Finally, we also would like to send our sincere thanks to anyone involved in aim of completing the research paper such as libraries, our friends and others. II. Abstract This paper investigates how to improve HUCFL first-year English major students’ listening skill . The research has been done with a small group of the first-year. The research developed a questionaire to find out the difficulties of the HULFL first-year students in listening and suggest some solutions as well. A random representative sample was selected from 40 first- year students belonging to English department of HUCFL .
With full responses and data were gathered, analyzed, compared and generalized, our group are taken out some strategies for common difficulties and our experiences to help students improve their listening skill effectively III. Introduction Of the four English skills- Listening, Speaking, Reading and Writing, it is supposed that listening skill is the most challenging. To obtain this skill requires a great effort from learners which emphasizes much practice. However, it is impossible for all learners to find out suitable ways to improve their listening skill.
This is one of the reasons why we do research on improving listening English skill. HUCFL English major first year students are the typical object of our research. The first reason for our subject choice is their relatively poor condition of learning English in general and English listening in particular. Most of the students of HUCFL come from the central part of Vietnam where most students do not have many opportunities to develop their English skills including English listening skill. Therefore, the first-year students face more difficulties in new learning environment.
The Essay on Can You Improve Someones Listening Skills
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said It is a luxury to be understood. Why is it that you can say the exact same thing to three different employees or coworkers at your company and get three different reactions? One will give you a blank stare. The second will respond with a stream of excuses. And the third understands what you are saying and comes up with a suggestion that you hadn't even considered. Why ...
Secondly, we learn the same major as them, so we can take advantage of our experiences in order to offer solutions which improve their listening skill as soon as possible. This research concerns the following problems: 1. What are listening skill levels of HUCFL English major first-year students now? 2. What are the difficulties faced by HUCFL English major first-year students when they are listening? 3. What are solutions suggested to improve the listening skill of HUCFL English major first-year students? III. Literature review 1. Listening English levels
Nowadays, there are a variety of international English frameworks that estimate level of language skills including listening skill, such as: IELTS, TOEFl, TOEFL ibt, British General Qualifications. Recently, The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) is the one that our university using. It is used around the world to describe learners’ language skills. The CEFR has six levels – from A1 for the most basic beginner to C2 for the very highest level of ability. The Common European Framework divides learners into three broad divisions that can be divided into six levels: A Basic User * A1 Breakthrough or beginner: Can understand and use familiar everyday expressions and very basic phrases aimed at the satisfaction of needs of a concrete type. * Can introduce him/herself and others and can ask and answer questions about personal details such as where he/she lives, people he/she knows and things he/she has. * Can interact in a simple way provided the other person talks slowly and clearly and is prepared to help. * A2 Waystage or elementary: * Can understand sentences and frequently used expressions related to areas of most immediate relevance (e. g. very basic personal and family information, shopping, local geography, employment).
Can communicate in simple and routine tasks requiring a simple and direct exchange of information on familiar and routine matters. * Can describe in simple terms aspects of his/her background, immediate environment and matters in areas of immediate need. B Independent User * B1 Threshold or intermediate: * Can understand the main points of clear standard input on familiar matters regularly encountered in work, school, leisure, etc. * Can deal with most situations likely to arise while travelling in an area where the language is spoken. * Can produce simple connected text on topics that are familiar or of personal interest. Can describe experiences and events, dreams, hopes & ambitions and briefly give reasons and explanations for opinions and plans. * B2 Vantage or upper intermediate: * Can understand the main ideas of complex text on both concrete and abstract topics, including technical discussions in his/her field of specialisation. * Can interact with a degree of fluency and spontaneity that makes regular interaction with native speakers quite possible without strain for either party. * Can produce clear, detailed text on a wide range of subjects and explain a viewpoint on a topical issue giving the advantages and disadvantages of various options.
The Report on The Benefit of Reading Novel for English Literature Students in Translation Class
The Benefit of Reading Novel for English Literature Students in Translation Class Maria Oktaviarini 081214005 Sanata Dharma University Jogjakarta This paper describes a research about the effect of reading novel that usually does by each student in English Literature Department. The writer wants to tell about how the activity may improve their skill in translating text. the writer will take a ...
C Proficient User * C1 Effective Operational Proficiency or advanced: * Can understand a wide range of demanding, longer texts, and recognise implicit meaning. * Can express ideas fluently and spontaneously without much obvious searching for expressions. * Can use language flexibly and effectively for social, academic and professional purposes. * Can produce clear, well-structured, detailed text on complex subjects, showing controlled use of organisational patterns, connectors and cohesive devices. * C2 Mastery or proficiency: * Can understand with ease virtually everything heard or read. Can summarize information from different spoken and written sources, reconstructing arguments and accounts in a coherent presentation. * Can express him/herself spontaneously, very fluently and precisely, differentiating finer shades of meaning even in the most complex situations. 2. Facing difficulties of listening skill * Different accents In a modern textbook, students have to not only deal with a variety of British, American and Australian accents, but might also have Indian or French thrown in. * VocabularyVocabulary includes not only words, but also expressions/idioms. You’re much better off knowing a great many of them.
The Essay on Becoming a Better English Student
Last year my ability to write was above the average of my English class. At the time I thought that reading and writing were the only things to English. This year I was handed a light to show me that reading and writing are only the outlines of English. When handed this light I started seeing the interior: the texture, the color, and a lot more about the high lights of English.The texture of ...
The fact of the matter is that knowing too few of them may turn into a big hurdle on your way to understanding speech. This is because when you encounter an unknown expression, you can’t help but dwell on it in an attempt to figure out its meaning. But in the interim the speaker keeps on rattling off his ideas, not knowing that he has already lost you and you’re left in the starting blocks. * Pronunciation English words can be difficult to pronounce – and when speaking English, you have to consider not only the pronunciation of the individual words, but also the connection between the words in the sentence.
There’s also the “rhythm” and intonation of the sentence to consider – and sometimes your mouth gets confused! * Necessary listening skill In listening comprehension, the new-heard sound will be kept for about onesecond in echo memory, during which students match sound and word withlinguistic knowledge and put the word in short-term memory. The function of short-term memory is to remember the word until listener organize the word into sentence and grasp the idea of it, then clear up the memory of the word to keep another new-heard information.
If students try to remember each word and sentence, short-term memory will be overloaded, and many words will be cleared up before being organized, thus they can just remember the last sentence they heard. | * Not focusing being easily distracted by background, noise or you find the communicator attractive/ unattractive and you pay more attention to how you feel about than to what they are saying. * Feeling unwell or tired, hungry, thirsty or needing to use the toilet. Especially, you are extremely unfortunate to get them in exams. 3. Solutions to improving English listening skill:
Here are a few things you can do to improve your listening skills as a high school student, college student or non-traditional student. * Come to class restedly Make sure you had a good night’s sleep and had a good meal. When your body is well taken cared of, your mental focus will be that much better. If you come to class sleepy, hung over, medicated or tired, it may be impossible for you to keep your eyes open and focus on what the speakers are saying. * Be prepared for class. You should prepare for your new lessons carefully, anything related to the topics that you will learn, such as: vocabulary, their pronunciation. Move to the front or “energy zone” of the professor/cassette… This is the part of the classroom, where the professor/cassette focuses most of his speaking energy when he speaks. This normally is the area, where students are giving the professor the most attention. Also move closer to the front so you won’t have any trouble seeing, hearing or paying attention. * Evaluate what you hear Think about what the professor’s or teacher’s words mean and how they relate to what you already know about the class subject. * Take great notes.
The Essay on Listening Skills 3
On way to reinforce listening skills is by asking a series of question to students as they ‘re reading passages from their textbooks. This method will encourage students to pay attention in order to answer questions at any moment during the lesson. Therefore, one student can read a text aloud while the rest of the class is following along reading quietly. During this time the teacher can pose ...
Since it’s impossible for even the best listeners to remember all that has been said, especially you are under pressure of exam. * Live and work in an English-speaking environment By joining some kind of sports, hobbies, or other activities with a group of English speakers. * Volunteer to speak with English-speaking tourists or find a position at a local tour company. This will allow you to practice your English listening skills on a regular basis with English speakers. The experience may be frustrating at first, but you will be immersed in an environment where you can quickly improve your English listening skills. Do a language exchange with an English speaker, in person or over Skype. Skype offers the major benefit of allowing you to communicate with someone who is a native speaker of the language that you wish to learn which is the best way to improve and develop English listening and speaking skills. * Watch lots of hours of movies, TV shows, and videos in English. Watch English movies without subtitles and try to follow along. Even if you do not understand each word, study the actors’ body movements and verbal cues to figure out what is going on.
Repeat the movie with the subtitles to see if you were correct in your comprehension. Remember, the subtitles generally do not match word-for-word, as they are designed to be read quickly, so use them as a way to understand what is happening within the scene and not as a perfect translation of what is being said. * Listen to English podcasts on a topic that’s interesting to you (but not on the topic of learning English).
IV. Findings and discussion 1. Subject of study This research was performed among HUCEF English major first year students.
The Essay on Pre-Sessional Academic English and Study Skills: Useful Links for Study
... improving academic skills, especially how to read a journal article http://unilearning. uow. edu. au/main. html BBC Learning English http://www. bbc. co. uk/worldservice/learningenglish/ English ... bbc. co. uk/worldservice/learningenglish/language/wordsinthenews/ Randall’s Cyber Listening Lab – many exercises: go ... a free lesson and pdf student book http://accentschool. com/run_software. html ...
The subject survey on 40 HUCEF English major first year students ,according to the following table Subject| Type of data collection| Quantity| HUCFL English major first year students| Questionaire| 40| 2. Procedures a. Questionaire: The purpose of using questionnaire was to investigate the attitude of students toward listening skill. The questionnaire consists of 10 questions. It was delivered to 40 students. The questions are clear in order to help students answer them as quickly and accurately as possible. The questionaire focuses on 3 questions: 1.
How are English listening skill levels of HUCFL English major first-year students now? 2. What are the difficulties that HUCFL first-year English majored students are facing when they are listening English? 3. What are strategies suggested to improve the listening English skill of HUCFL first-year English majored students? b. Data analysis: The data are collected from the survey questionnaire conducted on 40 students of the HUCFL English major first year students. Based on the collected data, the process is the key solution to improve listening skills of the HUCEF English major first year students.
Question Answer| A| B| C| D| E| 1| 7. 5%| 52. 5%| 15%| 25%| | 2| 10%| 55%| 32. 5%| 2. 5%| | 3| 27. 5%. | 72. 5%| 0%| 0%| | 4| 42. 5%| 15%| 32. 5%| 10%| | 5| 30%| 52. 5%| 5%| 12. 5%| | 6| 35%| 47. 5%| 5%| 10%| 2. 5%| 7| 2. 5%| 55%| 42. 5%| 0%| | 8| 32. 5%| 57. 5%| 10%| 0%| | 9| 20%| 12. 5%| 67. 5%. | | | 1. It can be seen from the table that most of students didn’t have an opportunity to learn listening subject at primary school. Only 10 percent students learned this subject at primary school while over a half of participants learned it at secondary school.
The students who did not have a chance to learn English subject until they were at high school are up to 15 percent. It is such a pity that one fourth of them only started learning it at university. Doubtlessly, HUCFL English major first-year students have to make up their late starts of learning this skill by making many efforts. 2. The table shows that only below 3% of students had their last semester listening exam done successfully from 76% to 100%. A number of students that achieved from 51% to 75% of their listening exam counted on nearly 33%.
The Term Paper on Ien English Students Language Academic
... frequently applied at IEN in order to develop student! s learning skills in academic environment. We organize group discussion in ... the English language studies at IEN English is to improve communication skills, especially at the stage of General English. This module of English ... and on the other hand have their listening reading skills practiced. Develop academic skills in order to get prepared for ...
Most of students (55%) got the results from 26% to 50%. Unluckily, there were up to 10% of students got from 0%-25%. Based on the above analysis, it is clear that most participants have troubles in listening English. 3. The chart indicates that there was only about a quarter (27. 5%) of HUCFL English major first-year students who were satisfied with the results of their last semester listening exam while the rest of them (72. 5%) were not. It shows that the results are not as high as the students’ expectation. Therefore, we should find out solutions to helping them improve their listening skill. . As we can see, the majority of students (42. 5%) chose Liaison as the most confusing thing that they face while listening English while about one thirds (35%) of them chose “Fast speaking speed”. Slang/ Idiom/Proverb were voted to be the third popular answer (15%) whereas “Various accents” was the most unpopular one(10%).
It can be concluded liaison and speaking speed are the most common difficulties which participants are facing. 5. There is a great difference in an amount of time which the students spend on learning listening skill.
Over 50% of population (52, 5%) spends from 2 hours to 5 hours per week practicing Listening skill. The number of participants spending 2 hours per week practicing Listening skill ranks second in all (30%).
There is only 5% of these students spend 5-7 hours a week doing like that while it was 12. 5 % of them spend over 7 hours practicing Listening skill. In conclusion, students did not used to spend many times practicing Listening skill, so that they did not make any remarkable improvement. 6. From the data, nearly 50% population considered that identifying main ideas is the most common.
Another sub-skill is finding key words ranked second- accounting on over one of third of population( 35%).
Predicting the content through body language, background… is chosen by 10% of participants. Another 5% were in favor of taking note. The left thought they most use other skills but did not mention what they were. Their choice expresses the way how to they usually deal with their listening skill and the most favorite way is identify main idea. 7. The table above shows that there was only 2. 5% of students who didn’t improve their English listening skill since they started learning in HUCFL.
Happily, the majority (97. 5%) students agreed that their English listening skill had been improved since they started learning at our university. 42. 5% of them considered that their listening skill had been improved a lot while it is over 55% of them still thought that it was not up to much. This is the reason why we suggested that they should change their methods to learn this subject to gain more knowledge. 8. According to the collected data, there was in total 90% students deciding to skip their difficulties while doing listening exercises, including 57. % of them would like to try several times before skipping and over 30% prefer to skip their difficulties immediately. This means that freshmen of HUCFL are not very patient while doing listening exercises. 9. The chart above indicates nearly a half of the students (67. 5%) wanted to combine learning listening English with entertaining, such as watching English films, listening to English songs. It is highly different that speaking English with foreigners, especially natives which was supported by 20% of these students. Surprisingly, the rest, only one eighth (12. %) chose the common way- doing listening English exercises. It is obvious that students have tendency to choose less stressful ways to improve their listening English skill. 10. This question required participants to give explanations to their answers. There were 67,5% of them that supported combination of learning and entertaining because almost they thought it is very interesting, which helps them learn effectively without stress or boredom. Some others considered watching English films or listening to music as their hobbies, so they were pretty pleasant to choose this solution.
The rest explained that such kinds of entertainment improve not only their listening skill but also their speaking skill, grammar, and vocabulary, so that they thought they could “kill many birds with only one stone”. One fifth of population that regarded doing listening English exercises as the best way gave their different explanations. For some students whose vocabulary was not rich enough, the most suitable way for them is practicing their listening skill with their suitable level exercises. Others thought that it is common but an academic learning way.
Others else had explanation in common with the group above: it is possible for them to develop more than only one skill, such as vocabulary, liaison, pronunciation… An interactive solution seems to be not supported much- only over 10% was likely to speak English with foreigners, especially natives to improve their listening skill. An obvious reason given is that they can improve both listening and speaking skill, consisting of pronunciation, vocabulary, … Some of them explained speaking English with someone is interesting and comfortable.
They also found it easy to guess the mean of speakers by their body language. The explanations of participants had showed the interesting and multi-funtional solutions are preferred. V. Research implication Listening skill seen to be difficult for students in university in general and HUCFL first- year students in particular. From our findings, three following suggestions are given. The first solution is watching English programs, film, videos or listening to English songs, which are supported by many students.
The reason why it is considered as the most favorite solution is combination of learning and entertaining (even enjoying favorite hobby), which helps students less stressful and more interested. The second solution is communicating with foreigners especially natives. It is suggested because of its differently useful impact on learners. Apart from improving listening skill, learners can also improve speaking skill, expand their vocabulary, idioms, … Last but not least, students should do listening English exercises.
This is an indispensable solution because they instruct you how to gain sub-skills support your listening skill, such as finding key words, identifying main ideas, predicting content through context… VI. Conclusion According to the research, it is obvious that HUCFL English major first- year students have difficulty in listening English skill. It can be explained that they have not got enough English knowledge that supports them while listening, such as: liaison, idiom, proverb, various accents, fast speaking speed and so on.
All of them are very challenging, however, our subjects have lacked self- studying and patience, which cannot make up their late start of learning listening English. To improve the situation, there are different solutions that we suggested, such as: doing more listening exercises, communicating with foreigners and watching English videos, films or listening to English music. And the last one is the most favorite- the combination of learning and entertaining. This is the first time we has done such a research so mistakes are unavoidable because of the restricted time.
In addition, population of our research are only 40 students so the data obtained does not reflect the most exactly. Besides, the research materials and other conditions also inhibited from getting more issues in reality related to improve listening skill. Therefore, the result of the research is not perfect as we had expected. We hope that readers, especially our teacher, are going to willing to forgive and contribute more information for our research. Suggestions for Further Study Firstly, further investigation into the most effective way to improve English listening skill of students.
Secondly, further investigation about necessary sub-skills support while listening English. Thirdly, further investigation about self-studying solutions to improve English listening skill. VII. Reference http://www. usingenglish. com/ http://www. english-test. net/ http://www. skillsyouneed. com/ http://en. wikipedia. org/ http://www. cambridgeenglish. org/exams-and-qualifications/ http://gvillage. org http://coachforyourdreams. com/ VIII. Appendix Questionaire 1. When did you start to study English listening skill? A. At primary school B. At secondary school
C. At high school D. At university 2. How many percent of your listening exam of last semester did you get? A. 0%- 25% B. 26% – 50% C. 51%- 75% D. 76% – 100% 3. Did you satisfy with your result? A. YesB. No 4. Which is the most thing confusing you while listening English? A. Liaison B. Slang/ idiom/ proverb C. Fast speaking speed D. Various accents 5. How many hours per week do you spend on practicing listening English skill? A. 0<…? 2B. 2<… ? 5C. 5< … ? 7D. >7 6. Which is the sub-skill that you use most while listening English? A. Finding key words
B. Identifying main ideas C. Taking note D. Predicting the content through body language, background E. Others: ………………………………………. 7. How has your listening English skill been improved since you started learning in HUCFL? A. None B. Not much C. Much D. Extremely much 8. What will you do when you face a difficult listening English exercise? A. You will skip it because you think you are just trying in vain. B. You will try several times, then you will skip if you cannot find out anything more. C. You will read the questions carefully again, then listen again.
Finally, you cannot do anything more you will ask for help. 9. Which of the following ways that you use most frequently in order to improve your listening skill? A. Doing listening English exercises B. Speaking English with foreigners, especially natives C. Combining learning and entertaining, such as watching English films, listening to English songs… 10. Please explain your answers of the ninth question. ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
