HANOI OPEN UNIVERSITY

FACULTY OF ENGLISH

ASSIGNMENT ON SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

M.A Thesis Proposal

EFFECTS OF USING SOCIAL MEDIA TO ENHANCE ENGLISH

LISTENING COMPREHENSION SKILLS FOR THE SECOND-YEAR
STUDENTS AT A UNIVERSITY IN HANOI
(Hiệu quả của việc sử dụng truyền thông xã hội để nâng cao kỹ năng nghe hiểu
tiếng anh cho sinh viên năm 2 tại đại học ở Hà Nội)

NGUYỄN THỊ PHƯƠNG ANH

Date of birth: 28/11/2004
Group:K29A2
Field: English Language

Hanoi – 2023

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 TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents Page number
1. Introduction 2
1.1. Rationale 2
1.2. Aim and objectives 3
1.3. Scope of the study 4
1.4. Research questions 4
1.5. Structure of the study 4
2. Literature Review 4
2.1. Overview of previous studies 4
2.2. Theoretical framework 5

3. Proposed Research Methodology 7

3.1. Research approaches 8

3.2. Population and sample 8

3.3. Research methods 8

4. Proposed Chapter Outline 8
References 9

1. Introduction
1.1. Rationale
Listening is a significant language skill to develop because it provides input
for the learners and without comprehending input, they cannot learn anything.

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Despite its importance, listening has been ignored in second language learning,
research, and teaching. Thus, English language learners consider listening as the
most difficult language skill to learn and not easy to develop. Leaners have
problems in content of the listening text (e.g., unfamiliar words, idiom), lack of
concentration, distinguishing the word boundaries and concerned with speaker’s
speed of speech and different accents. Nowadays, more and more students
encounter the problem of being able to listen but not understanding the content.
It is crutial to find effective ways to solve this problem. In recent years,
people found that soscial media, can be effectively used as a pedagogical tool to
enhance the listening comprehension skills, compared with other traditional audio
recording tools. The primary goal of this study is to know whether social media is
capable of developing listening comprehension skills of the second-year students ,
and gaining the deeper understanding of the presented materials. In addition, using
these tools makes them familiar with the target language culture and it's native
speakers. Finally, the findings of the study showed that using social media can
enhance the listening comprehension skill of the second-year studets, reduce the
limitations whenever they have listening test.
In conclusion, students need to be encouraged by using English-language
social media contents in order to improve their English proficiency. It is known that
there is significant relation between use of social media content and English
proficiency. So, the use of social media is much needed in learning English. Due to
all reason-metion above, the researcher would like to choose the research paper
entitled: “Effects of using social media to enhance English listening
comprehension skills for the second-year students at a university in Hanoi”.
1.2. Aim and objectives
This research aims to enhance English listening comprehension skills
through social media for the second-year students at a university in Hanoi
The research objectives of the study are:
- Benefits of using social media to develop English listening comprehension
skills for the second-year students at a unversity in Hanoi
- Ways to improve the English listening comprehension skills for the second-
year students through using social media
1.3. Scope of the study
Academic scope: English listening comprehension skill

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 Social scope: the second-year students at a university in Hanoi
1.4. Research questions
- What are the benefits of using social media to develop English listening
comprehension skills for second-year students at a university in Hanoi?
- How can the English listening comprehension skills be improved for the
second-year students through social media at a university in Hanoi?
1.5. Structure of the study
This study consists of five chapters:
Chapter 1. Introduction, introduces the rationale for choosing the field for
studying, the aim and objectives, the scope of the study, the research questions.
Chapter 2. Literature review, discussion of previous studies that have addressed
the issue of communicative English.
Chapter 3. Methodology, presents research types, population, sample and research
methods.
Chapter 4. Results/Findings of the study, evaluates the results, illustrates
examples, finds out the causes and factors affecting English communication skills
and proposes solutions to improve English listening comprehesion skills for second-
year students
Chapter 5. Conclusion, summarizes the main points in the study, the major
findings of the investigation, concluding remarks, limitations and suggestions for
further study.

2. Literature review
The literature review is organized into two parts: Overview of previous studies
and theoretical background. The first part of the literature review summarizes
the previous investigation about using social media in English learning. The
second part of the literature review aims to review the benefits of social media
and the outcome of bring social media to improving listening comprehsion skills
in English through authentic material.
2.1. Overview of previous studies
Nowadays, social media has changed the way people communicate, convey
ideas and connect to others. There are some reasons why social media is also
popularly used in the field of education, such as it is used by students and the people
widespread; it offers a characteristic that other teaching media doesn’t have; and

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more importantly, it also brings some changes towards the conventional value and
concepts of students’ learning process.
Zhonggen, Liheng, Ping et.al (2022) concluded that mobile learning
technologies could significantly improve behavioural, social, cognitive and
emotional engagements and English learning outcomes compared with social media
tools. The traditional teaching tools did not improve behavioural, social, cognitive
and emotional engagements and learning outcomes as much as Rain Classroom and
WeChat did. Future research could focus on development of serious games to
improve student engagement and learning outcomes.
Tess (2013) showed the growth of social media and other Web 2.0
technologies is unprecedented . Social media technology has become an essential
part of personal life as users generate content, share photos, choose to ‘‘like’’, or
interact in a game. The ubiquity of social media is no more apparent than at the
university where the technology is transforming the ways students communicate,
collaborate, and learn.
Burbules(2016) explores the effects of various social media on the ways
people communicate, and the implications of these effects for the use of social
media in educational contexts. Facebook, Twitter, and a host of other applications
are being used in increasing numbers, especially by young people. It is where they
live, share, and learn, so it is to be expected that educators would want to find ways
to use these technologies to engage them. At the same time, however, these new
media come with a host of issues and dangers as well as possibilities. Creative
educators need to be aware of these in weighing the advantages and disadvantages
of social media for educational purposes.

2.2. Theoretical framework

2.2.1. Defination of social media
Social media is a tool of information and communication technology used by
people to communicate online. Social media is also one famous platform used by
people of every age and level. Social media is a thing as a result of the advanced of
technology nowadays (Monica & Anamaria, 2014). According to (Kaplan &
Haenlein, 2010), social media is a group of internet applications that allows the
creation of various content in the world. There are many kinds of social media such
as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, etc. These kinds of social media are easy

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to be signed up for free. It is also one of the reasons why most people use these
social media.

2.2.2. Defination of listening compresion skill

There have been different definitions of the term “listening comprehension.”
Rost (2013) and Hamouda (2013) defined listening comprehension as an interactive
process in which listeners are involved in constructing meaning. Listeners
comprehend the oral input through sound discrimination, previous knowledge,
grammatical structures, stress and intonation, and the other linguistic or non-
linguistic clues. Researchers defined listening comprehension as the various
processes of understanding and making sense of spoken language. These involve
knowing speech sounds, comprehending the meaning of individual words, and
understanding the syntax of sentences (as cited in Gilakjani & Sabouri, 2016)

2.2.3. The benefits of social media in learning English listening comprehesion skils
According to Ahmed (2016), Modern Media as an era technology supports
listening skill development greatly. It plays an important role in improving listening
skill. Several researches emphasize that the using Modern Media in processing of
learning English language and in improving listening skill has several advantages
a)The role of the text and visual as aids to language processing when appearing in
conjunction with the aural text;(b) the fact that combined media enrich target
language processing, thereby rendering input more direct and salient for the
language acquisition process; and (c) the motivational aspect of video as an
advantage for language instruction.
As suggested by Madden et al. (2013)—“the benefit of a classification
schema is that it allows researchers and practitioners to identify particular types or
uses of comments and separate these out for analysis” (p. 711)—this experimental
study aims to find out if YouTube comments can assist or increase L2 listening
comprehension of videos. In addition, we will explore participants’ perceptions
toward three constructs of comments as a listening help option (relevance, value,
and feasibility).
Thilaphan, Kanokkamalade, Klinchan, et.al (2020) described the results after
investigation the situation of student’s English-Listening from social media
improvement, the finding indicated that most of the students generally can speak

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English in the class very well. However, according to the additional comment
finding some students have problems with academic term. It meant some
respondents could speak general English. But they could not use academic English
such religious terms, Buddhist terms, and philosophical term and logic terms and so
on. Expression one’s own idea in English and hesitation to speak were also difficult
for them.

2.2.4. Ways to impove listening comprehension skills through social media

Using videos to facilitate learners’ listening comprehension has been greatly
discussed in the past two decades (Baltova 1994; Progosh, 1996; Canning-Wilson,
2000; Kusumarasdyati, 2004; Safarali and Hamidi, 2012).Video materials enhanced
students’ listening comprehension skills since they are able to derive meaning from
what they are watching and hearing thanks to the comprehensible input provided by
the environment in which the video takes place. The results of the study showed a
significant effect of input presentation modes on listening comprehension and their
interaction with text types.
Moreover, researchers suggested some significant guidelines for teachers to
insure successful active video viewing and to boost learning. These are: Segement-
allow your students to watch the video in short segments; Notes - videos are ideal
for developing note-taking skills. Take notes on the first viewing, then rewind,
replay and check them. This can be done individually or collectively as a class
discussion session; Pause - Use the "pause" feature to temporarily stop the video
and allow your students to try to predict/recall what will happen next; Sound off-
for video sequences that rely on visuals, turn the sound off and narrate. This
technique works especially well for listing the steps of a process; Picture off- use
the audio clues to describe what is on screen. Compare and contrast the predictions
with the actual video; Preview each video carefully to determine its suitability for
the lesson's objectives and student's learning outcomes.
In summary, this part investigated a number of previous studies on
enhancing English listening comprehension skills, the importance of social media
usage in the process of improving English listening comprehension skills for
university students and theoretical background related to some materials for
language learning and the use of social media.

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3. Proposed Research Methodology
3.1. Research approaches
To reach the goal of the research, the writer used two main research
approaches: quantitative and qualitative. The quantitative method was used to
collect data for the study while the qualitative method was applied to describe and
analyze the data of the study
3.2. Population and Sample
The population of the study are the students a unversity in Hanoi. The
study’s sample includes 30 second-year students at a university in Hanoi
3.3. Research Methods
To achieve the aim and objectives, the researcher used quantitative and
qualitative methods. The quantitative method was applied to investigate the
benifits of social media while the qualitative one was used to the way they uesed in
learning English listening comprehension skills by the second-year students at a
university in Hanoi.
The survey questionnaire consisted of 3 multiple – choice questions and 8
questions with 3 ranking scale responses. The researcher conducted the survey
questionnaire to collect data about the social media usage of 30 second-year
students in studying English listening comprehension skills.
4. Proposal Chapter Outline
Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1. Rationale
1.2. Aim and objectives of the study
1.3. Research questions
1.4. Scope of the study
1.5. Structure of the study
Chapter 2: Literature review
2.1. Review of previous studies
2.2. Theoretical background
Chapter 3: Methodology
3.1. Research approaches
3.2. Population and sample
3.3. Research methods

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Chapter 4: Results/Findings and discussion
4.1. Results/Findings
4.1.1. The benefits of social media in learning English listening comprehesion skills
4.1.2. Ways to impove listening comprehension skills through social media
4.2. Discussion
Chapter 5: Conclusion
References
Ahmed Ali Mutahar (2016) The Significance of Listening Comprehension in
English Language Teaching, ISSN 1799-2591 Theory and Practice in Language
Studies, Vol. 6, No. 8, pp. 1670-1677, August 2016
https://www.academypublication.com/issues2/tpls/vol06/08/tpls0608.pdf#page=154
Baltova, I." Impact of Video on The Comprehension Skills of Core French
Students" Canadian Modern Language Review, 50, 3 (1994): 506-531.
Burbules, N. C. (2016). How we use and are used by social media in
education. Educational Theory, 66(4), 551-565.
https://sadil.ws/bitstream/handle/123456789/757/HOW%20WE%20USE
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%20EDUCATION.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
Canning-Wilson , C. (2000). 24. Practical Aspects of Using Video in The Foreign
Language Classroom. The Internet TESL Journal, VI (11)
Gilakjani, A. P., & Sabouri, N. B. (2016). Learners' Listening Comprehension
Difficulties in English Language Learning: A Literature Review. English language
teaching, 9(6), 123-133.
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1101226.pdf
Progosh, D. (1996). Using video for listening assessment: Opinions of test-
takers. TESL Canada Journal, 34-44.
Hamouda, A. (2013). An Investigation of Listening Comprehension Problems
Encountered by Saudi Students in the EL Listening Classroom. International Journal
of Academic Research in Progressive Education and Development. 2(2), 113-155
https://www.scirp.org/(S(lz5mqp453edsnp55rrgjct55))/reference/
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Kusumarasdyati. (2004, 7). Listening, Viewing and Imagination: Movies in EFL
Classes. 2nd International Conference on Imagination and Education, Vancouver,
Canada. Retrieved from

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Safarali, S. K., & Hamidi, H. (2012). The impact of videos presenting speakers’
gestures and facial clues on Iranian EFL learners’ listening
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literature, 1(6), 106-114.
Tess, P. A. (2013). The role of social media in higher education classes (real and
virtual)–A literature review. Computers in human behavior, 29(5), A60-A68.
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Thilaphan, V. A., Kanokkamalade, V., & Klinchan, N. (2020). A Study of English
listening skill from social media of BA students, Faculty of Humanities at
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takers. TESL Canada Journal, 34-44.
Rost, M. (2013). Teaching and researching: Listening. Routledge.
listening comprehension skills
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outcomes of English learning,Volume 31, 2022 - Issue 3, P381-398.
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