DIFFICULTIES OF LEARNING LISTENING COMPREHENSION FACED BY 1ST-YEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS AT DONG NAI UNIVERSITY

Abstract

This study investigated the difficulties in English listening comprehension experienced by first-year English major students at Dong Nai University. Employing a quantitative approach, the research explored various factors impacting listening skills, including background knowledge, vocabulary, physical setting, psychological and pronunciation challenges. The findings reveal that students encounter a very high extent of difficulties across all examined categories. Key challenges identified include pervasive listening anxiety, difficulties maintaining concentration, and struggles with diverse English accents, intonation changes, and rapid speech rates. Furthermore, suboptimal physical learning conditions such as poor audio quality, background noise, and the inability to replay materials significantly impede comprehension. Lexical limitations, encompassing both general and specialized vocabulary, coupled with insufficient topical and cultural background knowledge, also present substantial barriers. These results strongly reject the null hypothesis that students do not experience significant challenges and robustly support the alternative hypothesis that a wide range of difficulties are encountered. The study underscores the complex interplay of internal and external factors hindering listening comprehension among these learners, providing crucial insights for developing targeted pedagogical interventions to enhance their listening proficiency.