DIFFICULTIES IN STUDYING TOEIC LISTENING COMPREHENSION OF NON–ENGLISH MAJORED FRESHMEN AT TAY DO UNIVERSITY, VIETNAM

Abstract

TOEIC Certificate is becoming more and more popular all over the world in general and in particular, Vietnam. It is considered as one of the most compulsory demands for graduating university, especially at Tay Do university. Listening seems to be a skill that many students usually face difficulties in learning. Therefore, the survey research “Difficulties in studying TOEIC Listening Comprehension of non – English majored freshmen at Tay Do University” was conducted to figure out common difficulties in studying TOEIC listening of non-English majored students. Freshmen of Bachelor of Tourism and Travel Management class at Tay Do university were chosen as the participants. Questionnaire and interview were used as instruments to collect the data. The findings of the study would point out learners’ difficulties consisting of general difficulties (vocabulary, pronunciation, background knowledge and psychological) and difficulties in each part in the TOEIC listening test. Thanks to the results, some solutions would be suggested for students’ improvement.

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European Journal of English Language Teaching
ISSN: 2501-7136
ISSN-L: 2501-7136
Available on-line at: www.oapub.org/edu
Copyright © The Author(s). All Rights Reserved.
© 2015 – 2020 Open Access Publishing Group 16
DOI: 10.46827/ejel.v6i1.3297
Volume 6 │ Issue 1 │ 2020
DIFFICULTIES IN STUDYING TOEIC LISTENING
COMPREHENSION OF NON–ENGLISH MAJORED
FRESHMEN AT TAY DO UNIVERSITY, VIETNAM
Hiep Thanh Nga Nguyen,
Thi Minh Uyen Phan
i
,
Thi My Duyen Huynh,
Thi Kim Huong Tran
Tay Do University,
68 Tran Chien St., Le Binh Ward,
Cai Rang District, Can Tho City,
Vietnam
Abstract:
TOEIC Certificate is becoming more and more popular all over the world in general and
in particular, Vietnam. It is considered as one of the most compulsory demands for
graduating university, especially at Tay Do university. Listening seems to be a skill that
many students usually face difficulties in learning. Therefore, the survey research
“Difficulties in studying TOEIC Listening Comprehension of non – English majored
freshmen at Tay Do University” was conducted to figure out common difficulties in
studying TOEIC listening of non-English majored students. Freshmen of Bachelor of
Tourism and Travel Management class at Tay Do university were chosen as the
participants. Questionnaire and interview were used as instruments to collect the data.
The findings of the study would point out learners’ difficulties consisting of general
difficulties (vocabulary, pronunciation, background knowledge and psychological) and
difficulties in each part in the TOEIC listening test. Thanks to the results, some solutions
would be suggested for students’ improvement.
Keywords: TOEIC, listening, difficulty, non-English freshmen, university
1. Introduction
This chapter addresses the rationale, the objection of the research, the significance of the
study and research organization.
i
Correspondence: email uyenphan.taydouni@gmail.com

Hiep Thanh Nga Nguyen, Thi Minh Uyen Phan, Thi My Duyen Huynh, Thi Kim Huong Tran
DIFFICULTIES IN STUDYING TOEIC LISTENING COMPREHENSION OF
NON–ENGLISH MAJORED FRESHMEN AT TAY DO UNIVERSITY, VIETNAM
European Journal of English Language Teaching - Volume 6 │ Issue 1 │ 2020 17
1.1 Rationale
Nowadays, language plays a vital role in human’s life. In today’s era of globalization and
internationalization, we cannot deny the importance of English in lives and social
development. English is considered as an international language used to exchange
information, either for those who speak it as their first language and those who speak it
as a second language. It is considered as an effective tool to communicate effectually in
the process of integration. Having good English proficiency is an indispensable condition
to get a promising future for many people.
English has become a prerequisite for job seekers, so a number of English learners
wish to sit for worldwide standardized English tests such as IELTS, TOEFL or TOEIC.
Among these, TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication) has been
increasingly applied in both workplace and educational institutions. Many universities
offer English courses based on students’ TOEIC test scores. At Tay Do University, the
TOEIC test has been used since 2016 to classify students’ English proficiency. Students
have to get at least a TOEIC result with 450 scores to meet the requirements for
graduation.
Traditionally, a TOEIC test consists of two sections, which are designed to test
candidates’ two skills: listening and reading. Generally, listening skill is considered as
the most essential as well as the most difficult skill for students. Because it comprises
different task types with various topics. Listening is a prominent skill and plays a
significant role. Although the more vital listening is, the harder they are to learn.
Listening in any language requires focus and attention. Non-English majored freshmen
at Tay Do University still face some difficulties because of two main reasons. Firstly, the
general difficulties in the whole TOEIC listening test are vocabulary, background
knowledge and pronunciation. Secondly, some elements can affect each of parts such as
psychological, the speed rate, the length, unfamiliar word, etc.
For these above reasons, the research “Difficulties in studying TOEIC Listening
skill of non-English majored freshmen at Tay Do University” has been conducted to gain
insights into the difficulties encountered by students in TOEIC listening. Thus, based on
the difficulties stated in this study, students can find out the difficulties and methods to
improve their skill.
1.2 The Aims of the Study
The purpose of this study is to explore the difficulties of studying TOEIC Listening
Comprehension. Therefore, the study aims to answer the following research questions:
1) Do non-English majored freshmen at Tay Do University often get difficult in
studying TOEIC listening?
2) What challenges do they face in studying TOEIC listening?
1.3 The Significance of the Study
This study shows the difficulties that students at Tay Do University face in the listening
part of the TOEIC test. By doing this research, the researcher wants to help Tay Do

Hiep Thanh Nga Nguyen, Thi Minh Uyen Phan, Thi My Duyen Huynh, Thi Kim Huong Tran
DIFFICULTIES IN STUDYING TOEIC LISTENING COMPREHENSION OF
NON–ENGLISH MAJORED FRESHMEN AT TAY DO UNIVERSITY, VIETNAM
European Journal of English Language Teaching - Volume 6 │ Issue 1 │ 2020 18
students find out the problems and overcome them in order to improve their listening
scores.
1.4 The Organization of the Study
This study is divided into 5 main chapters:
• Introduction provides the rationale, significance and organization of the study.
• Literature review covers the theory of listening, consisting of definitions of listening,
the important of listening, overview TOEIC test, some obstacles that students get
in trouble in studying TOEIC Listening Comprehension.
• Methodology states the study’s method employed in the study, including research
questions, research design, participants, instruments and procedure.
• Results and discussion, give the results of the study in order to find out the common
mistakes that are troubling the participants in studying TOEIC Listening
Comprehension. This chapter consists of results, data analysis and discussion.
• Conclusion, limitations and recommendations give the conclusion, the limitations of
the study and suggest recommendations for further research.
2. Literature Review
This part presents the overview TOEIC test, the definitions of listening and its
importance, the general difficulties and its obstacles of each of parts in TOEIC Listening
Comprehension.
2.1 Definitions of Listening
Communication has various parts which could be effective with a view of improving the
productivity and effectiveness of interaction. Listening is one part of communication that
must also gain huge priority by an individual. In a variety of ways, there have been
numerous definitions of listening. Nunan (1998) asserted that “listening is the basic skill in
language learning. Without listening skill, learners will never learn to communicate effectively.
In fact, over 50% of time that students spend functioning in a foreign language will be devoted to
listening”. However, it appears as a challenge in the process of learning English. “Listening
is far more difficult than many people can image” because it “involves an active process of
deciphering and constructing meaning form both verbal and non – verbal messages” (Nunan,
1998). International Listening Association (1995, p.4-5) defined “the process of receiving,
constructing meaning from and responding to spoken or non-verbal messages”.
According to Underwood (1989, p.1), “listening is the activity of paying attention to
and trying to get meaning from something we hear”. In other words, a good listener, does not
only need to hear the words but also understands the meaning implied by the speaker.
Listening skill can be also defined as “Listening is the act of hearing attentively”. In addition,
Thomlison (1984) defines listening as “Active listening, which is very important for effective
communication”. Listening is a process of receiving, interpreting and reacting to a message
received from the speaker. “According to Management guru Tom Peters, Listening is an

Hiep Thanh Nga Nguyen, Thi Minh Uyen Phan, Thi My Duyen Huynh, Thi Kim Huong Tran
DIFFICULTIES IN STUDYING TOEIC LISTENING COMPREHENSION OF
NON–ENGLISH MAJORED FRESHMEN AT TAY DO UNIVERSITY, VIETNAM
European Journal of English Language Teaching - Volume 6 │ Issue 1 │ 2020 19
essential management and leadership skill”. Listening cannot be done only by ears. One can
listen with their eyes, sense, mind, heart and imagination.
Listening is often confused with hearing. Roland Barthes (1994), a linguist,
distinguishes between hearing and listening, stated that "Hearing is a physiological
phenomenon; listening is a psychological act". Hearing is the physical ability, while listening
is a skill. Listening skill allows one to make sense of and understand what another person
is saying. In other words, listening skill allows people to understand what someone is
talking about the meaning behind the words.
2.2 The Importance of Listening
Listening is the skill of understanding spoken language. Listening is an essential skill
presenting in most of the activities we carry out throughout our lives. In learning a
foreign language, it is extremely important to learn this skill. Listening plays a central
and possibly predominant part in the whole process of language learning. Listening,
speaking, reading and writing are the four skills that “indivisible range called
communication”. They are interrelated and interdependent. Furthermore, listening is an
important skill that allows us to receive, understand and evaluate information that is
communicated to us. As human beings, we seek to interact on a daily basis with each
other. According to Nadig (2010) "speaking is only half of the communication process needed
for interpersonal effectiveness. The other half is listening and understanding what others
communicate to us”. When nobody listens to a speaker or when a listener fails to
understand the message, communication is considered unsuccessful. Brownell (1994) and
Fracaro (2001), in Flynn et al (2008) state “listening is considered by some to be the single most
important element in the communication process, even more highly valued than speaking as a
communication skill necessary in the business world” (p.143-144). Everybody knows that in
order to listen to a message is not as simple as hear it, so the listener has to understand
the message and respond in the right manner.
Most relationships fall apart because partners feel unheard or misunderstood.
People often listen simply to respond, not to actually understand what is being said.
Listening is a key factor to the success of learning another language, especially in
studying English. That is the reason why the students have to pay attention to this skill.
2.3 The General Obstacles of TOEIC Listening
2.3.1 Vocabulary
Vocabulary has a considerable impact on listeners’ listening comprehension. It can be
defined as “words we must know to communicate effectively; words in speaking (expressive
vocabulary) and words in listening (receptive vocabulary)” (Neuman & Dwyer, 2009, p. 385).
In addition, Hornby (1995) defines vocabulary as “the total number of words in a language;
vocabulary is a list of words with their meanings”. In other word, it is a list or collection of
words or phrases usually alphabetically arranged and have meaning.
Vocabulary plays an indispensable role in language learning. The more student
master vocabulary, the more they can listen well. Vocabulary knowledge encompasses

Hiep Thanh Nga Nguyen, Thi Minh Uyen Phan, Thi My Duyen Huynh, Thi Kim Huong Tran
DIFFICULTIES IN STUDYING TOEIC LISTENING COMPREHENSION OF
NON–ENGLISH MAJORED FRESHMEN AT TAY DO UNIVERSITY, VIETNAM
European Journal of English Language Teaching - Volume 6 │ Issue 1 │ 2020 20
all the words we must know to access our background knowledge, express our ideas and
communicate effectively, and learn about new concepts. “Vocabulary is the glue that holds
stories, ideas and content together… making comprehension accessible for children.” (Rupley,
Logan & Nichols, 1998/99). In addition, Wilkins in Thornbury (2004) stated that “without
grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed. It means that
even someone has good grammar, but it will be useless if they do not know vocabulary”.
Words are the basis in learning a language. If students have a good command of
large numbers of vocabularies, they can achieve breakthrough in their listening skill.
Small knowledge of vocabulary directly weakens your listening ability. For example, in
sentences “you will view some seers trying to prove that the world is going to end” and
“They probably will not even remember the nighttime stroll”, the rate of students
answering correctly both questions is very low. Students said they were unfamiliar with
these blank words, so they just guessed the answer which increased the error rate. In their
daily learning, students do not pay enough attention to words recitation, which definitely
has a negative effect on their listening comprehension. Hence, shortage of vocabulary is
another reason of listening barrier.
From the above points, it seems reasonable to infer that vocabulary plays a
significant role in learners’ listening comprehension. Many words have more than one
meaning and some meanings are not common use so students can get confused. Thus,
the richer listeners’ amount of vocabulary is, the better their listening skill is.
2.3.2 Background Knowledge
Lack of background knowledge is one of the obstacles in listening. According to Goh
(2002) “language is rather like a mirror that reflects the national culture of its speakers”. In fact,
language cannot exist without culture. Culture can be explained as what the society
thinks and does, and the language is the expression off the ideas of the society. For this
reason, students need to have knowledge about the cultural background of the language.
Knowledge of cultural background refers to a country’s history, politics, economy and
customs, moral code, religious belief, etc. in the listening materials. Therefore, in order to
improve listening level of a language, having a command of its pronunciation and
vocabulary is far from enough, one must have profound knowledge of its culture as well.
This may imply that most learners have limited knowledge of their ways of dealing with
listening input and little awareness of the actual problems occurring during their online
processing.
Background knowledge is an extensive term to describe different kinds of
knowledge. According to Proverb (1990), “General background knowledge includes
knowledge of target culture, knowledge of the topic under discussion, and general world knowledge
of current affairs, arts, politics, and literature”. It can be referred that background knowledge
includes learners’ linguistics knowledge, world knowledge, understanding about the
context they are entering and their past experience which is same as acquiring new
knowledge. Anderson & Lynch (2000) stated that “lack of social cultural, factual and

Hiep Thanh Nga Nguyen, Thi Minh Uyen Phan, Thi My Duyen Huynh, Thi Kim Huong Tran
DIFFICULTIES IN STUDYING TOEIC LISTENING COMPREHENSION OF
NON–ENGLISH MAJORED FRESHMEN AT TAY DO UNIVERSITY, VIETNAM
European Journal of English Language Teaching - Volume 6 │ Issue 1 │ 2020 21
contextual knowledge of the target language can also present an obstacle to comprehension because
language is used to express culture”.
In short, background knowledge mentions all what learners have known, which
may strongly affect the way in which the listeners interpret and understanding the
message when listening. If you do not have vast knowledge in many fields, you cannot
apply your knowledge to the listening text. Consequently, successful comprehension in
listening takes place when the listeners have a good background knowledge.
2.3.3 Pronunciation
Pronunciation plays a critical role for students who want to master in both listening and
speaking. In other words, if students concentrate hard on their pronunciation, they will
be proficient in listening. In fact, Yates (2001) noted that “pronunciation relates to the
generation of sounds that we use to form meaning”. It includes paying attention to specific
sounds of a language. Aspects of speech beyond the level of the individual sound are
intonation, stress, timing rhythm, and how the voice is designed. It is a central
significance because it is a section of successful oral production or communicative
competence (Hismanoglu, 2006). In contrast, Gilakjani (2012) said that “learners with good
English pronunciation are likely to be understood even if they make errors in others areas, whereas
learners with bad pronunciation will not be understood, even if their grammar is prefect”. This
means if the listeners often pronounce some certain words inaccurately, they cannot
recognize those words in listening text. As a result, they cannot identify the main
information or the meaning of what they hear and grasp the main content. Moreover,
listeners fail in listening competence partly because their recognition of keywords is
weak, and their pronunciation is poor. Thus, one of the important steps in listening
competence is learning the way to identify and select sound signals corresponding to its
pronunciation.
In short, pronunciation is a big drawback for the students. That is the reason why
they usually face difficulties in listening. Thus, listeners should improve pronunciation
and practice it frequently because this would help to develop their skills and to perceive
the messages.
2.3.4 Psychological Factors
Psychological factors are those of the most complicated factors causing many difficulties
in listening English of many students. Psychological or emotional factors refer to the
psychological state of a student such as opinions, attitudes, status consciousness,
emotions, etc. that deeply affect the ability of listen. When the student is pre-occupied by
some other things and do not listen carefully what the other person is speaking, then
arises the psychological barrier in listening.
According to Dulay (1982), “when a student is exposed to a new language, his/ her first
internal hurdles are posed by the individual’s emotion barriers”. Indeed, listeners with a bad
mood find it difficult to concentrate on listening text. Moreover, when the student does
not listen to others, they will not be able to comprehend the message as it is intended and

Hiep Thanh Nga Nguyen, Thi Minh Uyen Phan, Thi My Duyen Huynh, Thi Kim Huong Tran
DIFFICULTIES IN STUDYING TOEIC LISTENING COMPREHENSION OF
NON–ENGLISH MAJORED FRESHMEN AT TAY DO UNIVERSITY, VIETNAM
European Journal of English Language Teaching - Volume 6 │ Issue 1 │ 2020 22
will not be able to give a proper feedback. They usually feel stressful when they cannot
listen clearly what English speakers are saying.
The listening work is greatly influenced by the emotion of the student. If students
are not in a good mood, they will not listen properly to what is being said and might say
things offending the speaker. Several emotions such as anger, nervousness, confusion,
restlessness, etc. affect the process of listening. To sum up, psychological factors are the
weaknesses of most students when learning TOEIC Listening Comprehension. Therefore,
students need to overcome them in order to study well.
2.4. Difficultes in Each Part of TOEIC Listening
2.4.1 Picture Description
50% of this part is the American’s accent and the rests are the accents of British,
Australian, New Zealand and Canada. Therefore, this part is regarded as the easiest part.
However, it is not that easy if students do not listen carefully. The examiners set many
traps for contestants in TOEIC listening. The main difficulties in this part are
homophones. It is easy to fall into this trap. Furthermore, using collocations instead of
simple words is one of the obstacles during listening. Moreover, having unclear and
invisible pictures makes students confused too. And the students cannot predict what the
speaker will say when the picture has too many details. For instance, the picture has a
boat in harbour in the center and some lamp-posts in the left. The correct answer
describes those lamp-posts, not a boat. Thus, the student has to examine carefully each of
the detail. To sum up, the more careful they are, the higher score they have in this part.
2.4.2 Questions and Responses
This part has a bigger amount of questions than other parts in TOEIC listening test. Some
students have difficulty in this part due to the rate of speech and the length of questions.
Most researchers agree that speech rate has created a problem in listening comprehension
and may be a key and controlling factor too. Most of the students complain that speech
rate seems to have an influential effect on their listening comprehension. The more
quickly the speed rate is, the more difficult they have. In addition, they cannot hear and
recognize what the type of question is, which makes them confused. Words are used in
many different contexts that make them bewildered. Furthermore, it is not easy to
understand what the speaker’s intention is.
2.4.3 Short Conversations
Listening Part 3 is one of the most challenging parts in the TOEIC listening test. In order
to achieve satisfactory success in this part of the test, one needs to improve both his
language skills and test-taking skills. When students listen to this part, they always try to
listen to more than they can, which makes them tired and miss much information. If they
can not concentrate on listening, they will not follow the conversation. Another difficulty
is to understand the content of listening texts with unfamiliar words. In addition,

Hiep Thanh Nga Nguyen, Thi Minh Uyen Phan, Thi My Duyen Huynh, Thi Kim Huong Tran
DIFFICULTIES IN STUDYING TOEIC LISTENING COMPREHENSION OF
NON–ENGLISH MAJORED FRESHMEN AT TAY DO UNIVERSITY, VIETNAM
European Journal of English Language Teaching - Volume 6 │ Issue 1 │ 2020 23
students get in trouble when listening different accents, which make it hard to hear
keywords in the conversation.
2.4.4 Short Talks
This part is considered as the most difficult part in TOEIC listening. Students do not have
time to preview questions so they cannot follow the text easily. Most of the time they
translate all the information into Vietnamese, that is why they easily miss the information
while listening. Furthermore, some find it hard to remain concentrated when listening
for a long time. Consequently, they feel tired and stressful.
3. Research Methodology
In this chapter, the methodology of the research includes research design, participants,
instruments and the procedure.
3.1 Research Design
In order to answer the research question stated in chapter 1, this survey research was
carried out at Tay Do University in Can Tho city. The participants are non-English
majored freshmen at Tay Do University, who would answer questionnaires and
interviews to gather information on their difficulties when studying TOEIC listening. The
collected information would be analyzed to show the research aims.
3.2 Participants
The participants of this study are 81 freshmen from non-English majored freshmen
Tourism and Travel Management 12 class, course XII at Tay Do University. There are 21
males and 59 females. They come from different areas, both rural and urban. They speak
Vietnamese as their mother tongue and English is considered as their foreign language,
which have been learned from 7 to 11 years. “Very easy TOIEC” is the book they use
during the first semester at university. It is a basis for them to get acquainted with TOEIC.
Therefore, it has fewer questions with an easier level than the real TOEIC test. This
provides reliable results and generalizes the findings of the research.
3.3 Instruments
3.3.1 Questionnaire
The questionnaire is considered a very common mean or instrument used to collect data
on phenomena, which are not easily observed, such as attitude, motivation, and self-
conceptions, or in other words, those in social science. Therefore, to seek for information
about the students’ recognition of difficulties as well as the ways they improve their
listening skills, the researcher used the questionnaire.
In the study, the questionnaire consists of 29 questions. The 81 copies of
questionnaire in English were given to the students in the non-English majored class,
course XII at Tay Do University, and 66 questionnaires were collected because other

Hiep Thanh Nga Nguyen, Thi Minh Uyen Phan, Thi My Duyen Huynh, Thi Kim Huong Tran
DIFFICULTIES IN STUDYING TOEIC LISTENING COMPREHENSION OF
NON–ENGLISH MAJORED FRESHMEN AT TAY DO UNIVERSITY, VIETNAM
European Journal of English Language Teaching - Volume 6 │ Issue 1 │ 2020 24
students were absent. The questionnaire included two parts which can be described as
follows.
Table 1: The Content of the Question Group
Group
Summary of the content of the question group
a. 1,2,3,4
Students’ background
b. 5,6,7,8,9
General difficulties in TOEIC listening
c. From 10 to 24
Difficulties in each of parts in TOEIC listening
3.3.2 Interview questions
In order to make the study more reliable, the interview papers were delivered to 15
students who were randomly selected in the non-English majored class, course XII at Tay
Do University with 5 questions which mentioned the difficulties when studying TOEIC
listening and 1 question about students’ solutions.
4. Results and Discussion
This chapter presents the results of the study to report basing on the reliable data
collected from the questionnaire and the interview. The results show difficulties in
studying TOEIC Listening Comprehension of non-English majored freshmen through
statistical evidence.
4.1 Results
This part shows the findings of the questionnaires and interview papers. The results are
drawn for analyzing necessary data and ideas that the researcher collected from 66 non–
English majored freshmen. The findings were split into two groups: the result of
questionnaire and the result of interview.
4.1.1 The Result of Questionnaires
The researcher got a lot of valuable and reliable information from participants thanks to
the questionnaires. The findings were classified into four basic items consisting of the
students’ background, students’ attitude, students’ evaluation on listening and students’
difficulties in studying TOEIC listening comprehension.
4.1.1.1 Students’ Background
Obviously, to realize the students’ level as well as their knowledge, the researcher needed
to get the information about their years of studying English. The following pie chart
shows the participants’ year of studying English calculated from this year (2018).

Hiep Thanh Nga Nguyen, Thi Minh Uyen Phan, Thi My Duyen Huynh, Thi Kim Huong Tran
DIFFICULTIES IN STUDYING TOEIC LISTENING COMPREHENSION OF
NON–ENGLISH MAJORED FRESHMEN AT TAY DO UNIVERSITY, VIETNAM
European Journal of English Language Teaching - Volume 6 │ Issue 1 │ 2020 25
Figure 1: Students' Years of Studying English
Looking at the chart, the biggest piece of the pie chart accounted for 65.2% (43/66)
of participants who have been studying English for 8 years. This means that they have
studied English since they were in grade 6th and they had 7 years learning English before
entering the university. Students who have learned English for 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13 years
made up for 4.5% (3/66), 6.1% (4/66), 15.2% (10/66), 3% (2/66) and 9.1% (6/66) respectively.
Thus, they must have had basic English knowledge.
To sum up, the percentage of students studying English 9-13 years was much
lower than that of the students who have learnt English 8 years. However, this does not
mean that they have good listening skill because the skill cannot be identified by the
number of years they spent studying English.
4.1.1.2 Students’ Attitude towards Learning English and English Listening Skill
As you know, English has become an international language and it is also a useful tool
for job requirements in many countries around the world in general and in Vietnam in
particular. Nowadays, most jobs demand some qualifications that relate to English. Thus,
students’ attitude towards the importance of learning English is shown clearly in this
chart.
Figure 2: The Importance of Learning English
62.10%
4.50%
6.10%
15.20%
3% 9.10%
8 years
9 years
10 years
11 years
12 years
13 years
77.3%
22.7%
0% 0%
0.0%
20.0%
40.0%
60.0%
80.0%
100.0%
Very important Important Normal Not important

Hiep Thanh Nga Nguyen, Thi Minh Uyen Phan, Thi My Duyen Huynh, Thi Kim Huong Tran
DIFFICULTIES IN STUDYING TOEIC LISTENING COMPREHENSION OF
NON–ENGLISH MAJORED FRESHMEN AT TAY DO UNIVERSITY, VIETNAM
European Journal of English Language Teaching - Volume 6 │ Issue 1 │ 2020 26
The crucial role of learning English cannot be denied. Looking at the figure, it is obvious
that the percentage of students who claimed that English was very important was
extremely high, more than three-fourths of the total numbers (77,3%) and 22,7% of non-
English majored thought that learning English was important. Whereas, no one thought
that English was normal and not important. The more important English students
consider, the more awareness they should raise.
Before entering the university, students had their own goals for their jobs in the
future. Indeed, there were many different aims. Although English was not their major,
they had to study and took English examinations for getting certifications, especially
TOEIC. Basically, their purposes of taking TOEIC test are shown in the following table.
Table 2: Students’ Purposes of Taking TOEIC Test
The purposes of taking TOEIC test
Findings
a. To fulfill the requirements of graduating university
25,7%
b. To be prepared for the future job
57,6%
c. To improve English proficiency
10,6%
d. To satisfy your interest
6,1%
Students who chose to take TOEIC test to prepare for their future jobs composed the
highest percentage, with over a half of the students (57,6%). This means that English is
an indispensable tool for finding a job with high salary nowadays. About 25,7% students
want to get TOEIC certificate to fulfill the requirements of graduating university, which
is a compulsory demand in most universities. There were 10,6% of students wanting to
improve their English proficiency because the higher score they want to get, the more
practice they should do. As a result, they can develop their English ability. Moreover,
6,1% students wish to satisfy their interest. So, students have many different opinions
about English, depending on their own purpose and passion on English.
4.1.1.3 Students’ Self-evaluation on their Listening Ability
Another significant key factor is that the freshmen made an evaluation on their real
listening ability. The level of listening skill of students is various because it depends on
the difference of the years they studying and their purpose of studying English. When
being asked “How do you evaluate your listening ability?”, there was no one believing
that their ability of listen was very good or good. They were not confident about their
ability. Conversely, the majority of freshmen thought that their listening ability was
average. This is proved in the highest percentage which represents 65,2% (43/66) of the
participants. Furthermore, the rate of students admitting they were bad at listening was
34,8% (23/66). This means that they still face some difficulties in listening whether they
study hard or not.

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DIFFICULTIES IN STUDYING TOEIC LISTENING COMPREHENSION OF
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European Journal of English Language Teaching - Volume 6 │ Issue 1 │ 2020 27
Figure 3: Students’ Self-evaluation on their Listening Ability
4.1.1.4 Students’ Difficulties in Learning TOEIC Listening Comprehension
Learning TOEIC listening was not really easy for non-English majored freshmen.
Therefore, they had to face a lot of obstacles when learning it. This study was split into
two main obstacles: general difficulties (vocabulary, background knowledge,
pronunciation and psychological factors) and particular difficulties in each part.
4.1.1.4.1 Students’ General Difficulties in TOEIC Listening
Most students have many difficulties in listening because of vocabulary, background
knowledge, pronunciation and psychological factors. The figure below shows their
problems in learning TOEIC listening comprehension.
Figure 4: Students’ General Difficulties in TOEIC Listening
Looking at the chart, the highest percentage was that of students choosing
vocabulary as the most difficult problem, with 34,8% (23/66). With unfamiliar words,
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
Very good Good Average Bad
0% 0%
65.2%
34.8%
34,8%
25,8%
22,7%
16,7%
Vocabulary
Background knowledge
Pronunciation
Psychological

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European Journal of English Language Teaching - Volume 6 │ Issue 1 │ 2020 28
students cannot not follow the information during the listening task. Even though there
are common words, they can not recognize any words because they mispronounce those
words. Thus, pronunciation comprised 25,8% (17/66) of the total number. Moreover,
some students considered background knowledge as a big problem. When having a
strange or uninformed topic, they are always confused. Hence, with 16,7% (11/66) it is
proved that students also have difficulty with psychological factors.
a. Vocabulary
Vocabulary is considered as an essential part of learning English. Without vocabulary,
the students cannot study English well. However, having a moderate amount of
vocabulary is not easy for the students, especially non-English majored freshmen at Tay
Do University. Therefore, it was one of the difficulties. Looking at the table below, we
could see the obstacles the students must face in vocabulary term.
Table 3: Difficulties in Vocabulary Term
Difficulties in Vocabulary term
Findings
a. Not having opportunity to use words regularly
53,2%
b. Hindering collocation
25,3%
c. Meaning of words in different contexts
21,5%
Giving a glance at Table 3, more than half of the students (53,2%) stated that they did not
have many opportunities to practise regularly new words in daily life. Although they
had studied numerous vocabularies, they used them so seldom that they could not
remember them for a long time, which made their vocabulary source limited. Thus, they
could not understand the listening text. Besides that, a hindering collocation was also a
big problem for the students, with the rate of 25,3%. In the TOEIC listening test, there are
more collocations than simple words. However, to study and understand collocation,
students should practise hard. The rest (21,5%) acknowledged that they had trouble in
understanding the meaning of words that were used in different contexts.
b. Background Knowledge
Following next is another difficulty – background knowledge. Looking at the chart
below, we could see some obstacles that the students have met.
Definitely, specialized terminology prevented learners from listening to the
content well, which was proved with the highest percentage (63,7%). It was hard for them
to study, remember and understand technical terms. Additionally, 24,2% of the students
felt that encountering unfamiliar topics made them confused. The remaining ones (12,1%)
stated that lacking cultural background inhibited them from foreseeing listening
contents.

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Figure 5: Difficulties in Background Knowledge Term
c. Pronunciation
It is no doubt that pronunciation is one of the weaknesses of students when listening.
Looking at the table, we could see some evidence that proved this notion.
Table 4: Difficulties in Pronunciation Term
Difficulties in Pronunciation term
Findings
a. Not recognize the words
67,4%
b. Not understand the meaning of word
19,4%
c. Not identify the main information
13,2%
The biggest difficulty for students was not being able to recognize the words, with the
highest percentage 67,4%. Mispronunciation leads to the fact that they find it hard to
recognize the spoken words, even though those words are familiar with them.
Furthermore, 19,4% of the students believed that with bad pronunciation, students could
not understand the meaning of words. Additionally, 13,2% of them could not identify the
main information of what they listened.
d. Psychological Factors
Moving to the last difficulty in learning TOEIC listening is psychological elements, which
is presented in this chart.
12.10%
24.20%
63.70%
0.00% 10.00% 20.00% 30.00% 40.00% 50.00% 60.00% 70.00%
Cultural background
Unfamiliar topic
Specialized terminology

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Figure 6: Difficulties in Psychological Factors Term
Concentration is a vital psychological factor for listening skill. Without
concentration, students cannot listen well. However, to keep a concentration is not easy.
More than half of the students (61,2%) thought that it was the biggest problem for them.
In fact, with a bad mood, it is hard to pay attention to listening. Besides, 26,2% of the
participants claimed that they were stressful when they could not listen clearly to the
content. Others (12,6%) found that listening for a long period of time is boring.
4.1.1.4.2 Students’ Difficulties in each of Parts in TOEIC listening
With different parts, the students face dissimilar difficulties. But which part is the most
difficult for them? With the following chart, it can be clearly seen.
Figure 7: Students’ Difficulties in each of Parts in Listening
From the figure, it is undeniable that the percentage of students who considered
the short talk as the most difficult part was 44%. 36% have trouble with the short
conversation, which means almost students fell in traps in these two parts. With 30
26,2%
12,6%
61,2%
0.00%
10.00%
20.00%
30.00%
40.00%
50.00%
60.00%
70.00%
Stressful Bored Concentrative
3%
16,7%
36%
44% Picture description
Questions and responses
Short conversations
Short Talk

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questions in the question-respond part, 16,7% of the students faced some difficulties. On
the contrary, only 2 students thought that the picture description part is the most
challenging, with a proportion of 3%.
a. Picture Description
In TOEIC listening, picture description is considered as the easiest part compared to other
parts. However, it is also very easy to make mistakes if students do not listen carefully.
Some obstacles in this part are shown in the table below.
Table 5: Difficulties in Picture Description
Statements
Strongly
agree
Agree
No idea
Disagree
Strongly
disagree
11. You find it difficult to see with
unclear and invisible pictures.
5,3%
27,4%
33,5%
19,5%
14,3%
12. You can not foresee what the
speaker says when the picture has
too much details.
13,7%
31,2%
25,6%
17,3%
12,2%
13. Using collocations instead of
simple words is one of your
obstacles during listening.
18,2%
55,7%
18,8%
7,3%
0%
14. It is easy for you to fall into
traps with similar- sound words.
26,9%
42,5%
25,1%
5,5%
0%
As can be seen from the table, the first statement stated that students had difficulty in
seeing with unclear and invisible pictures. With 3,5% “strongly agree” and 27,3% “agree”,
it was proved that some students got in trouble with this section. The highest percentage
(33,5%) was students having no idea of this statement. Additionally, the rest disagreed
(19,5%) and strongly disagreed (14,3%) with the problem. In statement 12, it was said that
they had many difficulties when they could not predict what the speakers said, 31,2% of
them chose “agree” and 13,7% of the total chose “strongly agree”, 25,6% gave no
comment on this statement because they had no idea, others disagreed (17,3%) and
strongly disagreed (12,2%) because it was not their problem.
For statement 13, 63,9% of the students agreed that collocation made them
confused because of their limited knowledge of collocation. (18,2% of them strongly
agreed and 55,7% of them agreed). 18,8% of students said they did not have an idea and
very few of them (7,3%) disagreed.
25,1% of students gave no comment on statement 14. Most of them (69,4%) agreed
that it was easy to fall into traps when encountering homophone words. (26,9% of them
strongly agreed and 42,5% of them agreed). Nevertheless, 5,5% of participants were
neutral about this difficulty and no one strongly disagreed.
To sum up, the biggest problem that the students have faced in this part was
collocation, with a very high percentage of 73,9%. Actually, to study, understand as well
as remember collocations are really hard.

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b. Questions and Responses
Apparently, this is a part which has only three answers for each question. The more
careful they are, the higher mark they have. However, the students also have problems
in this part. The results is demonstrated in the table.
Table 6: Difficulties in Questions and Responses
Statements
Strongly
agree
Agree
No idea
Disagree
Strongly
disagree
15. You are confused when you can’t
hear and recognize what the type of
question is.
13,7%
68,3%
11,6%
6,4%
0%
16. Words are used in many different
context that make you bewildered.
23,3%
58,7%
8,9%
5,4%
3,7%
17. The speech rate has created a
problem in listening comprehension.
62,3%
31,8%
5,9%
0%
0%
18. You can not easy to understand
what the speaker’s intention is.
12,4%
30,8%
36,2%
16,3%
4,3%
Let’s have a look at statement 15, not recognizing types of questions seemed to be a
difficulty obstructing the students from being able to listen well. Hence, most of the
freshmen thought that it was one of the difficulties in listening TOEIC with 82%. (13,7%
of them strongly agree and 68,3% of them agree). 11,6% of students had no idea about
this statement and 6,4% of them disagreed.
As for statement 16, it was uncomplicated to see that more than half of the
participants (58,7%) admitted that they had a trend of being used words in many different
contexts. Similarly, there was 23,3% of them who strongly agreed with this statement. In
contrast, 5,4% of them said they disagreed, very few of them thought that it was not
absolutely true and 8,9% of them had no idea. Statement 17 revealed the number of
freshmen approved that it was hard for them to catch up with the speech of the speakers.
About 62,3% strongly agreed and 31,8% agreed felt that the speech rate was too fast, and
they could not follow. The remaining ones were 5,9% had no idea and no one disagreed
this statement.
With statement 18, about 12,4% of participants strongly agreed and 30,8% of them
agreed that they were confused when they did not understand the speakers’ intention.
Nevertheless, 36,2% of students had no think about it and 20,6% of them did not think
that was their difficulty. (16,3% of them disagreed and 4,3% of them strongly agreed).
In short, almost students (94,1%) revealed that the speech rate of the speaker
prevented them from able to listen well. In fact, the faster the speaker talk, the less
fluently they listen. Thus, the student should practise more and more by listening to some
English news such as VOA, BBC learning English, etc.
c. Short Conversations
Continuing with another problem in the conversation part, three statements were about
the difficulties of students in this part illustrated in the table.

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Table 7: Difficulties in Short Conversations
Statements
Strongly
agree
Agree
No idea
Disagree
Strongly
disagree
19. It’s difficult to understand the
content of the texts if you face with
unfamiliar words.
53,4%
33,7%
12,9%
0%
0%
20. You get in trouble in listening
from many different accents.
27,3%
35,8%
26,3%
10,6%
0%
21. It is hard for you to hear key
words in a conversation.
21,2%
34,3%
34,2%
10,3%
0%
Looking at the table, the percentage of the respondents who strongly disagreed with the
three statements in the table was zero. Nevertheless, the percentage choosing “strongly
agree” and “agree” was almost overwhelming. In detail, 53,4% of them strongly agreed
that to understand the content with unfamiliar words was a big problem, 33,7% of
freshmen agreed, 12,9% no idea and no one disagreed. In statement 20, more than half of
the participants agreed that they got trouble in listening from many different accents.
(27,3% of students strongly agreed and 35,8% of them agreed). About 26,3% of them gave
no comments. And only 10,6% disagreed. As for the statement 21, 34,3% of participants
agreed that it was hard to recognize keywords in conversation. Besides, the percentages
of freshmen choosing “strongly agreed”, “no idea”, “disagreed” were 21,2%, 34,2% and
10,3% respectively.
In summary, with the highest percentage 53,4% of them strongly agreed and 33,7%
of them agreed in statement 19, it meant that unfamiliar words were the most drawback
in this part. Without vocabulary, they might not listen and understand the content.
d. Short Talks
Table 8: Difficulties in Short Talks
Statements
Strongly
agree
Agree
No idea
Disagree
Strongly
disagree
22. It doesn’t have time for you to
preview the question so you can’t easily
follow the text.
32,5%
46,3%
21,2%
0%
0%
23. You often translate all the
information into Vietnamese so you can
easily miss the text while listening.
68,7%
25,4%
5,9%
0%
0%
24. You find it hard to keep your
concentration when listening in a long
time.
29,3%
61,3%
9,4%
0%
0%
Definitely, it was clear that no one chose the column of “strongly agree” and “disagree”
was zero. Getting started with statement 22, the difficulty was their ability to follow the
text when they could not preview the question. It can be deduced that approximately
fourth-fifths of students (32,5% strongly agreed and 46,3% agreed) had a big problem.

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Conversely, 21,2% of them had no comment on this statement. The next one, statement
23, it stated that translating all the information into Vietnamese made them easily miss
the content while listening. The percentage of the respondents who concurred was 68,7%
strongly approved and 25,4% approved. The rest ones 5,9% had no opinions.
Additionally, as the statement 24 “You find it hard to keep your concentration when
listening in a long time” was stated, more than a half of freshmen showed their agreement
with this (61,3%). Similarly, 29,3% of them strongly agreed with the fact that they could
not concentrate on listening to text when listening for a very long time. Yet, 9,4% of them
believed that it was not a big deal and they had no idea about this.
From the findings above, zero percentage for all the column of “strongly agree”
and “agree”, it proved that almost students got the most difficulty in this part. Actually,
this part made students confused when listening to a short talk but having a lot of
information.
4.1.2 The Results of Interview
After analyzing the interviews of fifteen freshmen carefully, the researcher got the final
results that were in accord with the results of the questionnaire. First of all, when asking
the participants about the reason why they took the TOEIC test, most of them gave the
answers that met the researcher’s expectation. 9/15 students thought that English was an
international language; therefore, this certificate could be helpful for their future job.
Three students shared their ideas that it was one of the compulsory demands for
graduating from university so that they must take it. The rest were the participants whose
purpose of taking the TOEIC test was to improve their English proficiency.
Secondly, as reading the answers to the next interview question, listening seemed
to be a challenge for the students. The researcher found out that almost all fifteen
interviewees (15/15) considered listening was more difficult than reading in the TOEIC
test. For some reasons, “with different accents of foreigners, I can’t listen clearly” said the
students. Additionally, it was hard for them to understand what the speakers said
because of lacking vocabulary, pronunciation as well as background knowledge.
As for the interview question 3, “Which difficulties do you face when learning
listening in TOEIC?”. They listed out some difficulties such as their vocabulary source
limited so they could not listen well. Moreover, bad pronunciation prevented them from
recognizing the words even though it was a familiar word. Furthermore, “I was confused
when meeting unfamiliar topics” said the student. Thus, lacking background knowledge
was also a big problem for them.
When being asked among those difficulties “which was the most difficult factor
that made them not listen well?”. Of all fifteen students, there were eleven students who
did think that vocabulary was the most difficult key factor affecting them when learning
TOEIC listening. Lacking vocabulary could make the students misunderstand the
listening contents. Students did not use the words that they learnt regularly, so they were
easy to forget those words. This caused a problem that they could not recognize the
words they learned before when facing a test of listening. Others shared their ideas that

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the speech of the speakers made them embarrassed. When the native speakers spoke
fastly, they could not follow their ideas and did not understand what is said.
Additionally, students themselves also suggested some solutions to improve their
listening. Almost students thought that vocabulary was an indispensable thing for
studying English and in particularly TOEIC listening. Thus, they wanted to improve their
vocabulary source through reading English books, learning by heart new words,
watching films that had English subtitle, etc. Especially, they practised to put new words
to a particular context and combine it with others in its context. That helped them to
remember new words so long. The other ideas of students were listening more day by
day via listening media or internet. This allowed them to improve their reaction with the
speech rate and the spoken accents.
4.2 Discussion
The result of the questionnaire indicates that many of freshmen from non-English
majored class have been studying English for 7-9 years. It means that they spent at least
7 years studying English before entering university. However, they still face drawbacks
in listening. Therefore, in this research was to figure out the difficulties in learning
listening TOEIC of non-English majored freshmen at Tay Do University. In addition,
based on the research results, freshmen at Tay Do university encounter various listening
difficulties which may relate to vocabulary, background knowledge, pronunciation,
psychological and factor affecting each of the parts.
Firstly, in general difficulties, vocabulary was one of the biggest difficulties for the
students. They are easy to forget those words because many words have more than one
meaning and students seldom use. Even though, a word can be used in different contexts.
Thus, it led students to misunderstand what they heard. In addition, they were not able
to understand the listening text because of lacking vocabulary. They could not remember
so much vocabulary that they do not use regularly. Besides, their mispronunciation also
led them to difficulties in their listening. Even, they could not recognize the familiar
words. Additionally, lacking background knowledge was another problem for freshmen.
They always felt confused with unfamiliar topics. Thus, they could not foresee the
intention of the speaker. Because these topics were strange and it had many unfamiliar
words, phrases. Thus, they got anxiety. Furthermore, psychological also affected them
when listening. With a bad mood, they could not pay attention or concentrate on the
listening test. Or listening in a long time was made them tired and listened no effectively.
Finally, factor affecting each of the parts in TOEIC listening, with different parts,
students faced different problems. In the picture description part, the most difficulty was
similar-sound words. When listening to those words, they also fell into traps because
they could not recognize those words. Besides, collocation prevented them from listening
well. It was too hard for them to remember many collocations which they seldom use. In
another part – the question–respond part, the students could not listen fluently with the
fast speech of the speakers. They could not catch up with the speaker’s ideas and miss
the content. And they were confused when they could not hear the type of question.

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Different accents of the speaker made the students difficult in listening conversation in
part 3. Some native accents were too hard for them to listen well. Moreover, unfamiliar
words inhibited them to understand the listening content. The final part – the short talk,
it was considered as the most difficult part in TOEIC listening. While listening, they had
a habit of translating everything into Vietnamese. Thus, it was easy to miss the
information in the content. And listening in a long time made them not continue to
concentrate on the listening text. As a result of the research, the higher mark in TOEIC
listening they wanted to get, the more time they should practised.
5. Conclusion, Limitations and Recommendations
This chapter contains conclusion, limitations and some recommendations for the further
research.
5.1 Conclusion
Nowadays, English plays an essential role in social life as no one can exist without the
air. More and more people have learnt English. In fact, it is undeniable that English is one
of the most common languages in the world. Therefore, taking an English certificate is
very necessary such as TOEIC, TOEFL, IELTS, etc. However, studying a new language
or getting a certificate, particularly English, is not easy for the students. Actually, they
have faced many difficulties to study it. Indeed, non-English majored freshmen at Tay
Do university are a specific example. They had to get a TOEIC certificate for graduating.
Between two skills in TOEIC- listening and reading, they revealed that listening skill is
the most challenge for them to study. During the process of learning TOEIC listening,
they recognize many difficulties that limit their listening skill. After collecting and
analyzing the information and data, the researcher figured out some common difficulties
of freshmen in learning TOEIC listening. Thanks to precious information from
questionnaires and interviews we could see that the barriers were about vocabulary,
pronunciation, background knowledge, psychological and some difficulties in each of
parts in TOEIC listening test. In fact, that learning listening skill is not very difficult if
students know clearly their difficulties and they have some ways to solve their
difficulties.
For example, facing difficulties in vocabulary could be drawn from the fact that
students did not use frequently English words or not taking note the word, so that they
would fail to get information from the text during listening. Another difficulty was
background knowledge. Students could not have enough knowledge to understand all
fields in life, so they were hard to listen to unfamiliar topics or many specialized words.
They should spend much time on self-studying as possible to gain knowledge of different
fields and large vocabulary source. Additionally, the pronunciation was a problem for
the students. Having mispronunciation led them to not recognize words and
misunderstand the content of the listening text. Moreover, they got trouble with

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psychological factors. They felt ambiguous and discouraged in learning if they lose
orientation in determining the core information when listening.
Besides these difficulties, there were many other drawbacks in each of parts
affecting students’ listening ability. Listening similar-sound words made them confused.
They were easy to fail in traps with the words which had the same sound. Furthermore,
the speech of the speaker made them not to catch up with the spoken ideas. It led them
to miss much information. With unfamiliar words, they could not hear and understand
the listening content. And listening in a long time would make them tired and not
continue to concentrate on the text.
In brief, the research “Difficulties in studying TOEIC Listening Comprehension of
non – English majored freshmen at Tay Do University” intended to figure out the
problems that non-English majored freshmen faced in learning TOEIC listening. It helped
them to find out some appropriate solutions to overcome those difficulties. Thus, the
students should make a lot of effort, try their hardest and spend time for self-studying to
improve their listening ability.
5.2 Limitation
Although the supervisor and friends instructed and supported me enthusiastically, there
were still some limitations. Actually, it is the first time the researcher conducts such a real
study so that it can be unavoidable. Despite the researcher made an effort to collect
information from participants many times, the number of participants was limited. In
fact, there were 81 students in the class; however, only 66 students took part in the
questionnaire. Additionally, it wastes a lot of time in analyzing the data from some
participants did not focus on fulfilling the questionnaire.
5.3 Recommendation
This research can be seen as a basis for further research. Actually, the researcher can
develop their research with a larger number of the participant. Based on the results of
this survey, students also realize their difficulties and have some suggestions to help
them to improve their listening skill. I conclude with my ideas about the solutions to
improve the listening skill of the students.
First of all, I think that students should spend much time practising. Listening
various of topics helps them improve their background knowledge as well as vocabulary.
Furthermore, students should know to use suitable strategies for each of the parts in the
TOEIC listening test in order to get the best result.
However, students cannot improve themselves without teachers. Teachers play a
vital part such as a significant in building up their skill. Teachers will show their students
the ways in each stage of listening comprehension. Moreover, teachers advise their
students and support them to self-study at home. Hopefully, there will be some research
about solutions for students to overcome these obstacles.

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European Journal of English Language Teaching - Volume 6 │ Issue 1 │ 2020 38
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Hiep Thanh Nga Nguyen, Thi Minh Uyen Phan, Thi My Duyen Huynh, Thi Kim Huong Tran
DIFFICULTIES IN STUDYING TOEIC LISTENING COMPREHENSION OF
NON–ENGLISH MAJORED FRESHMEN AT TAY DO UNIVERSITY, VIETNAM
European Journal of English Language Teaching - Volume 6 │ Issue 1 │ 2020 39
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