ANXIETY IN ACADEMIC LISTENING COMPREHENSION EXPERIENCED BY SECOND YEAR MAINSTREAM STUDENTS AT FELTE, ULIS, VNU

Abstract

Listening comprehension is at the heart of language learning, which helps learners not only understand second language (L2) speakers but also comprehend a variety of L2 multimedia and documents. Meanwhile, listening plays an important role in developing second language acquisition (SLA) (Dunkel, 1991; Rost, 2001; Vandergrift, 2007). However, listening skill has not been paid enough attention in Vietnam high school due to some reasons related to test format. Therefore, students may not have lots of chances to practice listening and learn effective listening strategies, which leads to many obstacles that students may face when entering a university, especially a language focused one like ULIS. With higher expectation from teachers and strict requirement from the course, students have to experience lots of difficulties when learning this subject. Besides, to accomplish C1 level at the end of the second-year, many students feel anxious in Academic English listening comprehension – the subject that they have to study throughout that year. This study has been undertaken to investigate into the current situation and find out the main causes that make students experience anxiety using questionnaires as well as reveal suggestions by interviews with teachers and from other research to help them overcome their anxiety. Thanks to the willing participation of students, the researcher categories the main causes of students’ anxiety into factors relating to the speaker, the listening text, the environment and the listener. Meanwhile, many suggestions are collected from the teachers participating in the interview and other research, which become pedagogical recommendations in teaching and learning Academic English listening comprehension that is demonstrated in the chapter conclusion. Therefore, this study could be considerably helpful for students, teachers as well as researchers working on the related topics.