Studying listening difficulties of medical doctor students at thai nguyen university of medicine and pharmacy

 TNU Journal of Science and Technology 225(11): 101 - 106 
 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 101 
STUDYING LISTENING DIFFICULTIES OF MEDICAL DOCTOR STUDENTS 
AT THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY OF MEDICINE AND PHARMACY 
Nguyen Quynh Trang
1
, Duong Cong Dat
2*
, Dang Phuong Mai
3 
1TNU - University of Medicine and Pharmacy, 2TNU - University of Education, 
3TNU – University of Information and Communication Technology 
ABSTRACT 
The study was conducted to find out the listening difficulties of the first year Medical doctor 
students who were studying English 1 and English 2 at University of Medicine and Pharmacy - 
Thai Nguyen University and then proposed some possible solutions to improve their listening skill. 
The study employed quantitative method to collect data via questionnaire and interview. The 
results of the study revealed that the majority of listening difficulties pertains to two main factors, 
namely the speakers, and the listeners. Specifically, students’ listening difficulties include 
intonation, word stress, speed of speech, ending sounds, elision and linking sounds, insufficient 
vocabulary in medical fields, lacking basic knowledge and medical knowledge. Based on the 
findings, the study proposes some effective methodological practices to improve students’ 
listening skills. 
Keywords: communicative English; listening skill; listening comprehension; difficulties in 
listening skill; difficulties in listening comprehension 
Received: 21/8/2020; Revised: 19/10/2020; Published: 20/10/2020 
KHẢO SÁT NHỮNG KHÓ KHĂN TRONG VIỆC HỌC KỸ NĂNG NGHE 
CỦA SINH VIÊN BÁC SĨ Y KHOA TẠI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC Y DƯỢC 
- ĐẠI HỌC THÁI NGUYÊN 
Nguyễn Quỳnh Trang1, Dương Công Đạt2*, Đặng Phương Mai3 
1Trường Đại học Y Dược – ĐH Thái Nguyên 
2Trường Đại học Sư phạm – ĐH Thái Nguyên 
3Trường Đại học Công nghệ thông tin và Truyền thông – ĐH Thái Nguyên 
TÓM TẮT 
Nghiên cứu này được tiến hành nhằm tìm hiểu những khó khăn của nghe hiểu mà sinh viên bác sĩ 
Y khoa năm thứ nhất trường Đại học Y Dược - Đại học Thái Nguyên gặp phải khi học tiếng Anh1 
và tiếng Anh 2, từ đó đề xuất một số giải pháp để cải thiện kỹ năng nghe hiểu cho sinh viên. 
Nghiên cứu sử dụng phương pháp nghiên cứu định lượng để thu thập dữ liệu qua bảng câu hỏi 
điều tra và phỏng vấn. Kết quả từ khảo sát chỉ ra rằng, những khó khăn chủ yếu mà sinh viên gặp 
phải khi học kỹ năng nghe liên quan đến hai yếu tố chính: từ người nói, và từ người nghe. Cụ thể, 
những khó khăn của sinh viên khi nghe gồm có ngữ điệu của câu, trọng âm của từ, tốc độ, âm 
cuối, các hình thức nuốt âm và nối âm, thiếu từ vựng chuyên ngành, thiếu kiến thức cơ bản và 
chuyên ngành y. Nghiên cứu đã đề xuất các giải pháp thích hợp để việc học kỹ năng nghe của sinh 
viên tích cực và hiệu quả hơn trong lớp học. 
Từ khóa: Tiếng Anh giao tiếp; kỹ năng nghe; kỹ năng nghe hiểu; những khó khăn trọng việc học 
kỹ năng nghe; những khó khăn khi học nghe hiểu 
Ngày nhận bài: 21/8/2020; Ngày hoàn thiện: 19/10/2020; Ngày đăng: 20/10/2020 
* Corresponding author. Email: datdc@tnue.edu.vn 
DOI: https://doi.org/10.34238/tnu-jst.3513 
Nguyen Quynh Trang et al. TNU Journal of Science and Technology 225(11): 101 - 106 
 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 102 
1. Introduction 
Training learners’ skills of communicating 
and using foreign languages are considered a 
fundamental goal of teaching and learning 
English at the tertiary level in Vietnam. Since 
the school year 2017-2018, Thai Nguyen 
University of Medicine and Pharmacy 
(TUMP) has implemented the integration of 
foreign language modules with English for 
specific purposes (ESP) to help students apply 
their language abilities to study specialized 
subjects which were taught in English. 
Among the four basic major-skills of learning 
English, listening comprehension is the 
decisive skill to acquire language and to 
process information. Flavia [1] affirmed that 
listening is no longer a passive skill but 
becomes an active skill, in which learners 
play an active role in listening and processing 
information, understanding the content and 
finally giving feedback to that information. 
According to Hamouda [2], language learners 
often have trouble with listening 
comprehension because teachers often focus 
on teaching the knowledge of grammar, 
vocabulary, and reading ability at high school. 
Although innovative textbooks are designed 
with listening parts, listening skills are not 
taught and practiced as often as other skills. 
Furthermore, through observations at many 
schools in rural or mountainous areas, the 
teaching of listening skills is even ignored 
due to poor facilities, poor quality of 
loudspeakers, and no listening parts in the 
examinations. According to the Student 
Affairs Department, the majority of TUMP's 
students come from Region II, Region III in 
rural areas and the northern mountainous 
provinces of Vietnam. There are only a few 
students coming from big cities. 
Consequently, the majority of TUMP's 
students have difficulty in learning listening 
skills, especially listening to specialized fields 
when studying English 1 and 2. 
As TUMP’s teacher of English for 10 years, 
the researcher found that studying the main 
difficulties that students face when learning 
listening skills is essential. The researcher 
expected that the solutions of the research not 
only help teachers choose appropriate 
teaching methods but also help learners 
improve their listening skills. 
2. Subjects and methods of the study 
To choose the samples of the study, the 
researcher used Slovin’s formula n = N/ (1+ 
Ne
2
) (with e = 5%) and got the sample size of 
219 students of the total of 475 students. They 
were the freshmen and were studying English 
1 and 2 at TUMP in the first and second 
semester of the school year 2019 – 2020. 
In this study, the researcher used quantitative 
approaches in order to provide a more 
complete understanding of the research 
problem. The primary tool for collecting data 
used in this study was the questionnaire, 
which was divided into 2 main groups of 
difficulties: from the speaker and from the 
listener perspectives. The researcher also used 
4 open-ended questions to interview 10 
students, 5 students with good listening test 
results and 5 students with low listening test 
results to provide more corroborative 
evidence to the results of the study. 
The researcher used Statistical Package for 
the Social Science (SPSS ver 20.0) to analyze 
and interpret the data gathered from 
questionnaires. With the help of the software, 
the researcher determined to obtain accurate 
results of frequency counts, percentage, mean 
rating and weighted mean of difficulty in 
listening. The data from the interviews was 
inputted into Microsoft Excel software and 
then was calculated. 
3. Findings and discussion 
3.1. Difficulties from speakers 
The listening difficulties from the speakers 
are illustrated in Table 1. It shows that the 
highest percentage of the difficulty which 
students encounter is the last sounds (s, es, ed, 
Nguyen Quynh Trang et al. TNU Journal of Science and Technology 225(11): 101 - 106 
 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 103 
k, t, f) with the mean value of 3.69. This 
data shows that the ending sounds are one of 
the biggest challenges for students in 
acquiring information. This may be because 
students' pronunciation is not correct or the 
final sounds in English are not paid much 
attention when pronouncing. Gilakjani [3] 
said that if a word is pronounced differently 
from the way it was pronounced during 
learning, the listener cannot realize that it is 
the same word. They even forget the 
existence of it. The second difficulty is the 
fast speaking speed and intonation, and the 
speaker's stress with a mean of 3.68. 
Likewise, the simplified forms (swallowing 
and linking) and strange pronunciation also 
contribute to hindering students' listening 
comprehension. Conversely, noise and other 
interrupting sounds are the least difficult. It 
can be said that recordings from the speaker 
handle sound well. 
Regarding to the level of difficulty from the 
speaker, Table 2 shows that students often 
have difficulty in hearing the last sound 
accounting for 65.2%, followed by the strange 
pronunciation with the high level of difficulty 
of 64.3%. Words stress and intonation are 
also difficulties that most students face with 
as high as 63%. In addition, the fast speaking 
speed in the recordings also made it difficult 
for students to listen with high level of 61.2%. 
This result is the same in the research by [4] 
"Fast speed is the biggest obstacle for 
students because the majority of students do 
not follow the sequence of words and cannot 
understand the content of listening 
comprehension". 
Table 1. Difficulties from speakers 
 Samples Mean Std. Deviation 
1. Fast speed 219 3.68 .822 
2. Strange pronunciation 219 3.51 .925 
3. Number of speakers (more than 2) 219 2.49 1.042 
4. Ending sound (es, ce, se, ed, k, t ...) 219 3.69 .884 
5. Simplified forms (swallowing and linking) 219 3.65 .924 
6. Word stress, intonation of the sentence 219 3.68 .897 
7. Signal words (however, although, but) 219 2.91 .924 
8. Colloquial word (wanna, gotta, gonna) 219 2.74 1.121 
9. Noise and other interrupted sound 219 2.81 1.125 
Overall mean 3.24 
Legend: 1 - 1.79: never/ rarely 1.8-2.59: sometimes 2.6-3.39: often 
 3.4 - 4.19: usually 4.2-5.0: always 
Table 2. Level of difficulty from the speaker 
The difficulties 
Level (%) 
Low Medium High 
1. Fast speed 9.6 29.2 61.2 
2. Strange pronunciation 13.3 32.4 64.3 
3. Ending sound (es, ce, se, ed, k, t ...) 9.2 25.6 65.2 
4. Simplified forms (swallowing and linking) 10 26 64 
5. Word stress, intonation of the sentence 13.3 23.7 63 
Legend: Low = never + sometimes Medium = often 
 High = usually + always 
Nguyen Quynh Trang et al. TNU Journal of Science and Technology 225(11): 101 - 106 
 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 104 
3.2. Difficulties from listeners 
From Table 3, it can be seen that the lack of 
specialized vocabulary is the most difficult 
factor for students to study English programs 
integrated with specialized modules. It 
accounts for the highest mean value of 3.80. 
This indicates that students do not have a 
sufficient amount of specialized English 
knowledge to be able to listen and understand 
the context. The second difficulty with an 
average mean value of 3.79 is that students do 
not have an effective listening method. Most 
students have a habit of trying to hear each 
word. They do not have enough vocabulary to 
judge the context and guess the context. The 
lack of basic and specialized knowledge ranks 
third among the listener's difficulty with an 
average mean value of 3.75. The causes of the 
problems may be because students do not 
focus on English at high school. Most of them 
focus on the subjects which are for university 
entrance. The next difficulty is the students' 
poor pronunciation, inaccuracies and the 
limited ability to judge the content with the 
mean value of 3.68. On the contrary, poor 
psychology, health as well as the ability to 
focus are not challenging for students. The 
table points out that students have a stable 
mentality, good health and concentration 
ability when learning a foreign language with 
average mean values for each category of 
2.83 and 2.85 respectively. 
It can be clearly seen from Table 4 that 
students have the most difficulty in listening 
because the lack of specialized vocabulary 
accounts for 73% in high level. The next 
difficulty level is the lack of basic and 
specialized knowledge with a high level of 
67.6%. An ineffective listening method which 
accounts for a high level of 63% shows that 
students have not been advised to choose an 
effective listening method when learning 
English 1 and 2 at TUMP. 
Table 3. Difficulties from listener 
 Sample Mean Std. Deviation 
10. Lack of specialized vocabulary 219 3.80 .969 
11. Lack of basic and specialized knowledge 219 3.75 .980 
12. Psychological and health problems (sad, worried, tired ...) 219 2.83 1.155 
13. Poor / inaccurate pronunciation 219 3.68 1.049 
14. Poor concentration 219 2.85 1.018 
15. The ability to judge the content is limited 219 3.54 .992 
16. The listening method is not effective (trying to hear each word ...) 219 3.79 .918 
Overall mean 3.46 
Legend: 1-1.79: never/ rarely 2.6-3.39: often 4.2-5.0: always 
 1.8-2.59: sometimes 3.4-4.19: usually 
Table 4. Level of difficulty from the listener 
The difficulties 
Level (%) 
Low Medium High 
6. The lack of specialized vocabulary 11 16 73 
7. Lack of basic and specialized knowledge 10 22.4 67.6 
8. Inaccurate pronunciation 13.7 26.9 59.4 
9. The ability to judge the content is limited 17.3 27.4 55.3 
10. The listening method is not effective (trying to hear each word.) 7.3 29.7 63 
Nguyen Quynh Trang et al. TNU Journal of Science and Technology 225(11): 101 - 106 
 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 105 
3.3. Interview result 
When answering about the amount of time 
students spend listening at home, 100% of 
students with low listening test results said 
that they did not spend time listening at home. 
This result is similar to the conclusion that the 
author [5] has pointed out "Most students do 
not spend time practicing listening every 
day". Meanwhile, 100% of students with 
good listening results said that they listened to 
English whenever they have time. They often 
listened to English songs or English news. 
When answering the question “How do you 
think about listening lessons on class?” 100% 
of both groups thought that listening was 
difficult. In addition, when the author 
suggested about well-prepared pre-listening, 
80% of students with good listening results 
hoped they could follow the listening lessons 
well. Meanwhile, 100% of students with low 
listening test results had a neutral answer - “I 
don’t know.” 
4. Proposed major solutions and conclusions 
4.1. Some solutions to improve English 
listening comprehension skills for students 
4.1.1. For lecturers 
Lecturers should improve student 
pronunciation by making them to listen to 
different tones or practice listening and 
speaking with native speakers. They should 
ask students to learn by heart specialized 
vocabulary, and build their own specialized 
knowledge. Teachers should edit and improve 
the listening materials in order to motivate 
students to listen well. They also should guide 
students effective listening strategies... 
Although the curriculum has designed 
listening and understanding activities, 
lecturers still need to design more pre-
listening activities in an easy suitable and 
attractive way for both fair and weak students. 
Getting students familiar with the specialized 
vocabulary that will appear in the listening 
lesson will also help students to access and 
understand the listening lessons more easily. 
Some techniques can be applied such as: 
using medical situations for role-playing, 
videos about clinical situations so that 
students can actively discuss related topics 
before listening, using games or visual aids to 
engage students in the topic of the listening 
lesson while giving students listening tasks ... 
Teachers need to make the lesson more vivid 
by combining different methods because 
listening requires intensive concentration and 
it is difficult to maintain student interest. 
Teachers can choose listening songs with 
funny illustrations, attractive content or they 
can listen to the songs and ask students to fill 
in the blanks. The teacher can show or listen 
to a clinical situation, and students record as 
much dialogue as possible. 
4.1.2. For students 
First of all, students need to increase their 
self-practice time at home by practicing 
listening to good, easy-to-use, and appropriate 
listening resources (books, CDs, websites). In 
addition, students need to realize that 
persistence and regular practice are the keys 
to success for this subject. 
Furthermore, they also need to improve their 
understanding of a specialized field by 
reading and viewing specialized knowledge 
written in English on the World Health 
Organization website. Besides, students need 
to be bold, proactively communicate with 
foreign students in Thai Nguyen University or 
teachers, foreigners speaking English in the 
University. Active communication with 
foreigners is also one of the important factors 
that help students improve their listening 
comprehension ability. 
4.1.3. For university 
In order to help students effectively self-study 
English in general and listening 
comprehension skills in particular, the school 
needs to equip classrooms, reading rooms, 
Nguyen Quynh Trang et al. TNU Journal of Science and Technology 225(11): 101 - 106 
 Email: jst@tnu.edu.vn 106 
libraries, with materials and convenient 
technical equipment. For example, classrooms 
must be equipped with sound systems, 
audiovisual systems, projectors, and internet 
networks with good transmission lines to 
avoid blurry images and unclear sound. 
4.2. Conclusion 
Through research and investigation of the 
difficulties in learning listening skills of first 
year students of Medical Doctor, we can see 
the role and importance of listening skills 
when learning foreign languages in general 
and listening to English in the field 
specialized in particular. However, listening 
is considered the most difficult of the 
language skills (Listening, speaking, reading 
and writing). Therefore, the teacher is the first 
factor determining the student's development, 
so teachers have to improve their teaching 
style, provide qualified materials and always 
innovate the content so that it is vivid, 
accessible and engaging with students who 
love the subject. As for learners, it is 
necessary to identify the importance of 
listening comprehension skills in 
communication and future careers, thereby 
enhancing self listening practice, 
supplementing knowledge of English in 
specialized fields. 
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