and evaluating it
through communication. Therefore, there was no doubt that listening is the key to all

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effective communication. People who are unable to listen effectively easily
misunderstand messages. As a result, communication breaks down, and the sender of
the message can easily become impatient or frustrated. Furthermore, Purdy (1997)
elaborated that “listening is the process of receiving, making meaning from, and
answering to spoken and/or nonverbal messages”. Meanwhile, listening is the process
of understanding what is heard and organizing it into lexical elements to which meaning
can be allocated (Goss, 1982). Besides, Gilakjani A.P (2016) mentioned that Bowen,
Madsen, and Hilferty (1985) demonstrated “listening is understanding the oral
language. Students hear oral speech, divide sounds, classify them into lexical and
syntactic units, and comprehend the message”. It can be observed that listening is the
process of receiving what the speaker says, making and exhibiting meaning with the
speaker, and answering, as well as generating meaning through participation,
concentration, and empathy. Although, authors concluded the definition to this study:
“Listening is receiving language through the ears”. In this study, the language is
English.
2.1.2. The importance of listening

Nowadays, listening plays a vital role in our lives. Everyone listens for different
purposes such as entertainment, academic purposes, or obtaining the necessary
information. Besides, listening is also extremely essential to learning languages since
they enable one to gain insights and information, as well as communicate effectively.
To begin with, Hamouda (2013) emphasized “listening skill is very important in
acquiring understandable input. Without input, learning cannot take place”. Besides,
listening also has an important role in communication as it is said that, listening takes
up 40-50%, speaking 25-30%, reading 11-16%, and writing about 9% (Gilakjani and
Ahmadi, 2011). Moreover, listening is the most frequently used language skill (Morley,
1999; Scarcella & Oxford, 1992). It helps learners to succeed in language learning to
enhance comprehensible input. Since learners’ self-reliance in listening will be
increased, students will be motivated to have access to spoken English such as
conversations with native speakers.

In addition, listening is necessary for better communication. Truly, having a good


ability in listening is one of the main skills that have to be mastered by language

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learners. Rost (2009) argued that “listening helps us to understand the world around us
and is one of the necessary elements in creating successful communication”. In fact,
listening helps people identify problems, gain information, and increase their ability to
communicate successfully with speakers. Listeners can learn and avoid communication
problems by observing the speakers’ vocabulary, grammatical structure, pronunciation,
and tone. And since their communication skills have improved, they will feel more
confident as well as comfortable.

To sum up, listening is not only the most important skill for learning a new language,
but it is also the one that allows language majors and other majors, in general, to create
thoughts, build closer relationships and communicate more effectively when studying
English. Hence, students should pay attention to listening skills to be more successful in
life.

2.2. Difficulties of English listening

2.2.1. Vocabulary
In English, vocabulary is considered a significant element.
Stæhr (2009) stated that “vocabulary knowledge is a significant factor for successful
listening comprehension”. It can be seen that listeners can sometimes comprehend the
surface meaning of a passage but they cannot guess the meaning of the keyword. Thus,
students can have substantial problems understanding the whole meaning of a passage
unless they are familiar with it. This makes learners hard to focus on the listening texts.
According to Wilkins (1972), “Without grammar, very little can be expressed; without
vocabulary, nothing can be conveyed”. It should be emphasized that without an
extensive vocabulary and strategies for acquiring new vocabulary, learners often
achieve less than their potential and maybe discouraged from making use of language
learning opportunities around them such as listening to the radio, listening to native
speakers, and using language in a different context. In addition, Yang (2009) also
pointed out that “a large vocabulary size can help listeners achieve
better comprehension”. In other words, when confronted with new words,
students will be proficient in using words to speak, listen, read, or write in specific
contexts and understand the meaning clearly. On the other hand, it is difficult without
vocabulary. Hence, vocabulary is an element that should be taken into consideration
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when listening

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to English. In reality, vocabulary is typically a big challenge for students during the
language learning process because memorizing vocabulary is difficult, especially since
it takes so long to build vocabulary. Thus, students who lack vocabulary proficiency
have difficulties hearing what others are saying.
As can be seen from the above points, vocabulary plays an important role in improving
learners’ listening skills. Language learners with more vocabulary will have better-
listening comprehension. Therefore, to improve listening skills, students should expand
their vocabulary as much as they can.
2.2.2. Pronunciation
In English, pronunciation is also play an essential role in listening comprehension.
According to Gilakjani (2012), “learners with good English pronunciation are likely to
be understood even if they make errors in the other area, whereas learners with bad
pronunciation will not be understood, even if they have perfect grammar”. There is no
doubt that pronunciation is an important ingredient of communicative competence and
listening comprehension. For instance, students who are proficient in pronunciation can
confidently present their thoughts and even precisely listen to the messages of others.
On the other hand, poor pronunciation can cause misunderstanding in communication
and the listener cannot get the main message of the speakers in the conversation or even
in the listening text. As a result, most of them encountered many difficulties in learning
process. To the utmost, when students practice how to pronounce an English word, their
mother tongue has influenced their pronunciation, causing them often pronounce certain
words inaccurately. In fact, knowing a lot of vocabulary is meaningless if you cannot
pronounce those words correctly and no one can understand the words that you are
trying to use. Furthermore, there are numerous strange words that students have never
heard how pronounced before, therefore they cannot recognize those words in the
listening texts. Besides, students also faced difficulties when listening because there are
some words that have the same pronunciation such as know-no, ate-eight, cell-sell,
hour-our, eye-I, and so on.
Additionally, Gilakjani (2012) stated that “students with good pronunciation are more
likely to be understood regardless of errors they make in other areas of their learning,
whereas students with bad pronunciation will not be understood even if their
grammar
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is perfect”. This statement showed that students with bad pronunciation cannot

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recognize the important information, understand the meaning of what they hear, or
grasp the main point. Furthermore, pronunciation instruction is of great importance for
successful oral communication to take place because it is an important component of
communicative competence (Hismanoglu, 2006). Hence, in order to comprehend
spoken messages, the learners should acquire how the sounds are pronounced. Then,
listeners may comprehend the need for phonetic, phonological, lexical, syntactic,
semantic, and pragmatic information.
In brief, pronunciation is the factor that causes difficulties in the listening of students.
2.2.3. The length and speech rate
The length and speech rate is also an obstacle for students in listening skills. First and
foremost, Underwood (1989) expressed that “speed can make listening passage
difficult”. There is no doubt that the biggest problem with listening comprehension is
that listeners are not able to control the speed of speech. For instance, words cannot be
repeated for listeners and they are unable to playback recorded material. Thus, this can
cause significant difficulties in listening. And it is also extremely difficult for teachers
to know whether their learners understood what they heard, as they choose when they
repeat listening texts. Addtionally, Galakjani (2016) mentioned that Azmi Bingol, Celik,
Yidliz, and Tugrul Mart (2014) stated that “the level of students can have a significant
role when they listen to long parts and keep all information in their mind”. As a matter
of fact, listening for more than three minutes and completing listening tasks are difficult
for students with lower levels. Additionally, the length of a conversation listening too
long makes learning more difficult, as well as makes learners lose concentration as they
cannot remember all the information. As a result, listening becomes useless. Hence,
short listening passages are easy for learners to comprehend and reduce their fatigue.
Furthermore, it is very difficult for students to comprehend what is going on when they
listen to the text at a rapid speech rate. Thus, speed can make listening passages difficult.
Also, if speakers speak too fast, students may have serious problems understanding
second language words. In this situation, listeners are not able to control the speed of
the speakers and this can create critical problems with listening comprehension
(Underwood, 1989).
It is conspicuous that the length and speech rate are the impediments causing the
difficulties in listening. Therefore, students should pay attention to this element.
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2.2.4. Psychological obstacles
One of the biggest challenges influencing students’ English listening is the
psychological obstacles. Psychological factors can affect students’ listening
comprehension achievement and make them anxious when listening. In fact, students
often get anxious when they do some listening exercises on listening subjects, especially
unfamiliar topics. Although the students have the same knowledge and the same
strategies for their listening comprehension, they still have different scores on their
listening comprehension test, because their self-efficacy and anxiety level are different
especially for the early second years students.
In addition, anxiety is a feeling of tension, apprehension, and nervousness associated
with the situation of learning a foreign language. As Scarcella and Oxford (1992)
mentioned that “listening anxiety occurs when students feel they are faced with a task
that is too difficult or unfamiliar to them”. If the listeners are under the false impression
that they must understand every word, this anxiety is exacerbated. Truly, the anxiety
makes students difficult to focus on the speaker and easily forget what they just heard,
so it makes them difficult to understand what the speaker said. Moreover, self-efficacy
can affect the students listening comprehension (Abedini, 2009). Actually, if the
students think they do not have enough ability in listening comprehension, and they find
difficulties with it, they will give up immediately on their listening comprehension
which means they will have a failure from the start. Therefore, anxiety and self-efficacy
make students feel lack of self-confidence and motivation in listening.
Based on the explanation above, psychological obstacles have some influence on
listening ability.
2.3. Previous researches

The following is a review of previous studies on English listening problems perceived


by English Foreign Language students at different levels and by teachers of English.

In 2012, the study of Khamprated explored the English listening and speaking problems
faced by private vocational school students and determined the possible causes of their
problems. A questionnaire was used to collect quantitative data. The types of English
listening problems that participants commonly reported, such as local accents, speaker

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speed, cultural differences, and limited English grammar and lexical resources, were
among the major findings.

Hamouda (2013) investigated listening difficulties encountered by Saudi students


during their listening learning process. The study used a questionnaire and an interview
as part of a mixed-methods approach. The participants were 60 English-majored
freshmen at Qassim University. The findings revealed problems relating to speech
delivery such as the speed of speech, the bad quality of recordings, and the different
accents of the speakers, and to listeners such as a lack of concentration, anxiety, and
insufficient vocabulary.

Alrawashdeh and Al-zayed (2017) demonstrated a different aspect in their study of the
difficulties encountered by English teachers in teaching listening comprehension. The
instruments for data collection were a questionnaire for teachers and informal
interviews. The teachers identified three major issues that prevented them from
effectively teaching English listening comprehensions such as the learning environment,
the availability of sources and teaching aids, and the teachers' proficiency.

Tran T.Q. & Duong T.M. (2020) conducted a study in Vietnam to address listening
comprehension issues. The data collected from a questionnaire and a semi-structured
interview was analyzed statistically and qualitatively. The results revealed that the 115
English majors found listening texts (i.e. unfamiliar words, slangs, idioms, colloquial
words, and complex sentence structures) the most dominant cause of their low listening
comprehension. Furthermore, speedy delivery, unclear pronunciation, different accents,
anxiety, the invisibility of speakers’ facial expressions, and noise influenced their ability
to listen.

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CHAPTER 3. METHODOLOGY
This chapter describes the research methods used in the present study. It then presents
the population and sampling and research instruments. The last sections involve data
collection procedures, and data analysis methods.
3.1. Research design and methods

Documentary research method: Our research group classifies documents related to the
research topic to serve the assessment of the research overview.

Survey method by questionnaire: Our research group used a questionnaire designed on


the Google Form application with available answers and sent to English - majored
freshmen at Thu Dau Mot University.

Quantitative research: From the data of the respondents to the questionnaire, our
research group used Excel software to calculate values such as mean, standard
deviation, and percent to describe the actual results. On the basis of comparing the
values obtained from the investigation process, our research group points out some
valuable information.

3.2. Research instruments

Data for this study were collected through a questionnaire representing the quantitative
and qualitative methods, respectively. A questionnaire designed and used to measure
the frequency of ways to improve listening skills. The questionnaire consists of two
parts. Part 1 includes questions to collect personal information about the participants.
Part 2 is divided into 2 parts, part 1 is about the difficulties that students face when
learning to listen to English, the rest contains questions related to strategies that learners
may have used. These strategies consist of 20 items, of which 20 are related to students'
approach to improving listening skills, divided into 5 categories: determinative
strategies (DET), social strategies (SOC), metacognitive strategy (MET), mnemonic
strategy (MEM) and cognitive strategy. strategy (COG) (Schmitt, 1997). The options
are defined as SA=Strongly agree, A=Agree, N=Neutral, D=Disagree, and SD=Strongly
disagree.

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3.3. Setting, population, and sample
English - majors from Thu Dau Mot University participated in the research. Most of
them have difficulty in the process of English listening practice improving their
listening skills. The tools of the thesis are questionnaires and interviews designed to
find out students' obstacles while listening to English. The researcher has chosen the
questionnaire as a very useful tool because it provides a relatively cheap, fast and
efficient way to obtain large amounts of information from a large number of people
(Saul McLeod, 2014). Survey of 100 students and based on the answers to list the
ways students use to improve their English listening skills. However, variables such as
age, sex, and place of residence were not investigated in this survey. Research
objectives are clearly explained and students are willing to participate in the survey.
3.4. Data collection and analysis

3.4.1. Data Collection

Data was collected from answer links of English - major freshmen at Thu Dau Mot
University. The results obtained 100 answers. The data collected from the questions
were analyzed to find out the reason why the English- major freshmen at Thu Dau Mot
University do not have good English listening skills and then find ways to improve their
listening skills in English. The number of samples is small, but it is still enough to
provide valuable information on solutions to improve English- major freshmen at Thu
Dau Mot University.

3.4.1.1. Questionnaire
The answers from the questionnaire were noted from Strongly Agree (1), Agree (2),
No Ideas (3), Disagree (4), Strongly Disagree (5) respectively. Therefore, out research
group examined the data from the questionnaire and calculated the percentage using
excel. As regards the data from the interview paper at Dau Mot University, our research
group would identify the main point that related to the purpose of the research.

3.5. Research Instruments

Research data was collected through a questionnaire designed by Google Drive. The
questionnaire was designed and used to measure the number of students with difficulty
improving their English listening skills. The questionnaire consists of two parts. Part 1
includes questions related to the survey's personal information. Part 2 are questions
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related to the research topic and the answers are Strongly Agree (1), Agree (2), No
Ideas (3), Disagree (4), Strongly Disagree (5)

3.5.1. Procedures

The study process took place over 12 weeks and was carried out according to the table
below:
Duration Activities
- Identified the research topic and writing
outline
The first three weeks
- Looking for materials to support the
research
- Designing the questionnaire
From the 4th week to the 7th week
- Delivering the questionnaire
- Synthesizing and analyzing the collected
The last five weeks data
- Completing the thesis

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REFERENCES

1. Alrawashdeh, A.I. & Al-zayed, N.N. (2017). Difficulties That English Teachers
Encounter while Teaching Listening Comprehension and Their Attitudes towards
Them. English Language Teaching. Retrived from <
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316502226_Difficulties_That_English_Te
achers_Encounter_while_Teaching_Listening_Comprehension_and_Their_Attitude
s_towards_Them > on 11th March 2023.
2. Brown, G. & Yule, G. (1983). Teaching the spoken language (Vol. 2). Cambridge
University Press.
3. Gilakjani, A.P. & Sabouri, N.B. (2016). Learners’ Listening Comprehension
Difficulties in English Language Learning: A Literature Review. English Language
Teaching. Retrived from < https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1101226.pdf > on 11th
March 2023.
4. Goss, B. (1982). Listening as Information Processing. Communication Quarterly, 30,
304-3.
5. Hamouda (2013). An Investigation of Listening Comprehension Problems
Encountered by Saudi Students in the EL Listening Classroom. International
Journal of Academic Research in Progressive Education and Development, 2, 113-
155.

6. Hismanoglu, M. (2006). Current Perspectives on Pronunciation Learning and


Teaching. Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, 2(1), 234-239.
7. Khamprated, N. (2012). The Problems with the English Listening and Speaking of
Students Studying at a Private Vocational School. Bangkok: Graduate School,
Srinakharinwirot University.
8. Kutlu, O. & Aslanoglu, A.E. (2009). Factors affecting the listening skill. World
Conference on Educational Sciences. Retrived from <
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877042809003577/pdf?md5=6
e3e10da3cc89536463822003d09d719&pid=1-s2.0-S1877042809003577-main.pdf
> on 11th March 2023.

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9. Maung, W.Y.Y. (2019). The Effect of Listening Activities on Students’ Listening
Comprehension. International Journal of Trend in Scientific Research and
Development. Retrived from <
https://www.academia.edu/download/60494043/442_The_Effect_of_Listening_Acti
vities_on_Students_Listening_Comprehension20190905-87421-dlu13h.pdf > on
11th March 2023.
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What is listening? Retrived from <
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/285272127_What_is_listening > on 11th
March 2023.
11. Rost, M. (2002). Teaching and Researching Listening (2nd ed.). Edinburgh: Pearson.
12. Rahimi, A., & Abedini, A. (2009). The interface between EFL learners’ self-
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ROYAL, 3(1), 14-28.
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individual in the communicative classroom (p. 63). Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle.
14. Stæhr (2009). Vocabulary Knowledge And Advanced Listening Comprehension In
English As A Foreign Language. Cambridge University Press.
15. Tran, T.Q & Duong, T.M (2020). Insights into Listening Comprehension Problems:
A Case Study in Vietnam. PASAA. Retrived from <
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16. Underwood, M. (1989). Teaching Listening. New York: Longman
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Listeners. International Education Studies, 2(4), 134-139.

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APPENDICES

QUESTIONNAIRE

Dear friends,
We are currently an English- major from Thu Dau Mot University. We are conducting
research about “Ways to improve listening skills for English-majored freshmen at Thu
Dau Mot University”. We are very happy that you spend your valuable time helping me
answer the following questions. Please carefully complete the following questionnaire
related to the listening problems that you are facing in listening English. Your
information is very important and useful for our research. Once again, thank you so
much!
PART 1: DEMOGRAPHIC INFORMATION
Fill in the blank with your answers or put X in the box;
1. I have studied English for...........year(s).
2. Why do you study English?
 To get a better job
 To apply scholarship
 To communicate with foreigners
 To go abroad for vacation/ business
 Other reason(s):………………………..
3. How important English is?
 Very important
 Important
 Not important
 Very not important
4. You like to learn English.
 Strongly agree
 Agree
 Disagree
 Strongly disagree

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5. Where do you usually listen English?
 Social media (Youtube, Facebook, Tiktok,…)
 In class
 English club
 Other place:…………………
6. Do you think passive listening is a good way to improve your English listening skills?
 Strongly Agree
 Agree
 No Ideas
 Disagree
 Strongly Disagree
7. What are your strategies to practice/improve your English listening skills?
 Practice listening (news, conversation,…)
 Watch foreign movies
 Listening to music
 Other way(s): ……………………

PART 2: CONTENTS OF THE SURVEY

What are your thoughts on English listening skills of English-majored freshmen at Thu
Dau Mot University?

Put X in the boxes of your choice.

Strongly Agree = 1

Agree = 2

No Ideas = 3

Disagree =4

Strongly Disagree =5

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Statements 1 2 3 4 5

1. Living environment
affects English
listening skills

2. Lack of vocabulary
so can't listen to
English well

3. Linguistic challenges
(different accents and
dialects, speed of
speech)

4. The inability to
concentrate

5. Limited cultural and


social knowledge

6. Listening to English
song improves
listening skills

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7. Focus on the new
words

8. Listen to key points

9. Practice listening to
foreign newspapers

10. Joining English


club to improve
listening skills

11. No training
environment

12. Listening method


isn’t correct

13. Haven’t found the


motivation to practice
listening to English

14. Try to translate into


Vietnamese when
listening to English

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15. Talking with
foreigners often to
improve listening
English
16. Living environment
affects English
listening skills

17. Lack of vocabulary


so can't listen to
English well

18. Linguistic challenges


(different accents and
dialects, speed of
speech, unclear
pronunciation)
19. The inability to
concentrate

20. Limited cultural and


social knowledge

21. Listen to English


song to improve
listening skill

22
22. Focus on the new
words

23. Listen to key points

24. Practice listening to


foreign newspapers

25. Joining English


club to improve
listening skills

26. No training
environment

27. Listening method


isn’t correct

28. Haven’t found the


motivation to practice
listening to English
everyday

23
29. Talking with
foreigners often to
improve listening

30. Talking with


foreigners often to
improve listening
English

THANKS FOR YOUR CONTRIBUTION!!!

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